Canada Ancestry Records
Canada Genealogical Records
Canada ancestry records research is one of the easiest and most efficient genealogical studies you’ll ever perform. That’s because Canada has known relative peace and calm throughout most of its history, and the Canadians have always had an efficient and conscientious bureaucracy to take solid real estate records and census records.
French-Canadian Ancestry Records
French-Canadian genealogies might be even easier to study, because the Catholic Church of Canada will have copious notes on baptisms, confirmations, weddings and burials for followers of Canadian Catholicism.
When you are studying your family’s history as it dates back to Canada, follow our advice that I gave on our page “Canadian Ancestry Records“. With that in mind, and with my general praise of Canada’s genealogy records, I want to discuss reasons to turn a critical eye to any ancestry study.
Ancestry Records Advice
I’m not singling out Canada here, but I will use Canadian family history as an example. The problem with studying a family history is that, occasionally, your ancestors might have had reasons to lie on census records or lie about military service, or about a great many other subjects that might pass into the public records of the time.
Here’s why and here’s the information you should search with a critical eye.
Studying Canadian Ancestry Records
When you study the Canadian ancestry records, there will be reasons to be skeptical of some information. The person giving the information might be mistaken, due to information they got wrong via second hand or because time plays tricks on one’s memories, copy errors on the part of the person recording the information and the subject of the records might be motivated to give false information.
Mistaken Information
Imagine some cousin of yours living in Western Canada in the 1870s. Then imagine that person has a cousin who dies in the next town and, being the next of kin anywhere nearby, gives to the best of their knowledge evidence of their cousin’s family tree, including names and dates. That person could easily be mistaken, entering into the record bad information that we have no way of verifying or contradicting 200 years later.
When you see a death record, often you’ll find that a physician and a family member are consulted. Try to figure out who this family member was and how likely they were to be correct about genealogical information of their family member. If there is no family member on the record, you should treat this information with a grain of salt. Don’t dismiss it, but try to verify the record with other sources.
Time and the Memory
When a person lives for decades, they are going to collect a lot of information in their brain. Studies show that people can be absolutely convinced that a certain event took place a certain way, and be entirely wrong. The memory can play tricks on the mind.
The same is the case with facts like birthdates and marriage information. If the information was entered into the record decades later, consider that the person might be mistaken, simply because their memory isn’t perfect. This isn’t a reason to dismiss the information, but if you find information that couldn’t possibly be true, or contradicts all other information you have, it might have been inaccurately recorded.
Also consider that these records were made during a time of grief, so a grieving family member might have had other things on their mind than getting all the dates of birth right.
Clerical Errors
Along the same lines, it’s easy to be thinking one name or number and write down an entirely different name or number. There weren’t spellchecks in the 18th and 19th century, and there wasn’t a vast database to instantly compare one record with another. If a simple mistake was made by the person making the record, that mistake was likely to remain for future generations to sort out.
Providing False Information
Finally, a person might be motivated to present false information to a record writer. If there was a child born out of wedlock, social stigma or even fear of ostracism might force a parent to lie about a child’s age, or even their idenity. Maybe the parent told the census record the child was born a year later, or the child was the child of a dead uncle and therefore a cousin, or they might fail to mention the child at all.
Also, people might be motivated to lie about their military service in order to get a military pension or tax break. There really are countless reasons why your ancestors might have lied or falsified the public record, so look at all information you research with a critical eye.
Canada Ancestry Records
As stated above, the Canadian ancestry records are some of the most reliable in the world and on the Internet. They are impeccable. That’s why I brought this subject up now, to show that even the most reliable record keepers might have transmitted genealogical information that will mislead you. That being said, when you study Canada ancestry records, you’re probably on as steady grounds as you ever will be with ancestry research.
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 at 4:40 pm and is filed under Genealogical Records. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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