A genealogical DNA test allows for two individuals to determine with 99.9% certainty that they are related within a certain time frame, or with 100% certainty that they are not related within a certain time frame. Individual genetic test results are being collected in various databases to match people descended from a relatively recent common ancestor, for example see Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation. These tests are limited to either the direct male or the direct female line.

On a much longer time scale, genetic methods are being used to trace human migratory patterns and to determine biogeographical and ethnic origin. The results can be used to place people within ancient ancestral groups, for example see Genographic Project. Participation in all such projects is, of course, voluntary.

In a related development, non-genetic mathematical models of ancestry have been devised to determine the approximate year when the most recent common ancestor of all living humans existed.

Sharing data among researchers

Data sharing among genealogical researchers has grown to be a major use of the Internet. Most genealogy software programs can output information about persons and their relationships in GEDCOM format, so it can be shared with other genealogists by e-mail and internet forums, added to an online database, or converted into a family web site using online genealogical tools such as GED2HTML, PhpGedView, and Phpmyfamily. Many genealogical software applications also facilitate the sharing of information on CD-ROMs and DVDs made on personal computers.

One phenomenon over the last few years has been that of large genealogical databases going online and attracting such large flash crowds that the database's host server collapses, causing service to be quickly suspended while hurried upgrades are made to accommodate the traffic load. This happened with the Mormons' genealogy database, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's listing of war graves and in January 2002 with the much-anticipated British census for 1901.

Organizations

Genealogical and historical societies are a great help to researchers piecing together their family history and placing it within its historical context. Some such societies focus on tracing the lineage of participants in one historical event. Another type of society focuses on a particular geographical area rather than on particular individuals.

Volunteerism

Volunteer efforts figure prominently in genealogy. These efforts range from the extremely informal to the highly organized.

On the informal side are the many popular and useful message boards and mailing lists regarding particular surnames, regions, and other topics that are maintained on the internet to facilitate queries and responses. RootsWeb.com, for example, has hundreds of them. A mailing list subscriber can send a request for help by e-mail to the list address, the mail is immediately distributed to all the subscribers, and anyone who can help will e-mail a reply to the list. On the message boards, this exchange occurs entirely online. Not only can one get an answer very quickly, merely following the conversations is very educational too. These resources are used by experienced and inexperienced researchers alike.

In more organized settings, volunteers serve both as a resource to enrich data sources and as a means to obtain information from geographically remote or otherwise inaccessible sources. For instance, Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness (RAOGK)^[2] is an organization of more than 4500 researchers who share their time through its web site. The volunteers have each agreed to field one request per month in their geographical area, and that entitles them to draw upon the time of other group members in similar fashion. A request might take the form of "please check to see if my great-grandfather is buried in the cemetery near where you live" or "please check the May 1952 issues of your local newspaper for my grandfather's obituary", for instance. This group is one of many examples of researchers working on unrelated projects volunteering their time to other individuals on request.

Another form of volunteerism is records transcription. Usually this takes the form of manually transcribing information into electronic format for access online. This may be done from paper documents or other sources, such as tombstone inscriptions. Some organizations do the above and more, sometimes scanning out-of-print books to make them accessible for viewing online. One such group is the GeorgiaGenWeb project. This group provides records on a county level with links to affiliated projects run by broader archives and repositories, such as Southern Folk, and the American History and Genealogy Project which covers all states in the US. The User Database listing by Rootsweb is an example of the broad range of individual volunteer efforts. Among more formal volunteer transcription efforts are the databases of the Italian Genealogical Group, and the USGenWeb Census Project which matches volunteers with transcription opportunities.

FreeBMD is an excellent example of volunteerism. The aim is to transcribe the Civil Registration index of births, marriages and deaths for England and Wales. This information is then provided free of charge. Sister projects include FreeCEN which aims to transcribe all UK census data, and FreeREG, which is transcribing parish register data.

Records in genealogical research

Records of persons who were neither royalty nor nobility began to be taken by governments in order to keep track of their citizens (In most of Europe, for example, this started to take place in the 16th century). As more of the population began to be recorded, there were sufficient records to follow a family using the paper trail they left behind.

As each person lived his or her life, major events were usually documented with a license, permit or report which was stored at a local, regional or national office or archive. Genealogists locate these records, wherever they are stored, and extract information to discover family relationships and recreate timelines of persons' lives.

