Family Historian User Group

Years ago as a trainee history teacher I was strongly advised not to trust secondary source material for research. There are many well meaning amateur genealogists who transcribe original source material and publish it on the internet for the benefit of others.I recently came across transcript material on a recommended website about my own family that was inaccurate and very misleading. I have the printed original material myself. My advice is that although original material is expensive to come by it is worth getting BMD certificates and printing out original census returns so that your family history is not based on someone elses misakes.

ID:2266

Good point! However, unreliable and misleading as secondary source material can be, other peoples previous research has saved me months possibly years of my own (especially at the beginning) and also who's to say we don't mis-transcribe ourselves, or just can't decipher the records. I personally try to check everything against primary evidence where possible. One reason being I'm a bit of a completist and, erm obsessive!

Alan
[smile]

You are right Alan other people's research can save lots of time and I should have said that I am full of admiration for experienced researchers who share information for free on the internet following hours of searching, transcribing and checking facts.Two wonderful researchers have put one branch of my family tree on the internet back to the early 1600s. Another has my mother in law's family back to 1573. My comment came after I used information from a normally reliable and recommended website to save some time. After several hours and checking with a family member it became clear that the information was more fiction than fact.It was not a matter of transcription errors. The contributor turned out to be a generous, enthusiastic novice who had copied material from various sources without having enough background knowledge to draw the correct conclusions from the information produced.The website moderator accepted all contributions in good faith.

A fellow 'Wellbelove' researcher found 17 variations of our surname on an 1891 census website - mostly transcription errors. The worrying thing is there were probably many more!!!

Alan

Sources can be a real problem and not just other peoples' research.
Twice (only twice so far) I've been fooled by what appears to be exact matches elsewhere only to discover later that the lead I had was completely wrong.
The worst was my g(x3)grand father who disappeared from the village where his offspring were found only to reappear 40 miles away. It turned out that the person 40 miles away, with the same name and y.o.b. and with same named offspring, were unrelated. I have kept the research on that family just in case somewhere in the past they/we are related.
I found my family in Hackman's Bishops transcripts exactly where they should have been.