Tag Archives: Correcting Mistakes

Revisiting My Roots: Another Case in Point

Genealogical Preparation, organization, , , , ,

I’ve been working through my prior research on my Avery family from Wood County, Ohio. I’ve been going through my old research and mostly filling in blanks with the now low-hanging fruit of “easy” records hinted to me from Ancestry. Things such as census records, vital records, obituaries, and so on. I found another example of “trusting” old research in my binders.

I’m working through the children of Gilbert Z. Avery, just grabbing their basics: birth, death, census, marriage, and obits, generally. According to my previous “research,” Gilbert’s son John B. Avery was married to Cora May Hemminger. I have their marriage record. They married in Wood County on 6 October 1886.1 However, as I’m working through the records this time, starting with Gilbert’s obituary and working through finding his children in the census records as adults, I found John B. Avery, in Arkansas where his father’s obituary said he would be. His wife was not Cora; it was Josephine.

Not to worry. He may have married twice. When did Cora die? Hmmm, not until 1939. John is in the census with his wife Josephine for most of his adult life. He and Josephine married in about 1878, a full ten years earlier than the marriage record for John and Cora. John and Josephine are together in the census from 1880-1930. John died in 1932 in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. So, John could not have been married to Cora. I set out to figure out where I went wrong.

It was another case of believing research done before me. This time from a genealogist cousin who had done a lot of the Avery research and who was kind enough to share it with me to get me started. I was looking back over her original family group sheet she shared, and there it says that John B. Avery was married to Cora Hemminger. There is a note that he “resided in Pine Bluff, Arkansas?” So, she wasn’t sure about that, but there is no mention of Josephine.

I found the marriage record back in my early days and didn’t question it. And I didn’t go looking for him in the census. I DID put him in one of my early public trees. I did some searching in online trees for him, and I’m happy to say that most trees did not make the same mistake I did. Phew. Most of them have Josephine or no wife at all. Thank goodness.

I also did some searching on Cora Hemminger. I wanted to make sure she was a real person and who she was married to if not John B. Avery. In my Ancestry tree, she has a lot of hints. And she is married to John Avery, of course. But she’s married to John Orlando Avery. They also lived in Bowling Green, Ohio. John Orlando Avery’s parents are Joshua Orlando Avery and Harriet J. Manley, of Groton, Connecticut. My Averys were from New York state. So, I’m not sure they are related.

Let’s be fair. The internet, digitized images, and revolutionary tools like full-text did not exist when my cousins began their research. This has definitely made it easy for me to figure out the mistake in a matter of minutes. This is all at my fingertips now, whereas it wasn’t “back in the day.” The moral of the story? It’s a good idea to check your old research and reevaluate some of the early work you trusted.

1. The marriage record is at FamilySearch: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939K-BP64-D

Revisiting My Roots: A Case in Point

Genealogical Preparation, organization, , , ,

Several posts ago, I talked about how I “believed” others who had built the family tree before I started researching. I put a lot of “trust” out there.

“I believed everyone out there doing genealogy on the same families as me had been doing it longer and therefore must know more than I did, must have found the records already, and therefore their pedigrees, family group sheets, and trees posted online were correct.”

Well, I have just discovered an error that I’ve believed, and other genealogists before me had believed as well.

During my tree cleanup, I have recently been working on the Avery family. In one generation, the Averys and the Meekers lived next door to each other. From that, four Avery siblings married four Meeker siblings, creating a lot of chaos in my family tree. One generation down from this, I had another Avery marrying another Meeker. I hadn’t noticed before, because the Averys and Meekers are so intermingled. However, today, I noticed that this coupling was not in the right generation. I have in my tree, as many others do, that Mahlon I. Meeker married Pauline Avery. This would make these two first cousins. As I set out to research that, I could not find a marriage record for them, at a time when the marriage records exist and are pretty good.

So, I did a more global search for the Avery bride. I noticed a hint to another online tree that had the right groom, but the bride was Pauline Dunning, not Avery. At first, I thought this tree must be incorrect. So many trees have Pauline Avery as the wife of Mahlon I. Meeker. Well, I’ve learned that genealogy is not democracy, and just because there are so many “votes” for one thing does not make it true.

I reviewed the information I had that gave Pauline’s husband as Mahlon I. Meeker: they were all things from other researchers, not actual records. (See, I was believing them.) Then I reviewed the actual records I have. Pauline’s father’s obituary lists only “Polly deceased.” It does not give her a married name like her other siblings. Following the records for Mahlon I. Meeker, I do find a marriage record for him to Paulina Dunning. He is the correct Mahlon I. Meeker, but she was not the correct Paulina. I did consider that maybe Paulina was previously married before marrying Meeker, but I did not find that to be true. Mahlon’s wife’s maiden name was in fact Dunning and her parents have been identified; they are not Averys.

This was just the perfect situation to demonstrate why it is important to go back through your old research and clean it up. The good news, at least in this situation, is that both Mahlon and Paulina Avery are still in my tree, so I’m not lopping off an entire branch in this case.

Now on the hunt to find out what happened to the “real” Paulina.

Revisiting My Roots: Correcting Errors

Genealogical Preparation, organization,

Back when I was a beginner, I trusted. A lot. I believed everyone out there doing genealogy on the same families as me had been doing it longer and therefore must know more than I did, must have found the records already, and therefore their pedigrees, family group sheets, and trees posted online were correct.

What a sweet summer child I was!

Every day I see trees full of … how shall I say it nicely…? Garbage? Is that too harsh? I don’t mean to disparage anyone who is a beginner. Not at all. But I am criticizing myself a little bit. And I am definitely admonishing those that don’t go back and review their work. Especially before posting it to a public tree where thousands of beginners like me just blindly copy that garbage. For example, why didn’t I notice that someone found in the 1880 census couldn’t have died in 1876? (This is a mistake I am literally fixing at this very moment in my own database.)

I came to realize that many family historians out there didn’t know more than I did. They too were flailing around trying to grasp on to any information to fill a hole in their tree.

Again, I don’t mean to be harsh. We all started somewhere. And we all didn’t necessarily understand how invasive and far-reaching the internet would be when we posted those trees with less than accurate information on them. I know, from Facebook groups I’m in and discussions with colleagues, even NGSQ articles working to correct mistakes, that I’m not the only one dealing with this phenomenon.

One thing I did several years ago to help mitigate this problem, was I made my research tree private at Ancestry. So, all of my “garbage” work wouldn’t be copied again. That doesn’t stop the copying that was already done, but it is something. I then made a clean tree, back five generations, that is public and mostly correct, and just the straight lines (not all of the collaterals), and attached that to my DNA. This allows my DNA matches to see the basic information. But my research tree with all of the mistakes is now not available for public consumption.

By going back through my earlier research is allowing me to find these mistakes and rectify them with actual research in DOCUMENTS, not just believing someone’s tree like I did in my early days.