I changed my mind about someone recently.

Genealogically speaking.

I had been working with a possibility that two people might actually have been the same man.

The dates made it possible. Other pieces of the family story made it worth investigating. I certainly didn’t have enough evidence to say they were the same person, but I had enough to wonder.

So I wondered.

And researched.

Then more evidence came along.

Nope.

Two men.

Fine.

I’ll just be over here rearranging everything.

This Happens

When you’re working on a family with missing records, repeated names, questionable dates, and people who apparently considered leaving a clear paper trail beneath them, you have to develop theories.

There is nothing wrong with that.

The problem comes when we forget which parts are theories.

That’s why I’ve become pretty particular about the words I use in my research notes.

Confirmed.

Probable.

Possible.

Unproven.

Conflicting.

Those words keep me from turning “this could be him” into “this is him” somewhere along the way.

It is surprisingly easy to do.

I Really Thought It Might Be Him

In this particular case, I had good reasons to keep the possibility open.

Then family photographs and additional records supported the existence of two separate men.

That didn’t mean the earlier research was bad.

The evidence changed.

So did my conclusion.

I could have tried to explain away the new information because it didn’t fit my theory.

That would have been a terrible idea.

Unfortunately, once we become attached to a theory, explaining away inconvenient evidence can be awfully tempting.

Especially after we’ve spent three weeks on it.

Write Down the Problem

If records disagree, I don’t like forcing them into agreement.

Say one record gives a birth year of 1826.

Another points toward 1827.

Don’t quietly pick one because it fits your tree better.

Write down both.

Then start comparing everything you can find.

How close was each record created to the actual birth?

Who supplied the information?

Would that person have known?

Are there other records?

Could two people with similar names be getting mixed together?

Could both people actually exist?

That last possibility deserves more attention than it sometimes gets.

Families reused names constantly.

Cousins could have the same name.

A child could be named for another child who died, although don’t assume the first child died without finding evidence.

Two men with the same name could live in the same county.

And just when you think you’ve sorted them out, one of them will marry a woman with the same first name as the other one’s wife.

Because genealogy.

Don’t Ignore What the Family Kept

The evidence that changed my recent theory included material preserved by the family.

Photographs, letters, Bibles, diaries, funeral cards, and family recollections don’t automatically outrank official records.

They don’t automatically rank below them, either.

You still have to ask questions.

Who labeled the photograph?

When?

Was the label contemporary or added fifty years later?

Who wrote the Bible entry?

Was the person there when the event happened?

Who told the story?

A photograph labeled by someone’s daughter during his lifetime is different from one labeled by a great-grandchild who never met him.

Both are clues.

They just aren’t the same kind of evidence.

The Tree Is Allowed to Change

I think this is hard for some researchers, especially after years of work.

Removing a relationship can feel like admitting you were wrong.

Well, sometimes we were.

Welcome to genealogy.

We work with the records we have. Then another record turns up, and we know more than we did before.

I’d much rather change my tree than spend the next ten years researching the wrong family because I couldn’t bear to let go of an old conclusion.

And sometimes the best answer really is:

We don’t know.

I know.

Terribly unsatisfying.

But “we don’t know” leaves the question open for more research. A made-up answer sends everyone down the wrong road.

I’ve kept one phrase from this whole recent adventure because I think it’s worth remembering:

A good genealogist isn’t the person who never gets it wrong.

It’s the person willing to change their mind when the evidence says they should.

I still would have preferred being right the first time.

Just saying.