by AGS member Philip Spivey
Like this picture? It was uploaded to Ancestry and FamilySearch in 2012 as a picture of a Thomas Hicks born about 1710 in North Carolina and died in 1775. This picture has been shared by 285 people on Ancestry and appears in their family trees. You will also find it on the FamilySearch tree being shared by even more and attributed to the same person.
While this is indeed a picture of “a” Thomas Hicks, it is actually a picture of Thomas Holiday Hicks who wasn’t born until 1798. He was a former Governor of Maryland and never lived anywhere near North Carolina.
Those shaky leaved hints at Ancestry can provide a wealth of information, but they should never be taken at face value. This is a classic example of why one source doesn’t prove anything.
The biggest misconception about genealogy is that it is all about searching for facts and plugging them into a tree. Effective researchers spend most of their time interpreting available information. As we go back in time, the chances of finding a document that tells us exactly what we want to know get lower and lower. To figure out the truth of things, we contrast and compare many different bits of information to form conclusions that we think are likely true.
Now, let’s look at another picture.
This picture was uploaded in 2011 to Ancestry. It is reported to be Robert Darrell Allen, said to be born in 1831 in Pennsylvania, but he lived most of his life in Carroll County, Missouri, where he died in 1908. We have an ancestor by that name and place in our tree. He’s clearly not holding a sign saying, “I’m Robert Darrell Allen born in 1831 and living in Carroll County, Missouri.” So how do we know it is our R. D. Allen? Since we didn’t take that picture back in the day, we really don’t know for sure. However, we can form a conclusion based on what we do know. We build evidence to see what conclusion the evidence supports.
- The descendants of R. D. Allen are Caucasian and look like they could be related to this guy.
- The clothes he is wearing are typical of those worn around 1900.
- The style of photography matches that time period.
- If we look closely at the photographer’s mark at the bottom, it says “McNish, N. Main Street, Carrolton, Missouri.” Carrolton was the closet big town to where R. D. Allen lived at this time.
- There was a Canadian photographer named McNish living in the area at the time and had a business on N. Main St.
Can we now be 100% sure this is our R. D. Allen? No. But the evidence supports our conclusion, so we can now be reasonably sure that it probably is. I would feel comfortable putting this in my tree.
Always look for ways to corroborate the hints we find.
