Common Family Tree Mistakes

And how to avoid making them!

When you first start out creating your family tree it can be exciting, and at times overwhelming, especially if you’re using a service like Ancestry or MyHeritage, which are constantly feeding you suggested ‘hints’ and new connections. It becomes very easy to make some very common family tree mistakes. I know, I’ve made many of these myself when I first began to research my family history.

As fast as you add someone to your tree there are new ‘Hints’ being offered and links to other’s family trees and the temptation is great to add as much as you can as fast as it’s suggested – But Wait, is that really the best approach? I started off with my own research that way, and as a result I’m still correcting errors I made in my tree years ago. Even small errors can lead to large problems in your tree.

Before I get into the common mistakes many people make, it’s important to mention the Genealogy Proof Standard (GPS). These are 5 straightforward elements to apply to every person and piece of information you add to your family tree – before you add it.

• Research has been reasonably exhaustive
• Information has been analysed and corroborated
• Conflicting evidence has been resolved
• Sources have been cited or referenced
• A reasoned conclusion has been created

If you can’t place a tick mark beside all 5 elements then you shouldn’t consider the information as proven, or a ‘fact’. The link above will take you to a page explaining the GPS in more detail. 

My Top 5 Common Family Tree Mistakes:

1. Copying other people’s trees and research. Do your best to avoid doing this unless you have spent the time to independently verify or validate the information you’re planning to add to your family tree. You can do this by first looking at the source of the other person’s information. Is it a Primary or Secondary source? Can it be corroborated by other sources or family stories? If they don’t cite any source, that should be a large red flag! There is a tremendous amount of wrong information in online trees which can be attributed to poor research habits, record mismatches, improperly sourced details, or simply errors in logic. You will often find several trees that have the same incorrect information because the owners all accepted hints from the same incorrect source tree. Use other’s online trees for clues, but don’t trust at face value other’s research. 

1. Copying other people’s trees and research. Do your best to avoid doing this unless you have spent the time to independently verify or validate the information you’re planning to add to your family tree. You can do this by first looking at the source of the other person’s information. Is it a Primary or Secondary source? Can it be corroborated by other sources or family stories? If they don’t cite any source, that should be a large red flag! There is a tremendous amount of wrong information in online trees which can be attributed to poor research habits, record mismatches, improperly sourced details, or simply errors in logic. You will often find several trees that have the same incorrect information because the owners all accepted hints from the same incorrect source tree.
   • Use other’s online trees for clues, but don’t trust at face value other’s research. 
2. Not having a clear objective or goal for your research. For example, wanting to follow your paternal ancestry back at least 5 generations, or researching one specific surname, or group of surnames, in your family. With no objective it’s very easy to get drawn down rabbit holes and ending up adding people who aren’t really related to you, or aren’t relevant to what you originally wanted to learn about your family.
   • I have one cousin who has a tree on Ancestry with over 14,000 individuals. I can 100% guarantee you it contains many errors. It’s impossible for my cousin to have properly researched and validated, with sources cited, every person and fact. This is a great example of automatically accepting hints and having no real objective for the tree.
3. Adding people and facts just because they make sense. Back to the GPS rules again. It’s very easy to add the wrong “John Smith” to your tree just because the dates and locations appear to make sense. Once you have an incorrect ancestor in your tree it can cause a ripple effect, wasting your time and energy researching people who shouldn’t really be in your tree.
   • An example, there are 4 men with my great-grandfather’s name born the same month, the same year, in the same town. I have yet to find conclusive proof which one is my ancestor, so I’ve added the most likely candidate, without ruling out the others, and am turning to Y-DNA to try and solve the mystery.
4. Excluding people because of wrong dates or spellings. Old records were hand written and often transcribed by a 2nd or 3rd person. Depending on your family’s situation and circumstance, they may not have been literate and known how to properly spell their name. Spelling errors, especially of names, are common, as are incorrect birthdates and ages. Today it’s hard to imagine someone not knowing what day and year they were born, but if you were a farmer 200 year ago it’s very possible. People weren’t asked their birthdate often, as we are today, and so when providing information for a marriage or early census, they may have just guessed.
   • It’s also common to see one or both spouses sign their marriage certificate with an X, particularly in the 1700’s and well into the 1800’s, so if there was an incorrect spelling on the entry, it’s reasonable to assume they wouldn’t have noticed it.
5. Not starting with what you already know. The best way to start your tree is with information you already know, or can learn from living relatives through family stories, bibles, wills, diaries, etc. Make the time to interview every living relative (who’s willing) about what they remember, places, dates, stories, etc. Once those people are gone, their knowledge is also gone. 
   • I spent many hours talking with my mom about her family before she passed, and regret not having done the same with my father.

What is Family?

A group of persons of common ancestry

A people or group of peoples regarded as deriving from a common stock

– Merriam-Webster Dictionary

A final thought that relates to Mistakes #2 and #3… What does “Family” mean to you? Related Genetically? Related through marriage? Once you start adding people and accepting auto-generated hints from platforms like Ancestry, it’s very easy for your tree to explode in size, and for mistakes to start entering the tree. For some people, the size of their tree is like the number of followers on Instagram or X, or number of “friends” on Meta. It can become more of a bragging point and less about accuracy. A well-researched family tree needs to be accurate, not necessarily large. The most recent iteration of my own tree has focused solely on blood lines (maternal & paternal), removing everyone only related by marriage, and thus reducing my tree from several thousands, to under 300 people who I am confident are well researched and related to me.

I have people in my original Ancestry tree that have relationship descriptions like “mother-in-law of granduncle” and “maternal grandfather of wife of granduncle“. Those individuals are very distantly related to me only through a marriage, so why are they in my tree? It’s because when I first started out researching my family, Ancestry kept feeding me hints that seemed to make sense, and it was exciting to see my tree growing so I just kept adding people, and then more people were suggested, so I added them, and so on, and so on. I just looked at the 2 people I mentioned and there are dozens of new ‘hints’ waiting, including suggestions for their parents. Those people are not family… or at least, not by my definition.

If you have any questions, concerns or feedback, don’t hesitate to contact me. Likewise, if you would like help with your own research, or simply an independent and impartial review of your existing tree and research.

Happy researching!

Michael