A Sharp Eye and an Open Mind
Before we dive deeply into the past, we need a couple of really important tools at all times. It is exciting to start down the trail into the mists of the pasts to explore our family origins. We may have been told some fascinating story about great-grandpa and a harrowing escape during the war, that we have Native American heritage, or an adoptee may have heard that his birth mother lived in a small town outside of Houston but moved to Kansas. It is human nature to seek evidence for a belief or a story that we may have held onto (like the one in my family about being descendants of Robin Hood!).
These are important clues to research! But, they are not facts until they have been proven. If we go into our research seeking to validate a story, it taints how we interpret the evidence - to raise its importance if it supports our belief, or ignore it when it doesn't. This is human nature, and it is called bias. We must take great care not to let preconceptions color our research - particularly when the clues in the records and/or DNA evidence might add up to a different narrative.
An open mind is essential in interpreting our findings. So too is being thorough and complete when analyzing a record. For example, to look at all of the information included in the census - not just the records of our family members and any boarders living with them, but who lived next door and on the same street. What work did they do? How much schooling did they have? Where were their parents born? And, did the machine - or the census-taking human with the pen - transcribe everything correctly? Variations in spelling can mean a missed hint; and in olden days it seems that spelling in general could be a much looser business!
My wife's paternal grandfather Andrezj came from southern Poland through Ellis Island in 1912. I made a critical mistake when I first found his record a couple years ago. In this time period, arrivals were required to give a name and address for someone who could vouch for them in their home country, and also a name and address of who they were going to be with here in America. I was thrilled to get the name and address of his parents! But his record indicated that Andrezj was going to stay with an uncle in western Massachusetts. Since their entire family had emigrated to the Philadelphia area, I ignored it as an error, or something he made up or didn't really know, and forgot about it. What was I thinking?!
When I revisited this record a few weeks ago, I realized that my innocent bias about their family history cost me an opportunity to push our family research back another generation, for indeed this uncle was a brother to Andrezj's father. It turns out that he had taken his family from Philly to work in the area for a couple of years, and had a child there, before they returned to Philadelphia permanently. We now have another ancestor to research with new clues to my wife's family lineage in Poland. It appears that a descendant of that uncle's children is one of my wife's DNA matches. How much more I learned when I returned to the record with an open mind and a sharp eye!
It's incredibly important to learn all that we can, but to also look at what facts are supported by multiple sources, and which ones don't seem to withstand scrutiny. A 1940 American census record can be incredibly rich with clues, but the census was also recorded by a human interviewing other humans. As I frequently say to various cousins when I pose a theory to them; by all means disagree and challenge it! A good theory has to stand up to rigorous testing, or we need a different theory.
NEXT UP: Getting Started - What Do We Know?
These are important clues to research! But, they are not facts until they have been proven. If we go into our research seeking to validate a story, it taints how we interpret the evidence - to raise its importance if it supports our belief, or ignore it when it doesn't. This is human nature, and it is called bias. We must take great care not to let preconceptions color our research - particularly when the clues in the records and/or DNA evidence might add up to a different narrative.
An open mind is essential in interpreting our findings. So too is being thorough and complete when analyzing a record. For example, to look at all of the information included in the census - not just the records of our family members and any boarders living with them, but who lived next door and on the same street. What work did they do? How much schooling did they have? Where were their parents born? And, did the machine - or the census-taking human with the pen - transcribe everything correctly? Variations in spelling can mean a missed hint; and in olden days it seems that spelling in general could be a much looser business!
My wife's paternal grandfather Andrezj came from southern Poland through Ellis Island in 1912. I made a critical mistake when I first found his record a couple years ago. In this time period, arrivals were required to give a name and address for someone who could vouch for them in their home country, and also a name and address of who they were going to be with here in America. I was thrilled to get the name and address of his parents! But his record indicated that Andrezj was going to stay with an uncle in western Massachusetts. Since their entire family had emigrated to the Philadelphia area, I ignored it as an error, or something he made up or didn't really know, and forgot about it. What was I thinking?!
When I revisited this record a few weeks ago, I realized that my innocent bias about their family history cost me an opportunity to push our family research back another generation, for indeed this uncle was a brother to Andrezj's father. It turns out that he had taken his family from Philly to work in the area for a couple of years, and had a child there, before they returned to Philadelphia permanently. We now have another ancestor to research with new clues to my wife's family lineage in Poland. It appears that a descendant of that uncle's children is one of my wife's DNA matches. How much more I learned when I returned to the record with an open mind and a sharp eye!
It's incredibly important to learn all that we can, but to also look at what facts are supported by multiple sources, and which ones don't seem to withstand scrutiny. A 1940 American census record can be incredibly rich with clues, but the census was also recorded by a human interviewing other humans. As I frequently say to various cousins when I pose a theory to them; by all means disagree and challenge it! A good theory has to stand up to rigorous testing, or we need a different theory.
NEXT UP: Getting Started - What Do We Know?
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