One reason is that some of us have the good fortune to be direct descendants historical people living in the 9th and 10th centuries. Primary sources are parish registers, court documents, IPMs, Close Rolls, Feet of Fines, et alia. If the ancestors are from England, a lifetime is not long enough to peruse all the primary documents that are preserved by the government. Reliable secondary sources are constantly being tweaked as researchers now have access to more and more documents. These include the Cockayne's Complete Peerage, Europaiche Stammtafeln, Baronetage of England, Scottish Peerage, et alia.
CE ----- Original Message ----- From: Bob Vary<mailto:[email protected]> To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, July 03, 2011 2:15 PM Subject: RE: [LegacyUG] number of people in your file This may open a can of worms, but I’m having a hard time understanding the point of having so many people in a database. What is you purpose in doing your genealogy? Is it to have every single person in any way related to you? Personally, I have no interest in some 13th cousin, 10 times removed. I am only interested in my direct ancestry and possibly the siblings or cousins of those I descend from if they have some historical significance. And at the risk of sounding elitist, I don’t use any online databases submitted by amateurs. In my experience they are so full of errors as to be useless. I would rather have a small database built from original research using primary, or reliable secondary, sources. I don’t mean this as a criticism because everybody has their own goals and gets their enjoyment from doing thing their own way. Just wondering. Bob Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Online technical support: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp Follow Legacy on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/LegacyFamilyTree) and on our blog (http://news.LegacyFamilyTree.com). To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp
