Chaff & Grain
Someone complained about an unnamed genealogy website for not caring about accuracy. They also didn’t want to share their tree nor take a DNA test. Participation in family history research is strictly optional, is it not? Digital images of old original church and government records are key to proving paper trail familial relationships. Genealogy websites…
Someone complained about an unnamed genealogy website for not caring about accuracy. They also didn’t want to share their tree nor take a DNA test.
Participation in family history research is strictly optional, is it not?
Digital images of old original church and government records are key to proving paper trail familial relationships.
Genealogy websites attempt to preserve such records through digitization and make them viewable online often for a fee. To improve accessibility, they employ AI or human indexers. But that task is understandably difficult given handwriting interpretation issues.
These indexes in many cases save us hours of clicking through a likely record set page by page until we find the entry for our ancestor. I tend to do the page-by-page search to find out more about the neighborhood.
DNA is another tool for genealogists to use in combination with the paper trail.
Both types of online genealogical resources have helped me by:
— Saving me a fortune by not traveling to each state or country where my ancestors once lived.
— Overcoming a challenge where an end of line was only a name on a person’s birth and christening record.
Even our venerable, well-known genealogy professionals use online trees for clues.
Yes, there are indexing issues. Yes, there are ill-conceived family trees out there.
Genealogists have the same challenge as say, a wheat farmer, as both must sift through the chaff and grain to pull out all the “good stuff.”
IMAGE: “Separating the Wheat from Chaff”, Old Whole Grain Council Blog, published September 14, 2014 (https://wholegrainscouncil.
Happy family tree climbing!
Myrt 🙂
DearMYRTLE,
Your (retired) friend in genealogy
Myrt 🙂
DearMYRTLE,
Your (retired) friend in genealogy
