Last week, I blogged about my rookie mistake of trusting online family trees without question. If you missed it, you can catch up here.
This week’s lesson hits even closer to home—literally. Because as much as we want to believe our families always tell it straight, I’ve learned the hard way that even relatives can get the story wrong.
I know, I know. I've heard it too: "Grandma doesn’t lie."
And I’m not saying she—or Grandpa, Aunt Betty, Cousin Lou, or Mom and Dad—is lying. What I am saying is this: just because a family member says it, doesn’t make it so. Memories fade, names blur, and stories get tangled over time. That’s why we verify.
This one was tough for me. I wanted to trust my family. So I ignored what I knew wasn’t accurate for far too long.
I've blogged before about how my father once promised to pass along a genealogical book compiled by a cousin—but after he passed, my stepmother refused to give it to me.
In frustration, I posted a plea for help on a now-defunct genealogy site, accusing my "wicked stepmother" of holding my family's history hostage. To my surprise, a kind woman who had married into the family saw the post and reached out. She had the author's email and offered to contact him on my behalf.
He graciously responded—and sent me a digitized copy of his long out-of-print book. I was ecstatic. So much so that I used his work (which included no sources) as the basis for my paternal line… without question. I didn’t verify a single detail.
As I gained more experience—took classes, read how-to books, and worked with actual records—I knew better. I learned to look for reliable sources, analyze the evidence, and always, always cite my findings so I could trace them back.
But I ignored all of that when it came to the cousin’s book.
Why? Because I believed it had been compiled from other knowledgeable family members. Surely they knew the names, dates, and places.
Except… they didn’t.
Even the entries for my own parents were riddled with errors. My grandfather’s middle name? It was Edwin, not Edward. My mother’s maiden name? Koss, not Kass. My stepmother’s name—wrong in both maiden and first-married forms. I chalked it up to typos or bad handwriting. And when a second edition came out claiming to correct the first, I thought, “Great! All fixed.”
Except they weren’t.
I knew that. But I didn’t want to deal with it. We so badly want to believe our families have it right.
I’m not even sure when the spell broke—when I realized that my sources were stronger than vague memories or passed-down errors. Eventually, I started revising the tree, swapping family folklore for actual evidence.
Then in May, a distant relative messaged me to let me know I’d gotten the name of our second great-grandmother wrong.
Oh really?
You see, I have baptism records, census records from 1870, 1880, and 1900, a marriage certificate, two more censuses (1920 and 1930), a death certificate, an obituary, and a tombstone photo that all name her as Caroline.
But according to my cousin, her name was Catherine, because that’s what some unnamed family member once said.
I’ll be honest—my reply was a little snarky. I just couldn’t wrap my head around someone dismissing a lifetime of documentation because of one undocumented “memory.”
Caroline, by the way, had a nervous breakdown, according to her obituary, and died shortly after. I’ve never been able to determine why—there were no family deaths or financial troubles around that time. Maybe it was a medical issue misdiagnosed as mental illness. Maybe early-onset Alzheimer's, which runs in the family. I asked the cousin if they had more details, but… no.
So I told them, “Maybe she had a nervous breakdown because no one in the family could remember her actual name.”
I haven’t heard from them since. And that’s just fine by me.
Moral of the Story: Always, always, always check your sources. If the evidence points clearly to a conclusion—even if it contradicts a cherished family tale—you owe it to your research (and your ancestors) to accept the truth.
Next week, I’ll confess to another blunder from my early genealogy days—a really dumb trusting practice I’ve since abandoned for good.
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