Second Step - Proving History

OK, you have collected everything you can from relatives and are now ready to begin using all the tools available to create your family tree (or research). Hold on, lets talk about proof.

The Board for Certification of Genealogists has established a Genealogical Proof Standard that you should become familiar with. I know, rigorously establishing proof is not fun and takes some time but their is a very good reason for it. Every beginning genealogist I know has fallen prey to letting an unproven link creep into their records and from that second forward two hideous things occur.

First, every second you spend finding links based upon the mistake is wasted. I know a young man who spent 2 months researching based upon bad data. All of it was essentially worthless.

Second, we all use knowledge that is our head and not documented for a lot of the data we research. If any of that knowledge becomes suspect and we did not document the links, we suddenly become unsure of vast sections of our research.

To prevent this we simply need to apply the 5 principles of proof. Simply put they are:
1. Reasonably Exhaustive Search - for example don't just take a single Census report, add every family member to your tree then move on. Look for more data from different sources to confirm.
2. Complete and Accurate Citation of Sources - Cite, Cite, Cite. Write it down. If done correctly another person should be able to totally recreate your research.
3. Analysis and correlation of the collected information - Don't just say you got the data from a website or book. Document it. Show it's credibility and try to ascertain how much it's data can be trusted.
4. Resolution of conflicting evidence - Sometimes their is conflicting evidence that must be resolved. If a census shows a persons parents born in Georgia and you have evidence they were actually born elsewhere, no matter how exacting your proof, document the reasoning behind your decision to overcome evidence.
5. Soundly reasoned, coherently written conclusion - Document how you came to conclusions. This is especially vital when uncovering Maiden names of female ancestors.