Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Making some connections...and an important caution!

I had a pretty good weekend as far as making some cousin connections. I was contacted through ancestry.com by a new Bromagen cousin which is great news. That family line is really an interesting one, I have a feeling I'll be posting some specifics on that family group (with ties to VA, OH, and IN) in the near future. Then this morning I woke up to an email from someone related through my McKeever line. That one was pretty surprising because I haven't made any connections with that line up to this point. This person also found my posts through ancestry.com. I can't say enough good things about the boards on ancestry for this reason. I've found people who help when you're stuck and now found about 4 or 5 cousin connections as well. It really is a great resource, if you're careful that is. One of the dangers of ancestry.com is that there is a ton of unvalidated, undocumented information floating around there. It's great to connect with someone and exchange info but you have to remember to either get their source and assess its reliability or treat it as undocumented and seek out the proof yourself. Using a family or county history published in the 19th century is not necessarily proof positive that the info is correct. Do not assume that just because something is published that it is correct info unless there is a reliable source/sources cited. You all probably already know all this anyway, but it's something that is important to remember when using the forums at the popular sites like ancestry.

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