Just the facts

[1_mke]

In regards to innacuracies, some things I look for...

Is the youngest childs birth date realistic? IE, how old was the mother? If she was eight years old at the time you can be fairly sure there is a problem.

Along the same lines, woment seldom if ever had children when they were in their fifties so look at the ages of the youngest children. I generally drop children that are obviously to old or to young. In some cases there migth have been two or more mothers and that will occasionally be reflected in other versions of a particular genealogy.

People generally didn't move around much, even in colonial times. If you have twelve children look for some sort of logical and consisten progression in terms of their birth places. If one of them was born three states over from where every other one was born than there may be a problem.

Particularly in the case of males, look for death dates that predate by a year or more the birth date of their final listed child. Something is clearly wrong in this case.

Eight year old males do not father children. This is a variation of the mother issue above.

When dealing with census data trust the earlier ages more so than the later ones. I've noticed that both men and women tend to shave a few years off their ages as they get older.

Etc.

Mostly its just common sense and judgement calls. I'm slowly learning that all source material is likely to have some kind of error either by accident or intent. You have to take the body of evidence and make your best guess based on what you have.

[cokie]

Yes there are many inaccurate family trees on the internet. People just copy them without research and the inaccuracies keep circulating.
When you begin, first ask everyone in your family for information and keep a record in a familytree software program - you can download one from the LDS website FamilySearch for free that will do -

https://www.familysearch.org/

Census are really good but you must crossreference over several years to get a good idea of ages and birthdates etc. since the information isn't always accurate. The WorldGenWeb has resources for virtually every country in the world. Birth, marriage and death records are also valuable. Wills will name family members if you can find them. Historical records such as local history books can provide information if your ancestors were in them.
As far as dna, it's pretty difficult as yet to establish one's ancestry exactly from dna. I have over 100 matches on FTDNA and only two matched surnames.

[lgmayka]

I have been tested at 37 markers, My predicted haplogroup is I2b1, and i have very few concrete facts to start a family tree on my paternal side.

Does your Y-DNA Matches page list any matches at 37 markers?

[1_mke]

Agreed thetick. Other public records are far from perfect as well so you have to develope a good fuzz filter in order to read/interpret them.

As for how useful DNA testing is, I'd say very with the caveat that short of a fairly close match you'll still need to do a lot of work to figure out the connection.

Small matches (<.12% or so) can be many hundreds of years in the past. My Mom matches exactly the same small segment with three generations of the same family for instance. I don't have that segment at all.

DNA testing is only part of a larger arsenal of tools you need to use to find out the truth. Its not a magic bullet at this point. Give it time though and it should get better as more data will be in the databases. I'm going to be very interested to see how ancestry.com's efforts evolve for instance.

Note, I'm talking primarily about autosomal testing here.

[Jomid59]

How much can DNA testing really do ?

[thetick]

Well it depends what you mean by speculation and guess work. Census records are loaded with errors like typos on dates, stupid census takers calling Ukrainians Russian, just down right lying to cover an underage pregnancy...the list goes on and on.

Most Census and vital records are accurate but there is always some speculation and guess work with them.

[1_mke]

Have you signed up with any of the genealogy sites? Census data can provide fairly easily take you back to the mid 19th century if you have unusual surnames or know where your family is from. This is true in the case of the US, Caneda and Great Britain. Probably other countries as well but those are the ones I know about.

[507]

I believe there are more inaccurate family trees floating around out there on the internet than accurate family trees. I have been tested at 37 markers, My predicted haplogroup is I2b1, and i have very few concrete facts to start a family tree on my paternal side. I'm fairly certain of my father and grandfather but not much past that. What is the best way to get started ? Not using speculation and guess work. Just facts. How much can DNA testing really do ?