The longer I work in genealogy, the more I realize something about family tree research: a family tree isn’t simply something I find. I build it. Records give me names, dates, places, relationships, occupations, witnesses, neighbors, signatures, and dozens of other clues, but the records don’t come with instructions telling me exactly where every piece belongs.
That means I’m making decisions all the time. I decide whether the John Smith in one census is the same John Smith in the next, whether conflicting birth years can describe the same person, and whether a parent-child relationship has enough support to enter as a conclusion rather than a possibility.
In this episode, I look at how we weigh conflicting evidence, test our assumptions, and preserve the reasoning behind the connections in our family trees.
Podcast Notes: https://ancestralfindings.com/how-much-of-my-family-tree-depends-on-my-own-judgment/
Ancestral Findings Podcast: https://ancestralfindings.com/podcast
This Week’s Free Genealogy Lookups: https://ancestralfindings.com/lookups
Genealogy Giveaways: https://ancestralfindings.com/category/giveaways/
