As good genealogists, we know that when we add information to our family history we should also cite the sources that we used. But what do we do when the source is DNA? A source citation may be sufficient in some cases, but in other cases it is not.
adding DNA matches to your tree and information about the DNA that you share, the tests taken and so on
adding common ancestors who you identified using DNA evidence
adding people on the line of descent between common ancestors and DNA matches based on DNA evidence
using DNA evidence to confirm relationships between people who are already in your tree
removing people from your tree, if DNA evidence identifies errors
altering relationships based on DNA evidence.
DNA source citations
The source citations for most of these actions will be fairly straightforward.
When adding a DNA match, you will probably want to cite your DNA test initially. You can then add citations to documentary sources after you conduct further research to verify the relationship. Similarly, when adding people on the line of descent between common ancestors and DNA matches, you might initially just cite the family tree of your DNA match. Then add citations to documentary sources after you conduct further research.
When confirming people in your tree who are great great grandparents or closer, you can rely on evidence from one or two DNA matches who are close relatives (third cousin or closer). For these, a DNA source citation is usually sufficient.
Example DNA source citation
You can see from this example that a DNA source citation does not merely refer to the source. It also summarises the key evidence used to reach the conclusion. The main reason for this is that the source is not one that can be accessed by other researchers. DNA test results are available only to the tester and anyone that is provided access by the tester. So the citation needs to include sufficient information to convince another researcher that your conclusion is reasonable.
Evidence summaries and arguments
The evidence supporting other actions is more complex and a source citation may not be enough. For example, when confirming people in your tree who are more distant than great great grandparents, removing people from your tree or altering relationships.
My colleague, Veronica Williams, has written a great blog post describing the types of DNA evidence and situations in which you need more than just a source citation.
The DNA groups of the Society of Australian Genealogists are trialling a template for presenting the DNA evidence used to support a conclusion.
The purpose of a case study is to:
help researchers practice presenting evidence so that they can provide soundly reasoned and coherently written conclusions based on a reasonably exhaustive search, critical analysis and the resolution of conflicting evidence, with complete and accurate source citations
invite others to test the strength of the conclusion(s) and assist the researcher by offering suggestions for further analysis or research
share and educate each other on the methodology for using DNA evidence to reach conclusions.
You can also use the template to provide a structure for a document to attach to a family tree or a blog post; or to document the process undertaken when confirming identities and relationships in a family tree.
Download a copy of the template here. If you wish to provide feedback on the template, please use the Contact form on the About page.
For more articles and information about using DNA in family history, head to the DNA in family history page and watch that page for upcoming free downloads.
For more of my articles on documenting your family history, go to the Document page.
Name variations are a familiar problem to all genealogists. We search for a surname in the records and do not find it because it is not spelled consistently or in the way that we expect. Sure, we could browse through all of the indexes or images in a particular parish and grab every one that has a surname which is similar to ours. But is there a systematic way of searching for surname variations? Yes, there is.
Carol Baxter wrote a very useful book called Help! Why Can’t I Find My Ancestor’s Surname? The tips in this post are based on that book. Using Carol’s tips will help you search more systematically for name variations.
Carol suggests that you should think about the sounds and letters, and how they get distorted. In my most recent search, for the surname Nekerwis, I found that her tips explained every variation that I found. If I had used her tips before searching, my searching would have been a lot easier.
Tip 1
Name variations can occur when vowels are exchanged. This commonly occurs when a name is pronounced incorrectly, misheard, or transcribed incorrectly. Carol says that ‘Vowel sounds are more likely to experience sound changes than consonants because sound is carried by the vowel and is impacted by slight movements of the speaker’s tongue and jaw.’ (p37)
My grandmother’s surname Rusten, for example, is often spelled Rustin or Ruston. The final syllable of the surname Nekerwis could be spelled ‘wes’ ‘was’ ‘wos’ ‘wus’. I have found examples of the first two variations.
When searching for a surname, try variations on the vowels in the name. There are only five, so it is probably worth trying all of them.
Tip 2
Name variations resulting from changes to the beginning of a surname are a particular problem for genealogists, as lists are usually sorted alphabetically. However, Carol demonstrates that these changes are not usually random. They follow recognisable patterns.
The first letter of a name may be changed, added or omitted, or the entire first syllable might change. In my search for Nekerwis I found that Nekerwis was a variation on the earlier form of Nankerwis. It sometimes lost its first letter and became Ankerwis.
Other common changes described in chapter 14 of Carol’s book that I have observed while researching are:
Prefix exchanges or omissions, e.g. Macdonald, McDonald and Donald.
An added or omitted second letter in a consonant cluster, e.g. Dwyer is often transcribed or indexed as Dyer, and in one case it then became Ayer!
Mis-transcription of similar looking letters are very common, probably the most common is confusing the letter ‘s’ and ‘l’, e.g. Sawyer and Lawyer.
Make a list of possible variations to the first letter or syllable to guide your searching. Use Carol’s book and examples that you have previously found. Using wildcards in your searching may help, but make sure you allow for potential changes to the entire first syllable, not just the first letter. Don’t forget that it is about changes to the sounds, not necessarily just about changes to the letters.
Wildcards are special characters that can stand in for unknown characters. They may vary depending on where you are searching, so make sure you are familiar with the wildcards that are in use.
Tip 3
Name variations involving changes to the end of surnames are often minor, but be aware that they can sometimes be significant.
For the surname Nekerwis, I again get ‘wes’ ‘was’ ‘wos’ and ‘wus’, until I combine it with Tip 4, see below.
Other common types of changes described in chapter 16 of Carol’s book are:
An added or omitted letter, the most common being the letter ‘s’. An example in my family was the addition of the letter ‘d’ to Hen to create Hend at the time when having Chinese ancestry was a sensitive topic.
Addition or omission of ‘son’, e.g. Donald and Donaldson.
Tapering of the sound at the end of a surname explains common variations such as Edmonds, Edmunds and Edwards, but Carol also identifies three other common exchanges that are explained by tapering – wood and ward, e.g. Haywood and Hayward; field and ford, e.g. Ashfield and Ashford; and borough and bory, e.g. Thornborough and Thornbory.
Use wild cards in your searching to replace the last letter or the last syllable.
Tip 4
Name variations involving changes to in the middle of surnames are common, but it takes practice to understand some of them. It’s a good idea to read Carol’s book to study the patterns.
Some consonant sounds are similar and are often exchanged. Exchanging ‘v’ and ‘w’ produces Nekerwis and Nekervis, and exchanging ‘k’ and ‘c’ produces Ankervis and Ancervis, or Ankerves and Ancerves.
Consonants or syllables in the middle of a surname may be omitted. The loss of the middle ‘n’ in Nankervis is an example of this, and on a branch of the Nekerwis line I found that Ellis was often spelled as Elis. I have not found any examples of omitted syllables for the surname Nekerwis, but I suppose Nekwis/Nekvis or Nankwis/Nankvis are possible.
The index to Carol’s book provides a list of common exchanges that you can use in your searching.
Tip 5
Don’t forget that surnames are groups of sounds translated into a written form. Say the name out loud and think about how it might be spelled, or, if you find a surname and are not sure if it might be a variation on the one that you are looking for, read it out loud.
When researching my Nekerwis line, I found a person who seemed like they might be in the family but the surname was spelled Encarveys. I initially thought that just could not be right because the spelling was so different, but after I re-read Carol’s book I tried saying it out loud. Yes, if you put the emphasis on the first syllable, instead of the second which was my inclination, Nekerwis or Nankervis could easily be written down as Encarveys!
Understanding how surnames can vary will help you with searching, but it can also help you decide whether people with slightly different surnames could be related. The fact that there are patterns to the changes can help you provide a reasoned argument for your conclusions about relationships and name changes.
More information
For more articles on improving your search techniques, go to the Research page.
For more of my articles about analysing sources, go to the Analyse page.
