Since finding out about my new cousin, my interest has been sparked once again concerning my paternal lineage. Today I went looking at the hints on ancestry.com for Lillie SUTPHIN, as she has been the center of attention lately.
I don't generally like to use ancestry.com's hints because they are most often just telling me that there's someone else out there who has the same person in their family tree. It's not that I don't want to know about other potential relatives, but I know that there are a lot of people out there who are probably like I was - excited. And when you get excited, you might not realize that just adding other people's findings may not be the best idea.
Whenever my curiosity gets the better of me, I'll sometimes check out the others who have added my people to their family tree. If they have a significant amount of sources attached, then I feel like they probably are serious are trying to back up their research with evidence. In that case, sometimes I will compare the sources that they have to the ones I have. In doing so with Lillie, I ran into conflicting evidence.
For a long time in my records, Lillie's place of birth was "Georgia." I got that information from census records:
1900 Census
(Image by ancestry.com)
1910 Census
(Image by ancestry.com)
However, after I recently took a closer look at her death certificate, it claims she was born in Chatham County, NC. That's quite a difference!
Certificate of Death
(Image by ancestry.com)
I have heard or read that sometimes records can be inaccurate, and I suppose there's a chance that whomever gave the information for the death certificate might not have known that she was born in Georgia. Plus, I figure that since she was alive for the two censuses, probably gave that information herself, and its two instances of the same information, it sounds a little more reliable. I reckon I'll have to do a little more research on that!
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