Until recently, I was a columnist for the In-depth Genealogist Magazine and also wrote for their blog. Now the magazine is sadly no more, contributors have been invited to re-post their blog material elsewhere so that it is preserved. This is another post that I wrote for the magazine; it first appeared in September 2017.

Just to be clear, I am not asking whether you have added cousin Mary’s latest grandchild born in 2019. What I mean is, how recently have you looked at your pedigrees, files, conclusions, source citations and narrative family histories to see if they are still current? Family history is a never ending hobby, with so many opportunities. You get stuck on one line, no problem, there are others that you can follow. Almost all of us focus on one part of the tree for a while before turning to another. Maybe we have reached a dead end. Or perhaps an enquiry from another researcher, a DNA match, or a chance to visit and ancestral area will prompt us to dig out the Smith family research that has been left in abeyance for a few years. This is when you realise how much things may have changed in the intervening years.

There are likely to be issues with your source citations. There may broken links due to defunct URLS, record repositories may have moved, or have changed their names. For example, I just looked out some UK research that I had not revisited since 2011 and found references to The Public Record Office (Now known as The National Archives) and the Family Records’ Centre, which no longer exists. Other repositories have changed their catalogue referencing system so that the reference numbers I have quoted are no longer meaningful. It is probably still possible to follow my research trail as the records themselves have not changed but I clearly have some updating to do.

Of course, with the abundance of new records that are now available to me online, or have been indexed, making it harder for my family to hide, there will also be scope for me to add to this part of my family history or at least to tie up some loose ends. This is another way in which my family history is not up to date. You may be familiar with Thomas MacEntee’s concept of the ‘Genealogical Do-Over’, which encourages those of us who have been researching for some time to effectively start over again, filling in gaps, citing sources and making sure that our relationship linkages are sound. When we first start on our magical genealogical journey, instinct often encourages us to race back as far as possible, as fast as possible. Indeed the first question a non-genealogist will often ask is ‘how far back have you got?’ Of course, the important question is not ‘how far back are you?’ but ‘how much do you know about the people on your tree?’

A complete do-over, as advocated by Thomas MacEntee, may be too daunting a prospect for some of us. After all, there are all these exciting new ancestors to be found, why would we spend time going back over the old ones? If we can’t face a ‘re-do’, then we should most certainly be revisiting and revising at regular intervals. Is our family information up-to-date? Is there anything we can add in the light of newly available information? And, most importantly, if we were doing this research now, would we still feel that John is father of Richard and so on?

How ever carefully crafted a pedigree might be, with multiple pieces of evidence pointing to a particular relationship, we need to remember a salutary lesson – we can be wrong. Almost everyone who has spent a few years doing genealogy will have found themselves half way up someone else’s family tree at some point. Either that or we aren’t looking hard enough. Do take time to revisit, to revise, to update. Fresh eyes and fresh sources can often break down the brick wall that led you to abandon a particular family line in the past. Good luck.