"Doubt" courtesy of Freepik.com Doubt: hidden superpower Doubt and uncertainty are no fun. Our brains prefer confidence. However, listening to doubt can be your superpower IF it helps you stop, evaluate the situation, then  consider alternatives .  As a beginner genealogy researcher, I was not only confident, but ignorant. We don't know what we don't know. I assumed memories of what I had been told about my family were accurate. I've since realized that while no one lied to me, my memories were incomplete and so were the memories of my family members. Unpleasant facts such as divorce and child deaths were never mentioned. No wonder it took me years to untangle even my own recent family, much less more distant relatives and ancestors. The idea of research planning seemed absurd to this beginner. Now I'm looking at doubt and skepticism in a new light as I clean up my sprawling tree. I caused much of the mess years ago by accepting whatever "facts" I f...

  Which family would you rather see on your tree?  This? Ethelyn Stephens Jones & her parents Or this. Ethelyn, parents, husband, sisters and their husbands I wanted the whole family. But a fter extensive searching in Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com, FamilySearch.org and elsewhere, I had almost given up on having anything more than names and estimated dates for Ethelyn's parents, no records beyond her death certificate connecting them, or any other birth family. In other words, settling for the first image. Then FamilySearch found the death certificate, which gave her exact date and place of birth along with the full names of her parents. Of course immediately I added the parent names and other information on both trees, Ancestry and FamilySearch Family Tree (FSFT). Birth and family information on death certificates is secondary information, and not always reliable. Still, names are clues, and the birthplace in the death certificate was close to what she stated in her marriag...