Genealogy research can be wonderfully absorbing. Hours disappear as you follow fascinating family stories and uncover new sources. But effective family history research requires more than just discovery time. You need systems for documentation, organisation, and analysis.
The challenge? Balancing the exciting detective work with the essential but less glamorous tasks. Poor time management can leave you drowning in scrappy notes, struggling to find files, or repeating research you’ve already done.
Good genealogists develop efficient workflows. They create systems that support their research rather than slow it down.
Here are ten proven strategies to streamline your genealogy research and maximise your productive research time.
This post was originally published in October 2023 and last updated on 8 August 2025.
Take Good Research Notes
Don’t waste time creating notes that will not get used or worse, notes that are so bad you have to repeat the research! Make sure that you record the information that you might need, in a format that you will be able to understand. Be careful using abbreviations, as you might forget what they meant or misinterpret them when you go back to your notes at some point in the future. It’s a good idea to always include a source citation on your notes.
Even if you take really good notes, it is a good idea to make a copy of sources, in full or as extracts. Save them with your other family history documentation and, if possible, and link them to the relevant people in your family history software. These copies will then be available when you need to take another look and you will not have to waste time going back to the repository.
Find out more:
The FamilySearch Wiki has a useful article on this topic – Copying Sources
Be Meticulous with Data Entry
Take time to enter data into your family tree or family history software accurately, clearly, comprehensively and completely. Do not tell yourself you will fix it later as you probably won’t. Reducing errors at this point will make your family history more accurate and save you researching the wrong family or the wrong locations.
The Six Question Model for creating source citations, from The Good Genealogist (Lautrec, 2022)
Use Other People’s Research Wisely
You can save time by getting clues from other people’s family trees. Look for good quality research and use it to build hypotheses to test. Don’t just accept their conclusions as fact.
A lot of the time you will be focusing on one family group or family line at a time, but there are also benefits to creating research groups of people who have something in common because they may appear in the same sources or the same source types. For example, you might focus on researching all of your convicts, or all of the people buried in the same cemetery.
Find out more:
Use tags in online trees or family history software to identify groups and create lists. My article, Ancestry Tags Notes and Comments, provides suggestions.
Develop Your Skills and Knowledge
Improving your ability to find the best sources and analyse them will save you heaps of time.
Find out more:
I run genealogy research methods courses with the Society of Australian Genealogists. They are online and relevant to any location.
More courses and lecture options are listed on Cyndi’s List.
Join a Group
Working collaboratively or seeking assistance from other genealogists can help you find better information and develop your skills. There are a lot of genealogy Facebook groups, but also many others options to explore.
Find out more:
My article, Five Reasons to Use Wikitree, looks at the benefits of collaborative genealogy at Wikitree. Consider joining some of the challenges or a group project.
Many genealogy societies run special interest groups. For example, I convene the Legacy Family History Software Users Group for the Society of Australian Genealogists. Take a look at what your local or national society has to offer.
Good genealogy is all about working smarter. These ten strategies will help make your research more focused and productive.
Pick one tip that addresses your biggest time-waster right now. Maybe it’s finally creating that filing system or learning to create proper citations. Implement it this week.
About the Author
Danielle Lautrec is a genealogy educator, researcher, and author of The Good Genealogist. With qualifications in history, family history, and historical archaeology, she teaches for the Society of Australian Genealogists.
To produce good quality family history, you should not think narrowly. To reach conclusions that are reasonable and defensible, you must conduct a reasonably exhaustive search and undertake critical analysis. [1] That requires consideration of alternatives.
Consider alternative sources and repositories
To conduct a reasonably exhaustive search you need to use a variety of sources and repositories. This improves the range and type of information you obtain, and improves the quality and strength of the evidence.
For example, birth death and marriage records are very useful for establishing key events in a person’s life and relationships within a family. However, they are not always available and the information within them is limited. Other sources may provide the information needed.
When you consult alternative sources, or different versions of a source, you are more likely to notice inconsistencies in the information. Using alternative sources may also help overcome deficiencies in sources, such as illegibility or missing pages.
