My Research Almost Blew Up

 I am researching another line of my family.  I had been cruising right along for about a month and this Friday, it all came to a sudden halt. 

I had done some preliminary research a few years ago and it all looked correct. 

I have been using old books for my primary sources and town records. Suddenly they didn't match. My first reaction was "What did I do?". 

Then my next reaction was "I just spent a month on this research and I might need to start over".  I was moments away from hitting delete to my manuscript. I took a deep breath, looked at the clock and decided it would worth it to keep reading and researching.

I used google to look for other resources. I decided to go back to the books I had been using. I looked on Ancestry and FamilySearch again. 

The pieces started to come together. I had to read some pages in the books multiple times. My original research was correct. I had following another researchers tree and information was wrong... very wrong.

I learned one thinng very valuable.... don't trust other people's trees quite so much. I normally do my own research but sometimes I need other people's trees to look at records and notes. I reminded myself that I had stopped using logic and critical thinking and let others people's inaccurate research influence me. 

If you are using other people's family trees.... verify their information for yourself.  Read the fine print, read the subscripts in books and read carefully, multiple times. 

An hour and a half later, I figured it out!!  I didn't need to delete my manuscript, I just need to remove one small section of my manuscipt /research. 

That was a close one.  

I am going to go back to doing my own research and only look at other people's trees and  question everything. 

Once I figured it out, I saved my manuscript and walked away.  A clear head and no fatigue is the plan for next week.