VIP Genealogy Research Connection
There is a lot of guesswork and uncertainty in genealogy. No source is 100 percent reliable. People's
memories are not always accurate. Family secrets are unlikely to be revealed - adoptions and divorces are often covered up. you will find many errors with birth and death dates. Census workers often misspelled first and last names. Government workers may have typos from entering incorrect data on documents whether by a machine or human transcribed text for researchers' access.
Some mistakes are going to be unavoidable.
Genealogy is the Study and tracing of Family History. It is a never ending story of life, the past and the present. Researching and collecting names of relatives both living and deceased is involved to establish relationships between them. You learn who your ancestors are, where they came from, how they came here etc.
a. To learn about your ancestors, how they lived, where they lived, what their life was like. Find out if there were any important people in your blood line where your ancestors came from.
b. Medical reasons-to see if there was a history of illness in the family you need to know about.
c. Become aware of family members living now that you you don't know about. (example,
finding my father's family)
When you have names from relatives, a Family Surname Table is the basic worksheet used for genealogical research. It shows how you accumulate your ancestors names for your pedigree chart. You will end up with 32 direct line ancestral names out to your 2nd great-grand parents. Only one surname per column.