Consider alternative explanations and conclusions
To reach reasonable and defensible conclusions you must apply critical analysis techniques to information in a source. Do not just accept information as fact, as all sources can have errors.
Consider alternative explanations for a situation before settling on one. If you are using hypotheses in your research, always examine multiple hypotheses and competing hypotheses. This will help you be more objective and avoid confirmation bias.
Be open to the possibility that your conclusions may be incorrect and be willing to consider alternative conclusions. It may be that someone else has evidence that you did not consider, or has analysed and interpreted the evidence differently. You should also consider whether your conclusions need to be revised when new information or evidence becomes available.
Use alternative tools and techniques
Doing things the same way all the time tends to cause stagnant thinking. You will improve the quality of your family history if you try alternative approaches, tools and techniques.
A different approach, tool or technique may help you solve your research problem and teach you new skills.
The question of descent from royalty is often asked in genealogy. Clearly it is an issue of interest to many people, as websites use it to promote their businesses and journalists like to write about it. How do we find and analyse evidence in family history for such claims?
Claims of royal ancestry
Earlier this year, the Who Do You Think You Are magazine claimed that ‘Royal ancestry is one of the most exciting discoveries most people imaging when starting their family tree.’ [1]. I personally do not care much whether some of my ancestor were royal, except that it is relevant to the accuracy of one particular line in my family history.
Similarly, an article on the MyHeritage website claims that it is ‘one of the more exciting finds you might hope to make’ [2]. This article suggests that it is easy to find out, just by doing your research well. It also claims that ‘it’s actually pretty unlikely that you don’t have royal ancestry. It’s simple math’.
The Who Do You Think You Are article also states that, ‘If you have Caribbean ancestry and you can trace your family to a white plantation owner there is a good chance that you can also claim royal ancestry, as sons of gentry often emigrated to the Caribbean to seek their fortune.’ My own supposed connection to royalty is through Jamaican plantation owners. But the question is, was he really a son of gentry?
Analysis of the evidence in family history
As good genealogists, we need to be careful not to make, or accept, sweeping generalisations such as the statements quoted above. We need evidence to support the conclusions we reach.
As another genealogist, Graham Holton, stated in an article on the BBC News website, statistically it may be likely that you are descended from royalty but in actuality it can be very difficult to substantiate claims with solid evidence. [3]
Royal relationships are often in the very distant past. My own supposed connection is my 22x great grandfather, King Edward I (1239-1307). It is true that royal lines are better documented than non-royal, but over many generations the potential for error or fabrication in a family tree is quite high.
In my case, the evidence for this family line has many holes, and none larger than the point where an Englishman moved to the Caribbean.
It appears that my 9x great grandfather, John Lawrence, married Jane Collins in Cornwall, Jamaica in 1676 and died there after 10 May 1690. About 130 years later, their 3x great granddaughter Mary Scarlett married Joseph Brissett in England. Mary and Joseph were the 2x great grandparents of my paternal grandmother, Winifred Saywell. I won’t cite all the sources for this lineage, as it would clutter the blog post unnecessarily, but instead I will focus on the weaknesses in the evidence chain.
One of the techniques that I teach in my genealogy courses is using the Tree Health Assessment Tool to examine and document the strength of the evidence for each identity and relationship in your direct line. Green represents a substantiated relationship, yellow indicates that there is some evidence and pink indicates that a relationship is unsubstantiated.
The evidence
On this family line, the relationships are well supported by evidence back as far as my 6x great grandmother, Elizabeth Anglin. Baptism records support the conclusion that she was the daughter of Colonel Philip Anglin and Mary Lawrence. [4]
Strength of the evidence for my possible royal lineage. Summary table created using Tree Health Assessment Tool
Evidence exists for the next two generations, but it is not as strong. I have not found baptism records for Mary or her father John.
