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Fact or Fiction?

One of the problems we face doing genealogical research is getting the facts straight. It's one thing to have names, but it's another thing to gather facts such as date and place of birth, date of death, and other vital information. As you find your ancestors, you may discover that they may have recorded birthdates that vary within a range as large as 10 years. Your ancestors records may also list different states as their birth location. This is typical for early African-American records because 1) slaves often didn't know their birth date or where they were born, 2) birth certificates weren't required in many states until the early 1900's or later and 3) census takers sometimes gathered information from neighbors when family members weren't available which lends to discrepancies.

Significant to my own personal family history, I found that spelling errors also were common. For example, many of my family records contained the surname Makey. However, as I followed those individuals from state to state, Makey was sometimes recorded as Mackey. Also, children's names and date of births were sometimes swapped.

So, given the possible discrepancies that may be revealed in your search, how exactly do you determine the correct dates and spellings? Do you give more weight to the sources recorded closest to the actual dates in question? Do you rely on oral history? Or, do you record the discrepancies and continue the search? Unless the source I find is undisputed, I guess I'll just have to note the discrepancies and hope our family facts don't soon become a tree of fiction.

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Comment by Mavis Jones on July 10, 2009 at 10:45pm: Anitra, enjoyed reading your post. It reminded of my maternal grandfather's maternal line. Based on my granddad's first cousin's funeral program, their name was spelled, Rome. However, ever single census I've gotten a different variation of the surname (Draughn, Rhone, Roan, etc.) . I've even had ancestors flip genders from one census to the next. I think a lot of it as Angela has stated and with African-American research, you also have to remember the time in which events took place.

Comment by Angela Walton-Raji on July 10, 2009 at 9:41pm: Hello Anitiria, I too enjoyed your post. Add to the list of differences in spelling the fact that in many cases the enumerator himself sometimes had challenges in their own degree of literacy and sometimes name were written the way they were heard to have been pronounced. Another challenge is that at times, some of the indexes are not accurate, and inspection of the document reveals that the name was written correctly while the persons who indexed the record, made their own errors as well. It is good to list the many possible reasons that we can't find those whom we seek. Great to see your message!
-Angela-

Comment by Ethel Marie Silcock on July 10, 2009 at 6:14pm: I loved your post! I too seem to have problems with the facts, which sometimes are not the "facts' at all. Especially with the census, argggg. My biggest, and most time-consuming, was locating my husband's grandfather. He should be on the 1880 census for Arkansas, but, no, unable to locate Clarence Vandiver anywhere. Turns out, the transcriber misspelled the last name into Vandwine.

Even on modern day documents, there are errors. My Clarence Vandiver's death certificate had several errors.

Fact or Fiction?

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