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26 About Genealogical Standards of Evidence
for example, age, location, parents, spouse, child, occupation,
signature, etc.
Most instructors in the field of genealogy will advise you,
when you are starting a family project, to gather oral
information from elderly living relatives. These family members
are likely to have personal knowledge of events and
relationships that may take you years to uncover through your
own efforts. Another early step is to check library catalogues
to see if one of the lines in your family history has already
been "done." Both these steps are absolutely necessary at the
beginning of your ancestral searches, but paradoxically, they
can produce faulty information. They can even lead you on
wild goose chases into irrelevant records. Why?
Firstly, because as we age our memories may forget or confuse
NDP; because families may prefer to recall only the "good"
things about the deceased; because society at times attaches
rigid stigma to certain behaviours, and tacitly agrees to conceal
any subsequent enquiry, even many generations later when a
family genealogst appears. Human nature often manifests some
motivation - personal, social, religious or legal - for
obscuring or changing the facts.
Secondly, the family histories produced within the last
century or so, whether single copies of a typed manuscript,
books that were privately or commercially printed, or out
of print, are widely accessible now through interlibrary loan,
microform, online digitization or other reproduction
techniques. It is possible and probable that you can find
one of your own surname lines. It is best to remind ourselves
that relying on published genealogies and family histories,
while providing us with clues, is not a substitute for research
in original sources. Published references are definitely
exciting and useful discoveries, but they should not make
you lose sight of genealogical principles. A large number of