Lessons learned: Weekly Genealogy Prompt #21

Week #21: Lessons learned. Fess up to your research mistakes so others can learn from them!

I immediately knew what my number one mistake was: Not documenting my sources. Many times I have other researchers email me asking me how I found data I had included in my family trees either on Ancestry or Familysearch. It is frustrating and embarassing to tell them, “I don’t really know” or “I copied it from another site and forgot to put down where.”

Now, I try to take that extra “less than a minute” time to document where I found my data. I will not be here forever, everyone has their time to “meet their maker” so to speak. Will others behind me, say in the year 2061 (don’t think I’ll live or be researching when I am 100!) be able to find where I got my information?

So, learn from my mistake and always document your sources. Even if you don’t document like a professional, do something to state where your records were found!

More articles written by Tina Sansone can be found at Genealogy@Bellaonline.com

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