How much can we assume when tracing our ancesters ? (General)

by rookancestrybest , United Kingdom, Friday, February 04, 2011, 20:28 (5045 days ago) @ slowhands

The best thing to do is to keep looking at a range of sources, have an open mind and never assume that because there appears to be no record that the person died or did not exist. I always try to prove/verify things by looking at a range of sources.I have found that sometimes something apparently insignificant or a fragment of information opens a massive way into finding out much more e.g. I removed some photographs from a photograph album which had never been removed to look at the back of them, and sure enough the people's names were written on many of them!!! I have also found other relatives who have researched family history independently and this has been useful when they have made the same links as me from looking for the information differently or from other information I did not have.
When I first started on family history I made a number of assumptions, e.g. many times that people had died in childhood, only to find that this was wrong because they would pop up unexpectedly in the most surprising places, e.g. one person I thought had died, actually lived to a ripe old age and married three times. Remember that people may have gone abroad especially if they were in the army, navy, or Church, so the British Colonial territories e.g. India are sometimes where the family had "disappeared" to. Also bear in mind that at the end of the Victorian era a lot of people went to the USA too. Also never forget that people can spell their surnames differently and that Census records and transcriptions can be misspelt.
Also don't assume because one branch of the family might be very poor that others could be rich and vice versa because people's circumstances even within one family can change and can create a vast difference in their life chances. I have found in one branch of my family (not FOD) that the eldest sons inherited, became rich as did their descendants but younger siblings ended up in very modest or poorer circumstances and over about three or four generations the differences in their circumstances can be enormous.
E.g. the descendants of one brother can end up at expensive public schools and the descendants of another might be in the workhouse when a few generations have passed! The early death of the breadwinner can also make a family's circumstances change dramatically especially in the 19th Century.