{"id":3419,"date":"2025-07-12T00:26:16","date_gmt":"2025-07-12T00:26:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/?p=3419"},"modified":"2025-07-12T00:26:17","modified_gmt":"2025-07-12T00:26:17","slug":"the-summer-of-my-genealogical-discontent-lesson-2-cousin-trust-or-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/?p=3419","title":{"rendered":"The Summer of My Genealogical Discontent, Lesson 2: Cousin Trust, or Not!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Caroline Kable Leininger<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Last week, I blogged about my rookie mistake of trusting online family trees without question. If you missed it, you can catch up here.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This week\u2019s lesson hits even closer to home\u2014literally. Because as much as we want to believe our families always tell it straight, I\u2019ve learned the hard way that even relatives can get the story wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know, I know. I’ve heard it too: “Grandma doesn\u2019t lie.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I\u2019m not saying she\u2014or Grandpa, Aunt Betty, Cousin Lou, or Mom and Dad\u2014is lying. What I am<\/em> saying is this: just because a family member says it, doesn\u2019t make it so. Memories fade, names blur, and stories get tangled over time. That\u2019s why we verify.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This one was tough for me. I wanted to trust my family. So I ignored what I knew<\/em> wasn\u2019t accurate for far too long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve blogged before about how my father once promised to pass along a genealogical book compiled by a cousin\u2014but after he passed, my stepmother refused to give it to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He graciously responded\u2014and 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\u2026 without question. I didn\u2019t verify a single detail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I gained more experience\u2014took classes, read how-to books, and worked with actual records\u2014I knew better. I learned to look for reliable sources, analyze the evidence, and always, always cite my findings so I could trace them back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I ignored all of that when it came to the cousin\u2019s book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why? Because I believed it had been compiled from other knowledgeable family members. Surely they<\/em> knew the names, dates, and places.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Except\u2026 they didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even the entries for my own parents were riddled with errors. My grandfather\u2019s middle name? It was Edwin<\/em>, not Edward<\/em>. My mother\u2019s maiden name? Koss<\/em>, not Kass<\/em>. My stepmother\u2019s name\u2014wrong 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, \u201cGreat! All fixed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Except they weren\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I knew that. But I didn\u2019t want to deal with it. We so badly want to believe our families have it right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not even sure when the spell broke\u2014when I realized that my<\/em> sources were stronger than vague memories or passed-down errors. Eventually, I started revising the tree, swapping family folklore for actual evidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then in May, a distant relative messaged me to let me know I\u2019d gotten the name of our second great-grandmother wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh really?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/em> a tombstone photo that all name her as Caroline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But according to my cousin, her name was Catherine<\/em>, because that\u2019s what some unnamed family member once said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll be honest\u2014my reply was a little snarky. I just couldn\u2019t wrap my head around someone dismissing a lifetime of documentation because of one undocumented \u201cmemory.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Caroline, by the way, had a nervous breakdown, according to her obituary, and died shortly after. I\u2019ve never been able to determine why\u2014there 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\u2026 no.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I told them, \u201cMaybe she had a nervous breakdown because no one in the family could remember her actual name.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I haven\u2019t heard from them since. And that\u2019s just fine by me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Moral of the Story:<\/strong> Always, always, always check your sources. If the evidence points clearly to a conclusion\u2014even if it contradicts a cherished family tale\u2014you owe it to your research (and your ancestors) to accept the truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next week, I\u2019ll confess to another blunder from my early genealogy days\u2014a really<\/em> dumb trusting practice I\u2019ve since abandoned for good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s lesson hits even closer to home\u2014literally. Because as much as we want to believe our families always tell it straight, I\u2019ve learned the hard way that even relatives can … Continue reading “The Summer of My Genealogical Discontent, Lesson 2: Cousin Trust, or Not!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1294,1293],"class_list":["post-3419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","tag-caroline-kable","tag-family-genealogies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3419"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3449,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3419\/revisions\/3449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}