What is good quality family history?

For years, I confidently traced my great-great-grandmother Christina Malchow’s lineage through her father Gottlieb. After all, her parents married the same year she was born – the connection seemed obvious. Then my DNA results arrived. Christina wasn’t Gottlieb’s biological daughter. Years of research into the wrong family line, all based on a reasonable but incorrect assumption.

What are we aiming for when we say that we want good quality family history? Is having an accurate family tree enough, or are there other factors involved? And why is it so important that we have good quality family history?

Knowing the answers to these questions makes it easier to improve the quality of our family history.

Good quality family history rests on three essential pillars that work together to create reliable research: accurate, comprehensive and well-documented.

This post was originally published in June 2024 and last updated on 4 June 2025

1. Accurate family history

The correct people

An accurate family history has the correct people included. Each person is included because they are related to the person whose family history it is. They are family.

However, it is not as simple as this.

Relationships can be biological or non-biological. If the purpose of researching the family history is to research biological family, then the family history is inaccurate if it includes people who are not related biologically. On the contrary, if the purpose of researching the family history is to research family in the broadest sense, it is not made inaccurate by including non-biological relationships.

For example, my family history includes both my father’s biological parents and his adopted parents. It also includes the ancestors of both sets of parents. Including non-biological relationships in this case does not make it inaccurate, because that is my intent. His adopted parents were the people I knew as my grandparents. From my perspective, they are my family.

So, a judgement about the accuracy of a family history is partly dependent on the purpose of researching the family history. That purpose will vary depending on the intent of the researcher.

The correct relationships

An accurate family history has the correct relationships between each person. For example, it does not identify Person A as a sibling of Person B if Person A is actually a child of Person B.

Additionally, if a family history intentionally includes biological and non-biological family members, to be regarded as accurate it must distinguish between these different types of relationships. In the example above, my family history has two sets of parents for my father. One set is marked as biological and the other is marked as adopted.

You could also extend this principle further to other types of relationships. For example, if a woman marries for a second time, an accurate family history would mark the second husband as the step-father of the children from her first marriage.

Surnames can also mask true relationships. My 4x great-grandmother Mary Foran took her step-father’s surname when her mother remarried. Her birth surname was Leonard. Without distinguishing between her biological father (Leonard) and step-father (Foran), researchers could easily follow the wrong family line entirely.

The right information

An accurate family history does not have errors in the information.

Researchers create information errors:

• when information is copied incorrectly into a family history
• if a source contains incorrect information and that incorrect information is copied into a family history, and
• when someone misinterprets the information in a source.

For more information about information errors, see my article: Mistakes and Misinterpretation.

Implications of an inaccurate family history

The main goal in researching family history is to identify and learn about family. Inaccurate family histories contain people who are not family, which means the main goal is not achieved.

An inaccurate family history makes it difficult to carry out further research and leads to more errors.

See my article, Family Tree Health Assessment Tool: Build a Solid Foundation.

Having the right people and correct relationships is essential, but accuracy alone isn’t sufficient for quality family history.

2. Comprehensive family history

Good quality family history is not just about accuracy. It also needs to be comprehensive.

A family tree chart that just contains names, for example, is not sufficient. Similarly, a family history that only traces the direct line is not sufficient.

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Note: Direct line means the most direct line of ancestors or descendants. It excludes siblings. For example, father > father’s parents > their parents. (The Good Genealogist, Lautrec 2022, p187)

See my articles:

• Five good reasons not to limit your research to your direct line,
• How do you research beyond your direct line?
• Five ways to expand your search

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To be regarded as comprehensive, a family history also needs to include sufficient evidence to support the conclusions that have been made. For example, evidence should be obtained from more than one source and from the best sources.

This is the principle referred to as ‘reaching reasonable and defensible conclusions’. It is discussed in The Good Genealogist and also in my article How many sources should you use?

Similar to the situation with accuracy, a judgement about whether a family history is sufficiently comprehensive depends on the purpose of researching the family history. The people that are included and the information that is included should be consistent with that purpose.

This relates to the principle that family history should be based on a ‘reasonably exhaustive search’. Such a search examines all sources potentially relevant to the research question or hypothesis. For example, when researching a birth date, this means checking birth records, baptismal records, census records, and death certificates – not just stopping at the first source you find.

And, you need to explore offline family history sources as well as online sources.

Consequently, the family history should include all relevant information and people.

Even comprehensive research means little if you can’t substantiate your conclusions to others – or to yourself years later.

3. Well-documented family history

Good quality family history is well-documented.

This means that it is recorded systematically and comprehensively. It contains good quality source citations for each piece of information and has sufficient sources cited for each conclusion.

See my article How many sources should you use?

For more of my articles on documenting your family history, go to the Document page.

Accurate, comprehensive and well-documented

Good quality family history demonstrates all three characteristics. It is accurate, comprehensive and well-documented.

If there are weaknesses in any of these, it will affect the other. Poor documentation, for example, will usually make a family history inaccurate.

Good quality family history helps to ensure that we are researching our actual family. It also helps us do more research. When you have a solid foundation, every new discovery builds reliably on what came before.

Start by evaluating your current family history against these three pillars. Where are the gaps?

Addressing these weaknesses now will save you from the frustration of discovering errors years down the track – just like my experience with Christina Malchow showed me.

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Achieving good quality family history is the focus of the articles on this website, my book The Good Genealogist, and the courses and lectures that I present.

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More information

For more of my articles about research methods for family history, go to the Research Methods page.

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.