This morning I've just spent two hours wiping out nearly half of my brother-in-law's family tree (...... I must stop doing freebie lookups for people !
). I'd started off quite well - I'd got his father and mother's birth certificates, and (from what he told me) we knew that his mother was born in Wokingham, Berks, and that her father's name was William James Smith, who was a corporal in the Royal Berkshire regiment (note - I've changed the name to
Smith purely to respect his anonymity). So, when I found that there was a William James Smith born in Swallowfied, Berkshire, just up the road, this had to be him, right ? Well, actually NO.
It all started to fall apart when I found another Ancestry member who had this William James Smith in their tree, who insisted that their William James had died in Flanders in WW1, and this William James was a sergeant, not a corporal. Clearly "my" William James had to be alive in 1920 to father the child. So, to ensure I found the right William James Smith, I sent for my brother-in-law's maternal grandparents' marriage certificate (fortunately the bride's name was quite unusual, so I knew this was the right one).
When the certificate arrived, it was immediately apparent that my William James Smith was not from Berkshire at all, but Hampshire (a small village called Stratfield Saye, which I'd never heard of, despite working for a Berkshire-based company for 30 years !). The certificate showed that "my" William James' father was called George, who was a carter by trade.
So, the arrival of one certificated wiped out all of my research from my brother-in-law's family from his grandfather backwards - just the removal of the wrong people from his tree took forever.
Still the whole thing has reminded me of an important lesson - if your research is important, then back it up with proof !
