James Tanner's Rules for Genealogy

 

James Tanner’s Genealogy’s Star blog, 11 July 2020:

 

A New Rule of Genealogy Discovered: Number Thirteen

 Here are the previous 12 Rules.

·                     Rule One: When the baby was born, the mother was there.

·                     Rule Two: Absence of an obituary or death record does not mean the person is still alive.

·                     Rule Three: Every person who ever lived has a unique birth order and a unique set of biological parents.

·                     Rule Four: There are always more records.

·                     Rule Five: You cannot get blood out of a turnip. 

·                     Rule Six: Records move. 

·                     Rule Seven: Water and genealogical information flow downhill

·                     Rule Eight: Everything in genealogy is connected (butterfly)

·                     Rule Nine: There are patterns everywhere

·                     Rule Ten: Read the fine print

·                     Rule Eleven: Even a perfect fit can be wrong

·                     Rule Twelve: The end is always there

As I said back in November of 2019, you never know, there might be another rule somewhere out there in the genealogical universe waiting to be discovered. Well, here it is:

 

Rule Thirteen: Genealogists abhor a blank field

 Other than my obvious borrowing from the old scientific saying from physics known as, horror vacui, or plenism, commonly stated as "nature abhors a vacuum," attributed to Aristotle, this came to me as I was correcting entries in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. It seems like some genealogists are compelled to fill in a blank even if they have no idea what should go there. Hmm. I might say that some people are compelled to fill in a blank even if they have no idea what should go there and not attribute all that extra stuff to genealogists but in my experience, it is genealogists that obsess over empty fields such as birthdates before there could possibly have been any birth records. 

 Genealogy should be source-based. This means that when we add information (an event) to our family tree, it should be based on a valid historical source not just our speculation about the event. You might want to look at Rule Two (above) and think about the fact that empty fields may simply reflect the last of a record and not a failing on the part of the researcher. 

 Take some time to think about what you are adding to your own family tree and take some more time to think about what you add to an online public family tree.