Mistakes, I've Made a Few

I'm a baby when it comes to this genealogy thing. In my first 30 days of free access to records and family trees, I admit that I went a little crazy.

I didn't know much past my grandparents...a name here, a hometown there. But the thing with some of the more popular sites is that you don't  have to know...they know for you!

I thought that, anyway.

Before I really knew what I was looking for, I was attaching stuff to people in my family tree willy nilly. A 1790 census for a great grandfather born in 1865...you get it? It was rampant and I thought other members' trees were pure gold. I loved stealing generations off their trees...it was ah-may-ZING!

Fast forward four months later and I'm doing preliminary work for a Daughters of the American Revolution application...wherein I must provide honest-to-goodness proof of existence of all these characters that pave the path to my patriot ancestor.

Imagine how much fun it is to watch my branches crumble when I find error after error. That, and I've given up my naivete and working from the bottom of the tree upwards, not vice versa whenever I find an interesting character I want to claim.


Lesson learned, my friends....lesson learned.