Some evidence is provided by a painting reproduced in the Caribbeana, entitled ‘Mary, daughter of John Lawrence of Fairfield Estate and wife of Philip Anglin of Paradise Estate, Jamaica. Born later than 1700 and married in 1723. Grandmother of the first Lord Abinger.’ [5] The date of marriage may be an error, as her daughter Elizabeth was born in 1747. The Caribbeana and Historic Jamaica name Mary’s parents as John Lawrence and Susanna Petgrave, and claim that she was born in 1713. [6] The Caribbeana also claims that Mary was the great granddaughter of Henry Lawrence, President of Oliver Cromwell’s Council (Caribbeana, p.131).
This claim of a relationship to Henry Lawrence is where the evidence chain breaks (shown pink in the table above).
The Caribbeana states that Mary’s grandfather, John, was born in 1636 in Isleham, Cambridgeshire to Henry Lawrence and Amy Peyton. He is reported as having left England, landed in Barbados, then arrived in Jamaica in 1676 where he married Jane Dunn nee Collins. This story is also reported in Burke’s Landed Gentry, where Lawrence is listed as of Wiltshire England and of Fairfield Jamaica. The use of the Lawrence crest in Jamaica is cited as evidence of the relationship. [7]
Is my connection substantiated?
I have done my best to trace back references to this claim and they all seem to originate from an article in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1815 by a descendant of John, James Lawrence. [8]
That article, unfortunately, lists no sources to back up the claim and my knowledge of heraldry is insufficient to determine whether use of the Lawrence crest is reasonable evidence. The Caribbeana does acknowledge that the evidence was inconclusive and that the family agreed that John’s parentage had not been established (p.131).
In addition, my research into Henry Lawrence has so far failed to find any decent evidence to support or refute that he had a son called John.
The Dictionary of National Biography claims that he had seven sons and six daughters, but does not list their names. [9] Even worse, it cites as its sources the abovementioned article from the Gentleman’s Magazine and another derivative source, Chesters of Chicheley, the latter of which cites, you guessed it, the 1815 article. [10]
My research seems to be going around in circles! A good indication that the evidence is flimsy.
A US publication from 1847 does list Henry’s children, including John, but again there are no sources cited to support the claim. [11]
So, how is this all relevant to my original question about evidence in family history to support a claim of descendancy from royalty?
King Edward I was the 10x great grandfather of Henry Lawrence’s wife Amy. That part of the family line is well documented. However, as the claim that John was their son is still unsubstantiated, I cannot claim to be of royal descent on this line.
More information
For more articles about analysis in family history, go to the Analyse page.
For more of my articles on documenting your family history, go to the Document page.
If you would like to read more about my family history, go to my Rustenivy website.
[3] Sean Coughlan, ‘How millions don’t know they’re related to royalty’, BBC News, 1 Nov 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-59041055, accessed 23 Aug 2023
[4] Hanover Parish Register BMB I, 1725-1825, p. 49.
[5] Vere Langford Oliver, Caribbeana: being miscellaneous papers relating to the history, genealogy, topography and antiquities of the British West Indies, 6 volumes 1910-1919.
[6] Frank Cundall, Historic Jamaica, Institute of Jamaica, 1915, p. 340.
[7] John Burke, Burke’s Landed Gentry: The Principality of Wales and The North West, originally published 1833.
[8] The Gentleman’s Magazine, Volume 85 Part 1, 1815.
[9] Gordon Goodwin, ‘Henry Lawrence’, Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900 vol. 32.
[10] Robert Edmond Chester Waters, Genealogical Memoirs of the Extinct Family of Chester of Chicheley, Their Ancestors and Descendants, London England, Robson and Sons, 1878.
[11] John Lawrence, A genealogical memoir of the family of John Lawrence, of Watertown, 1636; with brief notices of others of the name in England and America, Boston, Coolidge & Wiley, 1847.
Notes:
Caribbeana is a book of family histories of the Caribbean. The trees in the book are based on parish records and family papers, and many of these parish records are now also available online at FamilySearch. Where available, I have verified the information for my family against the parish records.
