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Show PROVE ALL THINGS By VV. M. Everton When the Apostle Paul wrote the injunction Prove all things" he probahly did not have in mind genealogical records, yet there is no phase of work where this command would he more appropriate. Every entry you make on your pedigree chart should be proven positively. Ask yourself always "How do I know this is right?", If it is a guess put a question mark after it and then keep up your search for proof of your guess. To illustrate: We have an ancestor, Thomas Everton, who was a toy when the Revolutionary war started. We found a record of a small light-haired toy named Thomas Everton who enlisted in the army as a drummer toy. He served throughout the war and then settled in Stoughton, Mass. Naturally we assumed that this boy was our ancestor. ances-tor. We searched in the towns of Massachusetts for a. record rec-ord of his marriage. We could not find it, neither did we find any further proof that this toy was really our ancestor. After years of watching and waiting we finally found the truth. There were two or perhaps three Thomas Ever-tons Ever-tons in the Revolutionary army. The light-haired toy was not our ancestor. Instead'of settling in Massachusetts after the war our ancestor settled in Maine. From the pension office we received detailed information which proved this one to he our ancestor. Witk this information we now have a clue as to where to look for the family of his wife. In their anxiety to connect up their families, searchers sometimes attach their children to mothers who were a hundred hun-dred years old when the taty was born and some have sealed wives to hustands who were ninety years their senor. Mistakes of this kind are inexcusatle. Many other errors are made which can only te corrected ty further research. The real genealogist takes nothing for granted, he proves each step as he goes along. Are You "JLelter Blind?" We Lave teen advising our readers to write letters as a regular part. of their genealogical research for years and years. Almost every week something comes to emphasize the importance of letter-writing and very often to emphasize the fact that many are not really conscious of the fact that they can write letters atout genealogy. Not long ago a researcher re-searcher found in the Compendium of American genealogy the name of a man who checked pretty well as one of his ancestors. He needed more information in order to identify him definitely. He was worried. Lie didn't know what to do. It just didn't occur to him that he could write to the man who put the pedigree in the Compendium. He -was very much delighted when someone suggested that he write a letter. Why, sure. Wiry hadn't he thought of that hefore? |