Sometimes Genealogy Raises More Questions than Answers – February 24, 2021

Today, I helped several people with genealogy questions. Didn’t find much, other than new questions I couldn’t find the answers for.

I found partial answers that weren’t very helpful. In one case, someone wanted to find a school location. I find the town name – Stateburg, South Carolina, but not the school School #6. I think the county may have older maps with its location in their records.

In another case, someone went back 54 generations claiming they had proof back to 400 A. D. That far back, any proof would be impossible to verify. Maybe if you were a super billionaire and could dig up enough bodies and get viable DNA from them, I would believe it. However that far back, the odds of finding enough bodies to get DNA samples would be very difficult at best.

Having photographed cemeteries, it’s rare I find one with 100% records. I may get close, but haven’t run across any that have met the 100% rate. Go back 100+ years ago and the accuracy rate is much lower. Go back several hundred years and it gets worse.

No doubt some cemeteries may claim 100% accuracy rate, but it would be hard to prove it. A new cemetery could probably prove it easily as long as they keep good records and back-ups. A great example is a local cemetery of bad record keeping is now ran by the city. The staff kept records when they wanted to keep records. Some staff were diligent about keeping accurate records, but others weren’t.