"Charlemagne claimed descent from Mary and Joseph, but it seems unlikely that his sourcing was up to today's standards."

ADMITTEDLY, NOT EVERYONE has enjoyed enormous success in searching the large pedigree-linked databases, but those who have, and there are many, face an interesting choice. Should they continue on, finding more and more links that can easily mount up into the tens of thousands, or should they face the more arduous task of sourcing the links they have found?
        There is a great deal of satisfaction in being able to search an ancestral line back to 1000AD or earlier and if we are to believe some genealogical pundits there are more than 10 million North Americans currently alive who could do this. How does this come about? There were more than 500 colonials who have been proven to be of distinguished ancestry with pedigrees leading back to the royalty of Europe. Some of these distinguished colonials were very prolific and their descendants number in the hundreds of thousands; some of them were less prolific and others became extinct after a generation or two. The net result is that millions of Americans and Canadians are descendants of these early colonial pioneers who arrived on the shores of the New World about 15 generations ago. Many, if not all, of the major pedigree-linked databases have most of these distinguished colonial pedigrees online and an increasing number of researchers are uploading their research to these sites and discovering to their delight that they have a link to royal lines. Some researchers find that two or more of their colonial ancestors have links to royal lines and they quickly find that they can add thousands of names to their pedigrees since most of the royal families of Europe are connected at some point. If this is not enough, consider that much research is being done on Adamic lines since some of the prominent royals, notably Charlemagne, have claimed links to Joseph and Mary of biblical fame. The importance of spending more time on sourcing becomes quickly apparent since it only takes one wrong link to reduce your pedigree chart to a fiction. If you are going to show your royal ancestors off, it is important to make sure that your links are carefully researched and proven.

"Elizabeth Shown Mill's Evidence! is among the most popular guides to proper genealogical sourcing."

Sourcing
Sourcing is no one's favorite genealogical task, but it well may be the most important in that good sourcing validates all of your work and allows you to talk confidently about the links that led to your ancient ancestors. Those ancestors closest to yourself should be easy to validate with birth and marriage certificates, but as you move further back in time you will increasingly have to depend on censuses, parish records, land titles and service and pension records. Read the standard works on sourcing and evaluating evidence. One of the best is Elizabeth Shown Mills' Evidence!. Another good way to learn how to record source data is to obtain copies of the National Genealogical Society Quarterly and to carefully follow a genealogical report looking at the numbered footnotes to see how the many different sources are recorded. Most genealogical software also provides a way of saving notes and each name you enter on your pedigree should be accompanied with a note on where the information came from. Some sources are more valid than others and primary source material such as birth and marriage certificates and parish and census records should be clearly noted so that other genealogists reading your notes could easily obtain the records for themselves. Different problems are encountered when moving back into the 1700s both in the US and Canada. In the US, Revolutionary War records are widely available, and the 1790 national census has been indexed and is available from many sources. The records of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Sons of the American Revolution can be researched at the societies for a modest fee. In Canada, United Empire Loyalist records form a similar record data source along with first national 1841 census and a unique three-million-name CD database called the Canadian Genealogical Index. Many of the Canadian Empire Loyalists have American colonial ancestors and can rightly claim membership in lineage societies such as Mayflower Descendants, the DAR and the SAR.

Database Links
One tremendous advantage of uploading a GEDCOM to pedigree-linked databases is that there is a requirement with the host database that you supply contact information. This allows you to contact those individuals with whom you have common ancestors so that you can discuss source information. You could establish an e-mail correspondence with such genealogists that yields mutually fruitful results. The writer has used this facility with tremendous success and just one good link can turn out to be a genealogical treasure. Some of my ancestral names researched online had as many as 29 contributors and a very lively e-mail correspondence ensued that resulted in adding ancestors to my wife's line dating back to 902AD. What we found was that while we had understandably concentrated on direct-line ancestors who had many siblings, other researchers had been working on the sibling lines and although we had ancestors in common they had gone off on a branch from the tree that took them in different directions.

"Sometimes, too much success can be a bad thing. A huge number of new leads may cause beginners to lose focus on their primary research goals."

It Depends on You
In the months and years ahead, pedigree-linked databases will become an even more powerful repository for research and sourcing. If we are to be part of this development we need to upload well-sourced data to the online databases and be continually upgrading our online information as more detailed and better source information becomes available. Many who have uploaded their data have enjoyed considerable success but the surface has just been scratched. If another 100,000 researchers upload their data in 2002, the pedigree-linked databases will double in size and become even more valuable. Sharing information has always been the hallmark of the genealogical community and we now have within our reach a powerful new technology that has the potential to store, sort and organize genealogical data in a way that would have astounded us five short years ago.
        Of course this technology is not free and even hugely successful volunteer groups like RootsWeb need your tax-deductible donations. There are paid subscription databases that will allow you access to their data if you participate in their data extraction programs. KindredKonnections.com is one such organization that has a census extraction program running at present that will credit you with one hour of access to their databases in exchange for two family extractions from the census. Since two families take about five minutes to extract you can earn six hours access to the database for an hour's work - more if you type faster than me, and almost everyone does.
        This new side of genealogical research needs your participation to expand and make available the fruits of everyone's research in a way that could have only been imagined just a few short years ago.

This article originally appeared in our November/December 2001 issue.