Records that are used in genealogy research include:

• Adoption records
• Baptism or christening records
• Biographies and biographical profiles (as in Who's Who, etc.)
• Birth records
• Cemetery records and tombstones
• Census records
• City directories and telephone directories
• Daughters of the American Revolution records
• Death records
• Diaries, personal letters and family Bibles
• Emigration, immigration and naturalization records
• Land and homestead records, deeds
• Marriage and divorce records
• Medical records
• Military and conscription records
• Newspaper columns
• Obituaries
• Occupational records
• Oral history
• Passports
• Photographs
• School and alumni association records
• Ship passenger lists
• Social Security Administration records (within the USA)
• Tax records
• Voter registration records
• Wills and probate records

As a rule, genealogists nearly always start with the present and work backward in time rather than forward. Written records have the property of hindsight in that they only tell where a person might have lived and who their parents are, not where they and their descendants will be living in the future. Two exceptions are when a genealogist might interview living relatives as to who and where their children and grandchildren are, or tries to locate long-lost cousins who have already traced their families backward to one of his ancestors (which is forward in time from his point of view).

Reliability of sources

Experience shows that genealogical "facts" can be unreliable. The top five classes of genealogical information — place names, occupations, family names, first names, and dates — differ in their degree of reliability.

Place names

Place names are normally the most accurate because they tend to be long lasting. Nevertheless, place name data may be occasionally inaccurate or confusing. Inaccurate place names in records may be caused by a number of factors. First, place names may be subject to variable spellings by partially literate scribes. Second, small places in neighbouring counties may have the same or substantially similar names. For example, the name Brocton for villages occurs six times in the border area between the English counties of Shropshire and Staffordshire). Third, place names may be confusing or deceptive due to changes in political borders. For instance, county borders in the C17th-C19th England were frequently modified, with outlying and detached areas being reassigned to other counties. Old records may contain references to Middle Age villages that have ceased to exist due to disease or famine. Finally, census returns may simply have recorded inaccurate information.

Individual recollections also provide a source of place names, and sometimes inaccurate place names. The place where someone describes growing up may not be the place of birth or where the records are eventually found. For instance, while an ancestor may recall growing up in one location, records documenting that ancestor may only be found in other locations. There is a good likelihood that the place (parish) of a birth for a girl is the place she marries (unless 'sent abroad' as a servant), and that the place of residence for a man is where he is buried; certainly a neighbouring parish.

Additionally, records may be found in many different locations due to family mobility

Genealogists may rely on several references for place names: Maps (online), especially detailed maps such as the British Ordnance Survey (OS) maps and OS Old Map website; gazetteers (place name dictionary); census returns; birth, death & marriage records; and historical records such as the Domesday Book.

Occupations

Reported occupations may be semi-accurate. Many unskilled ancestors had a variety of jobs depending on the season and local trade requirements. Occasionally skilled trades pass from father to son. Census returns may contain some embellishment; e.g., from Labourer to Mason, or from journeyman to Master craftsman. Workmen no longer fit for their primary trade often take less glamorous jobs later in life. Names for old or unfamiliar local occupations may cause confusion if poorly legible. For example, an ostler (a keeper of horses) and a hostler (an innkeeper) could easily be confused for one another. Likewise, descriptions of such occupations may also be problematic. The perplexing description "ironer of rabbit burrows" may turn out to describe an ironer (profession) in the Bristol district named Rabbit Burrows. Several trades have regional preferences, for example, shoemaker or cordwainer. Finally, many apparently obscure jobs are part of a larger trade community, such as watchmaking, framework knitting or gunmaking.

Occupational data may be reported in trade directories, census returns, birth, death & marriage records.

Family Names

Family names are simultaneously one of the most important pieces of genealogical information, and a source of significant confusion for researchers.

In most cultures, the name of a person references the family to which he or she belongs. This is called the family name, or surname. It is often also called the last name because, for most speakers of English, the family name comes after the given name (or names). However, this is not the case in other cultures, e.g., Chinese family names precede the given name.

Patronymics are names which allow identification of an individual based on the father's name, e.g., Marga Olafsdottir or Olfa Thorsson. Many cultures used patronymics before surnames were adopted or came into use. The Dutch in New York, for example, used the patronymic system of names until 1687 when the advent of English rule mandated surname usage. See the article "Dutch Patronymics in New York in the 1600s" at Olive Tree Genealogy for a beginner tutorial on the patronymic system.

As with place names, surname and personal name data may be subject to variant spellings. Older records may include greater variation in spelling than modern records. Phonetic spelling may be the only link variantly spelled names; e.g., "Quilter" and "Kieltagh". Records may also include completely different variants of names, such as MORT for MORDECAI.

The transmission of names across generations, marriages and other relationships, and immigrations also causes significant inaccuracy in genealogical data. For instance, children may sometimes take or be given step-parent, foster parent, or adoptive parent names. Women in many cultures have routinely used their spouse's surnames. When a woman remarried, she may have changed her name and the names of her children; only her name; or changed no names. Her birth ("maiden") name may be reflected in her children's middle names; her own middle name; or dropped entirely.

