Question about sources
While researching my family genealogy I have come to an end of what I can document. However, if I open the trees for various ancestors here on FS I find the trees extending much further back in time, for several generations, which is quite exciting. The problem I have is there often are no sources listed for the data. For example, an ancestor will have their date of birth, death, spouse, children, parents etc listed, but no sources for any of it. This often continues for several generations. Am I missing something? It seems like these people are posted out of wishful thinking and not actually from data and documentation. I'm very hesitant to place these people in my family tree without any data to confirm they even belong in my tree.
Best Answer
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There may be all sorts of reasons for this, e.g. wishful thinking; 'legacy' FamilySearch data where the sources, even if they existed and were trustworthy at one point, never got loaded into the Tree; people treating user-contributed family trees on other sites e.g. Ancestry as if they were proper sources; people trusting unsourced family records; the dodgy Family Tree gedcom import capability.
Secondary sources such as printed genealogies are worth checking, if you haven't already done so - they may well not cite primary sources, and (as in my own experience) they may be misleading, but they may increase confidence levels (in which case I'd add relevant citations to the profile Sources).
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Answers
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Mandy, thanks for your reply. I guess I can use these unsourced entries as a lead to be researched and hopefully can substantiate (or debunk) some of them. Your comment about relevant citations is helpful as well.
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