#52Ancestors : check it out…

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Do you sometimes think about going back to the data you saved a few years ago ?...

I have already written that I started my genealogical research 38 years ago! What many years to go to the archives repositories, to organize the documents collected, to make files for each of the ancestors found ... Sometimes you had to make room in the closets! A question arises today, what about the quality of all this information today? This is where the need for verification comes in!

1 – Check, why ?

Like all of them, I began my personal genealogy by searching for a civil status certificate. I collated copies of archival repositories and documents printed from microfilm readers. Had I read everything right? Sometimes not! For example, the ancestor of my children, SOSA 32, Jacques Jean Baptiste DIEMUNSCH, married in 1845 in Lampertheim with Sophie BASTIAN, had his first child in the said commune on August 22, 1853. However, we all know that births in our ancestors took place almost every year. So, no child in eight years, it appealed to me. After rereading various acts concerning him, it turns out that Jacques Jean Baptiste worked for the railways. So I followed the railway line from Strasbourg to Wissembourg, and I found other children in other municipalities... It is therefore important to reread the civil status records in our possession, they can give us information that is indications to discover other members of the family.

2 – Check, how ?

In the previous paragraph, I simply reread a civil status certificate in my possession but it is not always so simple. Civil status records are acts of life that formalize the fact that we were born, married and then died. But, to cross-check information, it is sometimes necessary to read and consult other documents. For example, in Saint-Quentin, Julia L. gives birth to six children without really giving details about who she is, except perhaps her age. For the first five children, the age she gives would give her birth between 1856 and 1858. Only one birth, but the child's name is Marie Louise Clémence. After reading several pages of the Saint-Quentin' registers, it looks like single mothers easily give the name of Julia in this family... At the birth of the 6th child, it is written that Julia L. would be 16 years old, therefore, would have been born around 1876. There is no birth that could match...

On the other hand, if I consult the registration records of the last children, it turns out that two years apart, they are both sons of Julia L. and live at the same address. Bingo! How could a registrar be wrong about his age? The answer remains a great mystery!

Here is another way to verify data from our genealogies : by using of other documents than those of the civil status.

3 – Check, when ?

I have the habit, when I stumble on a lack of data, to let go of the current research, to work on another branch and to come back a few days or even a few months ago on the problem that blocks me. What for? Simply because when we are fully aware of what we are doing, we do not always see the information that would allow us to advance in our research. It is also necessary, regularly, to consult the two essential sites Geneanet and Filae. Every day, every month, every year, new genealogies and new data are published. This is how it is possible to find another clue, a date, a commune, that takes us where we would never have gone.

Only one sentence "Always put the work back on the job!" allows us to verify and confirm the information we enter in our genealogies !...