Yes, it's a good post about assumptions. Early on, I was proud of my detective work and assumptions, and got embarrassed on about every one later on by facts that surfaced. A more recent revelation was, "Don't always trust the name on the tombstone." My Ggrandmother's name on a memorial marker was "Dolla". When we found the actual tombstone in another location, it was "Dolly". There were many hot discussions over the correct one, with those who saw only one marker arguing their version of the spelling and provided "proof" with pictures. Many years later, we received a letter from the descendants of her surname. They said her real name was neither Dolla nor Dolly, but Dorothy. (sigh) Woody ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ db1753@dragonbbs.com writes: Thanks for pointing this article out to us. Assumptions! I suppose we have all made more than one of these assumptions in our years of research. I know I have. I have been doing a lot of searching in Census and finding errors in some of my earlier days of research. Sharing files on the World Connect site has brought me in touch with others who could help prove or disprove some of these assumptions. And I have been able to help others where I know they have the wrong information. Many of the genealogy sites are great for helping us to make a case one way or the other on these assumptions. There is one major genealogy web site that does not allow this interaction to correct the errors we find. I respect their research and all the data they have given to us, but wish they had an easier way of correcting files when we find wrong information. Last night I was on the LDS site www.familysearch.org and found some totally wrong information posted. The main problem there is, there seems to be no way to correct it as it was IGI submitted by someone a long time ago. No source or information as to where it came from. That bothers me a lot. We can have a good feeling that we are on the right track and suddenly find something that blows it all away. But on the other hand many of our assumptions and plain old "gut feelings" may indeed lead us to the right person or persons we are seeking. I think this is such a good article its worth printing out and posting it some place where it can be seen to remind us to always keep looking of the proven records. Sue Ellen