Common genealogy mistakes: verifying sources, same-name confusion and citing records

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Online family trees make it easy to add hundreds of ancestors in an afternoon. They also make it easy to copy someone else's error, attach the wrong John Smith and build a beautiful tree that belongs to a different family. These are the mistakes that trip up most beginners, and the habits that prevent them.

Mistake 1: copying other people's trees

Public online trees are full of useful leads and full of errors, and the errors spread as people copy each other. Ten trees agreeing does not mean ten people checked; it often means one person guessed and nine copied. Instead: treat any online tree as a hint. Look for the original record behind each fact before adding it to your own tree. If a tree gives no sources, assume nothing in it has been verified.

Mistake 2: same-name confusion

Common names in the same area are a trap. There may be three Thomas Joneses born within a few years in the same county, and it is easy to merge them into one man or attach the wrong one. Instead:

Use more than one detail to identify a person: name, age, birthplace, spouse, children, occupation and address together.
Follow the person through several records. If your Thomas Jones is a blacksmith married to Ann in one census, he should still fit in the next.
Look for the others with the same name and rule them out, rather than taking the first match.
Be wary when a record fits only because you wanted it to.

Mistake 3: trusting every record equally

Not all sources are equal. A useful way to think about it:

Original records created at the time, such as a register entry, are generally stronger than later copies, transcriptions or indexes.
Who supplied the information matters. A birth date on a death certificate was given by an informant, often a relative, years after the birth, and may be wrong. A birth certificate made weeks after the birth is usually more reliable for that date.
Transcriptions and indexes contain typing and reading errors. Always look at the image of the original where you can.

When records disagree, note both, weigh which is more likely to be accurate and say why.

Mistake 4: assuming spellings and ages are fixed

Many ancestors could not read or write, and clerks wrote names as they heard them. Surnames can change spelling from record to record, and ages often drift by a few years between censuses. Searching only for the exact spelling and age you expect will miss people. Instead: search with variant spellings and wider date ranges, and expect some inconsistency.

Mistake 5: ignoring geography and history

Places change names and boundaries, and records are kept by the authority of the time. A village may have moved between counties or parishes; a town may now be in a different country. Instead: use maps from the period, check which parish, district or county covered a place at the time, and learn the basic history of the area, such as migrations, wars or industries that might explain a move.

Mistake 6: impossible relationships

Watch for warning signs in your own tree:

a mother aged nine or sixty at a child's birth;
a child born after the father's death by more than nine months;
a person who appears in two places at once;
a marriage before either partner was born.

These usually mean two people have been merged or the wrong person attached.

Mistake 7: not citing your sources

If you do not record where every fact came from, you cannot check it later, explain it to a relative or spot which assumption caused a problem. A simple citation records:

what the record is (for example, a baptism register entry or a census return);
who or what it is about;
where it is held or where you found it, including the website or archive and any reference numbers;
the date you looked at it.

It does not need to follow a formal style at first. Consistency is what counts.

Mistake 8: jumping generations

Leaping from a known grandparent to a distant ancestor with the same surname skips the evidence in between. Prove each link, parent to child, one generation at a time.

Good habits to build

Keep a research log of where you have searched, including searches that found nothing.
Separate what you know from what you think, using notes like "probably" or "unconfirmed".
Revisit old conclusions when new records appear.
Share your tree with sources, so others can check your work and so you do not add to the copying problem.

What genealogy mistake taught you the most? Share your story, or ask for help untangling a confusing ancestor, in the comments.