Genealogy has a built-in problem that never goes away. You are trying to rebuild real lives from records created by real people, and people get things wrong. Sometimes the mistake is innocent, like a clerk mishearing a name or a census taker writing down a guess. Sometimes the mistake is intentional, like someone shaving off years, changing a birthplace, or hiding a first marriage. Even permanent things like headstones can be wrong, because the person ordering it may not have known the exact date, or the stone cutter may have carved it incorrectly.
Indexes and transcriptions help us find records, but they also introduce new errors. One wrong letter can split a family into two or merge two separate families into one. Online trees can spread those mistakes fast. After enough copying, a guess can start to look like a fact, just because you see it everywhere.
So how do you know when your research is accurate, or at least accurate enough that you would feel comfortable publishing it and building on it?
You will never get perfect certainty in every case. Genealogy deals with missing records, confusing handwriting, reused names, shifting county lines, and stories that have been polished over time. Still, you can get to strong confidence by using a few basic checks that experienced researchers use again and again. These checks help you spot weak links early, before they become bigger problems.
Agreement Across Independent Records
A single record can be wrong. It can also be talking about a different person with the same name. The fastest way to build confidence is to find the same key details repeated in records that were created for different reasons, by different people, at different times.
Look for consistency in names, ages, places, and relationships across multiple record types. A birth date might appear in a church register, a military record, and a death certificate. A parent name might show up in a marriage record, a probate file, and a newspaper notice. A maiden name might appear in a child’s birth record, a marriage record, and an obituary. When those independent records point the same way, you are standing on solid ground.
It helps to weigh records by how close they are to the event. A document created at the time of birth, marriage, or death often carries more weight than a later record that depends on someone’s memory. That does not make later records useless. It means you treat them as supporting evidence and keep an eye out for patterns. When the same detail keeps showing up, and you can see that the records are not simply copying each other, your confidence should increase.
When you do find a disagreement, treat it as a clue. Ask who gave the information, how likely they were to know it, and whether two people might be getting mixed together. The goal is not to force everything to match. The goal is to understand why it does or does not match.
A Timeline That Fits Real Life
One of the easiest ways to spot a wrong connection is to build a timeline. This sounds basic, which is why it works.
Start with what you know, then place every record you find into a single life story in order. Include dates, places, and the type of record. Add censuses, tax lists, land records, church entries, military service, marriages, births of children, probate records, and burial details. As you build it, look for a life that makes sense.
People can move, but travel takes time. Ages can vary, but they usually do not swing wildly. Families can have gaps between children, but some patterns are not realistic. When a timeline shows a man in two states at the same time, or a woman having children at ages that do not fit biology, the timeline is telling you something. Most often, it is telling you that you have two different people blended into one, or you attached a record to the wrong person.
A timeline also helps you see what should exist but does not. If a man owned land and then disappears from tax lists, there may be a death, a move, or a sale that you have not found yet. If a family is present in one census and missing in the next, you may need to search for them under a spelling change, in a nearby county, or in a record group you have not used yet.
When your timeline fits without constant excuses, it is a strong sign that you are tracking the correct person.
Outside Research That You Can Verify
Finding another tree that matches yours can feel reassuring, and sometimes it is. Other times, it is the warning sign, because people copy the same mistake. The difference is simple. Are you matching on evidence, or are you matching on names only?
When you find a tree that aligns with yours, look for sources. If the person has citations, follow them. Open the records and read them yourself. Make sure the document supports the claim being made. Indexes are helpful, but images matter, because indexes can drop details, and transcriptions can miss names, notes, or relationships written in the margins.
If you can trace another person’s conclusion back to real records and arrive at the same conclusion with your own eyes, that adds weight to your work. It also protects you from blind trust. You are not accepting their statement. You are confirming it.
When you and another researcher disagree, do not assume either of you is careless. It may be a genuine puzzle. Compare records, build timelines, and look for the specific point where the paths separate. Often, the answer is a record that one person did not know about, or a second person with the same name in the same county.
Strong Support For Your Hardest Conclusions
Sometimes you will not find the record you want. Maybe it never existed. Maybe it was lost. Maybe it is sitting in an unindexed book at a courthouse, or in a church register that is not online. This is when researchers make a careful leap, using indirect evidence.
Indirect evidence is when a record does not state the relationship plainly, but the details make the relationship likely. For example, a probate file may list heirs without calling them children. A land record may show a transfer that fits a parent child pattern. A court record may appoint a guardian for minors, pointing to a deceased father. A tax list may place two men next to each other for years, with one appearing right as the other disappears. A cluster of witnesses on marriages may repeat the same surnames, connecting families over time. Naming patterns can help when they match known relatives in the right place and the right time, though naming patterns should never be your only support.
The key is not to hang your conclusion on one clue. The key is to build a group of clues that all point the same direction. When you have several independent pieces that fit together, you may not have perfect certainty, but you have a strong case.
Also, keep a running list of what would settle the question. If the missing piece is a specific baptism entry, a deed, or a probate record, write that down. It keeps your mind focused. It also stops a leap from turning into a permanent assumption that never gets tested again.
DNA That Supports The Paper Trail
DNA testing has become one of the most useful tools for confirming family connections, especially when records are thin or confusing. DNA does not replace documents, and it does not work like a name tag. What it does well is confirm whether you belong in a certain family group.
The best DNA work looks for patterns, not one match. One match can be misleading. A cluster of matches who all connect to the same ancestral line is much more meaningful. Shared match tools help you see who matches both you and another person. When several people match each other and also match you, and their trees point to the same couple or the same family group, that is strong support.
DNA can also expose problems. Sometimes it shows that a paper trail is wrong, or that a relationship is not biological. That can be surprising, but it is still valuable information. It tells you to recheck the evidence, separate people with similar names, and look for events like adoptions, name changes, or other family situations that were not recorded clearly.
When DNA and records support the same conclusion, you can be more confident than you could have been with records alone.
What Accurate Means In Genealogy
In genealogy, accuracy is not about being perfect. It is about building conclusions that are supported, reasonable, and resistant to easy collapse. When your key facts show up in independent records, your timeline fits real life, outside work can be verified through documents, multiple clues support your tough calls, and DNA aligns when available, you have moved past guessing.
That is when you can build forward with confidence. You are building a family history that can hold up when someone else checks your work years from now.
