Irish Greene's family tree

When there are various versions of a tree, the first thing to do is to evaluate the sources.

Just because something is written down some place doesn’t mean it’s reliable information — you wantin to check your sources that you are using to see if they cite documentation — in other words, how did they come to the information they are giving?

Often the family genealogies written by family members are not reliable; some are but some aren’t.

So that’s the first thing you would want to check — are primary documents (documents from the time period) cited in any of the three different versions you mention above?

So, what kinds of citations are in the Greenes' genealogies? They might not be given as footnotes and such, but in order to be really useful, they need to at least be explaining where their information came from.

Private User what do we do when Bartrum presents multiple lines for a person. His index contains the sources he uses, and he acknowledges the differences, but he still presents both. I look at his dating and go with the line that makes the most chronological sense. Wolcott does that, but also looks at the geographical data available. I think the important thing is that you take all the data, and as Darrell once told me, "make your best guess and go with it."

Steven Mitchell Ferry —indeed. I hadn’t gotten to that part yet.

susana Diana greene clasen — It’s not clear what the problem is, as you seem to be saying that you have reliable sources. If so, use those. If you are worried about finding other information on the internet, ignore it if it comes from unsourced family web trees — they are not reliable, and cause a great deal of trouble in the early historical profiles.

The general rule of thumb is that primary sources are the most important — any documents from the time period itself; reliable secondary sources are the next important — genealogies or histories or studies that cite the primary documents — and the tertiary sources, which don’t cite anything at all, are usually not useful.

However. As Steven points out, the primary documents are often problematic. This isn’t just true in the early historical profiles (Steven is referencing the Welsh tree, where the medieval manuscript genealogies notoriously contradict each other) but even if recent profiles; sometimes clerks write the wrong date, or mishear some information, and so other documents contradict the information they give.

And even the secondary sources that cite their primary evidence aren’t necessarily reliable.

This is because all of the written sources come from a human author, who may have had biases in interpreting the documents. And the documents themselves come from humans, who may have made mistakes, or even Told Untruths. The entire Frankish tree is riddled with false genealogies that were invented in the Middle Ages; one of the branches of the Herbert family in England had a genealogy that was invented in Cromwellian times to give them a connection to the Tudors; almost all of the medieval genealogies from Europe take the noble families back to the gods.

So it’s often true that we have to make the best decision we can. When there is really an issue, you can mention that in the Overview (but don’t bother putting info from the web trees in; that information only matters if it either comes from reliable sources that contradict each other, or are a false narrative that has infected genealogies, like the Franks or the Herberts.)

So, of the three versions of your family that you have, which version is the most reliable?