The summer has been spent not so much on finding new records as finding old ones again.
I was surprised on running a report in the genealogy software that I use to see the large number of unsourced records.
It wasn’t in the mainstream family line but in a number of offshoots mainly, and was probably when a new family had been discovered and they were all added in haste.
I thought I had been quite strict with ensuring that when a new record or event was added the source was recorded at the same time. However the report proved me wrong and it has cost a large number of days to put some of it right and there’s a fair bit more to do.
In some cases it was seen that the omissions (and indeed errors) were from several years ago and never rechecked.
Running the report was depressing in some ways, but it has resulted in a good looking over of the family trees and with some up-side.
What was noticed in tracking down various events was how much more material there is on-line. For example, where evidence of a burial was initially sourced from the National Burial Index, a number of actual parish registers images were found in the new search giving a primary record rather than just an index entry.
Three lessons, or at least reminders the hard way.
1. However painful add the sources at the time
2. Periodically recheck on-line sources if a visit to the archive cannot be made, and update any source references to an index if possible.
3. Go over the whole tree from time to time and correct some of those early mistakes