Official records do not capture many kinds of surname changes. For example, fostering, common-law marriage, love affairs, changes in career or location may all result in name changes which are not reflected as such in official records.

Surname data may be found in trade directories, census returns, birth, death & marriage records.

First Names

Genealogical data regarding first names is subject to many of the same problems of family names and place names.

Additionally, nicknames for personal names are very common — Beth, Lizzie or Betty is common for Elizabeth, which can be confused with Eliza. Patty has been used as a diminutive form for Martha. There is Amy used for Alice, Nancy/Ann, and Polly used for a number of feminine names including Mary Ann and Elizabeth. While the feminine names are the most confusing, masculine names can also interchange: Jack, John & Jonathan, Joseph & Josiah, Edward & Edwin, etc.

Middle names provide additional information. Middle names may be inherited, or follow naming customs. Middle names may sometimes be treated as part of the family name. For instance, in some Latin cultures, both the mother's family name and the father's family name are used by the children. Official records may record full names in a variety of ways: First, Middle, Last; Last, Middle, First; Last, First Middle; Last, First, M.

The same personal name can also be given to several children, especially where an older child has died.

Personal names go through periods of popularity, so it is not uncommon to find many similarly-named people in a generation, and even similarly-named families; e.g., "William and Mary and their children David, Mary, and John".

Many names may be identified strongly with a particular gender; e.g., William for boys, and Mary for girls. Other names may be ambiguous, e.g., Lee, or have only slightly variant spellings based on gender, e.g., Frances (usually female) and Francis (usually male).

For a search engine designed for researching your family by unique first names, visit "First Name Basis" at Genealogy Today.

Dates

The general rule is to never trust a date! Accurate dates of birth may be given for modern registrations and in a few church records at baptism. Family Bibles may be a help, but can be written from memory long after the event - beware of the same ink and handwriting for all entries; a sure sign the dates were written at the same time and therefore will be less reliable. Women will commonly reduce their age on marriage, and perhaps those under "full age" may increase their age upon marriage or joining the armed forces. Census returns are notoriously unreliable, particularly when looking for a date for a husband's death - if the woman is at home while the husband is away, she could be given as Head of household or assumed a widow. The 1841 census in the UK is rounded down to the next lower multiple of five years. Dates around birth may be confused between birth and baptism. Some families wait 3-5 years before baptising children, and adult baptisms are not unheard of. Both birth and marriage dates can be adjusted to cover for pre-wedding pregnancies. It is very common for the first child to be born before or within a few months of a marriage and sometimes baptised in the mother's name, later adopting the father's name after the parents' marriage. The father's name can be used even if no marriage has occurred.

In 1752 the date of the new year was changed in England and the American Colonies. Before 1752 the new year started on the 25th March, but in 1752 this was changed to the 1st January. This was part of the transition to the Gregorian calendar from the Julian calendar. Many other European countries had already made the change, and by 1751 there was an 11 day discrepancy between the date in England and the date in other European countries. The date continued to be recorded as usual in 1752 until 2nd September 1752, the following day became 14th September 1752. Dates that were recorded in the older system can be shown by "double dating". For example; Original date: 24th of March 1750; Modern date: 24th March 1751; Double dating: 24th March 1750/51

For events occurring before 1752 in countries where the Julian calendar was still in use, it is best to use double dating whenever the exact year can be ascertained. When transcribing an original record where the exact year is evident but not expressed, the double date can be written as, for example, "24th March 1750[/51]".

One should also be aware that, in those places using the old Julian calendar, the numbering of months also varied. The "1st month" of the year was considered March, the second April, the third May, and so on. Those 24 days in March which fell before the beginning of the year were generally regarded as being part of the first month.

NOTE The foregoing may be true for British genealogical records but does in no way apply to records in other countries. A notable exception is the Nordic countries, especially Sweden, which have very detailed and mostly accurate records in the form of church records from the 18th century onwards.

But there, as in any historical research, a critical review of all information and an assessment of the reliability of each source is required.

The "maximum relationship"

One of the aims in professional genealogy circles has been to determine the maximum degree of separation which currently exists between all people in the world. That is to say, how many generations back is the first common ancestor that the two most distantly related people on earth share.

Latest models, taking into account sexual differentiation, monogamy and realistic migration patterns suggest that the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of all humans probably lived 75-150 generations or 2000-4000 years ago. Moreover, the MRCA is likely to have lived somewhere in Southeast Asia (increasing the likelihood of his or her descendents reaching the remote islands of the Pacific), is equally likely to be a man or woman, and is not characterized by an unusually large number of children. These models also show that while a large group (indeed all humans) share recent common ancestors, a given person is likely to share the vast majority of his or her genes with a very small local group.

Software