Revisit your genealogy sources!

Do you ever read something, look into it a bit, accept the answer and then move on?

You know, you read an obit, and you accept the dates on the paper? You read a marriage document and the think “oh so that is how they spell it”?

Here is my cautionary tale of revisiting your research on occasion.

I’ve posted in the past about how I inherited my maternal grandmother’s research and started to fill in blanks and finish what she had started. But, on my dads side there wasn’t any info so this allowed me to start from scratch.

I started with my dad’s mom and started exploring her side of the family. When I got to my 3rd Great Grandfather, Thomas Powers, I was in new territory. My grandmother had heard of him and knew he was from Ireland but anyone who knew him was deceased. My great grandmother remembered living in Tennessee and the move to Birmingham, Alabama (in a covered wagon) but didn’t know much more than things her mom had told her.

Thomas and his family were the 1st time I was dipping my toes into genealogy on my own. You still with me?

So, I found Thomas and his wife via my great great grandmothers death certificate, found they lived in Marion County, Tennessee and then I jumped into census records. I soon found the siblings of my 2 great grandmother and I was able to picture this family. I had names, and a location!

Then, I found Find A Grave (this is not about any of the recent issues with the site) and I found a memorial made for Thomas Powers, his wife Sarah McNabb and 3 of the children. The memorial for Thomas states he was born Jan 2 1826 – Yeaaaaaa! I have a date of birth! Yeaaaaaa!

I even made a day trip up to Marion County in 2011 to do research in the library and go to the cemetery to take a few more photos. I wrote about it here.

Now to the gist of the story and this post…

Last night on July 20, 2022 I was looking through the photos of McNabb Cemetery 2 that I had taken and something caught my eye on the photo of Thomas Powers headstone— is that a 1 after the 2, so not Jan 2, but Jan 21????

This is my picture, how could I have not noticed it?

So, off to Find A Grave to look at the original picture, and well, that is blurry and not well lit, so it is hard to tell. The 2nd photo on the memorial is my photo, the same one I’m looking at on my computer and guess what, there is a 1 there.

Can you see that 1 on the birth date line? I can, and I’m floored! You can see on the line for his death date that the 1 in 13 is not crisp either. Also the 1s on the dates for Mary Jane Powers are hard to make out also (can we talk about how confusing it is that he shares a headstone with his daughter and she has another headstone in the same plot). Granted it was raining with thunder and lightening so I was in a hurry to get the photos and get out of the storm but dang, it is there- Jan 21, 1826! Not Jan 2, 1826

I’ve requested new photos of the headstone so hopefully the light will be better and we’ll (ok I will) be able to read his date of birth better. And yes, I know, this may not be his date of birth but it could help me in narrowing down a few contenders I have in my goal of tracking him down prior to being in Marion Co in 1870.

Moral of the story, look over your early research and read everything over and over again. I’ve had this photo for 12 years and I’m just now realizing the error, yes I can admit my mistake and now will add “go over all photos again and learn to read” to my genealogy to do list.

Let me know of any genealogy mistakes you’ve made, just so I don’t feel so alone.