How do I know for sure if the person I found is really my ancestor?
I am trying to see if the people I find are truly my ancestors. I don’t have much information from other family. It’s hard to know if the information I find is really accurate.
Answers
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Here are some starting points for reading up on the Genealogical Proof Standard:
Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genealogical_Proof_Standard
A FamilySearch/RootsTech blog from 2016 https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/understanding-the-genealogical-proof-standard
The trick, of course, is that first step: "reasonably exhaustive research". Part of that is figuring out whether the record you've found is for the person you think it's for; sometimes, it takes several different pieces of evidence to show that yeah, that's really him -- and sometimes, it'll always remain a guess.
And, as always in genealogy, start with what you know for (reasonably) certain, and work your way back. There's not much point to your spending time proving that XY was NM's parent if it turns out that NM is no relation to you.
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@MelissaAnn83 To reinforce what Julia says, can I throw in a cautionary tale... I was tracing my Taylor line from me in Cheshire back to my 3G GPs in Central Lancashire and I was really careful - I got everything, including all the censuses between me and them. As a result of matching the families, I found out that, whereas they claimed to be from "Preston, Lancashire" when they were living in Cheshire, when I traced them back, the early censuses said they were from "Penwortham, Lancashire".
That change is not unusual - basically, Penwortham was then just a church and a scattering of houses on the other side of the river from Preston. When they came down to Cheshire, they must have got fed up with explaining where Penwortham was, so substituted it with the nearest big town that people had heard of.
My distant cousin attempted a shortcut of going straight from a late Cheshire census to the earliest Lancashire census. Unfortunately, this meant that she missed seeing the change from Preston to Penwortham and she happened to hit on a Thomas Taylor of the right age, living on his own, who was born in Preston. Wrong person sadly... My Thomas (our Thomas) was on the other side of the river, admitting that he was born in Penwortham. (Don't worry - I did, tactfully, tell her where she'd gone wrong).
So that's one aspect of doing the "reasonably exhaustive research" - don't miss any censuses out en route. And start with the person you know and work back - don't attempt leaps of faith between here and there - because people don't necessarily give the full and correct details.
Good luck - and the fact that you've said "It’s hard to know if the information I find is really accurate" is a good sign!
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I call it connecting the dots - making sure that you find every possible record covering the family of your research. If you jump too far back, you'll miss that clue that Gordon mentioned. And don't be afraid to work sideways - known as collateral or cluster or FAN Club research. Look at the rest of the family; don't try to isolate just on your direct line.
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I agree with all of the above and add my simple rule that likens it to a jigsaw puzzle: If it all fits into place easily, it's more likely to be right. If it only nearly fits, and all the following data doesn't show where it's wrong, and it just keeps getting more difficult to fit it together, then it's more likely to be wrong.
There is straightforward way of checking: When you have worked back in time to a supposed distant ancestor. Start from that family and work forward in time to see where they all went. If you've got it wrong, then you will probably find that they are all accounted for elsewhere and are nothing to do with you.
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