One of the hardest things about doing research and compiling genealogy, once you have mastered organized record keeping, is knowing for sure that the information you have compiled is accurate.
So you've done hours and hours of research and sent for certificates and records and compiled what you believe to be an accurate record of Grandparents going back for 10 generations, only to find a lost journal where it says your great grandfather Fred was adopted! WHAT!
Rootsweb.com has a guide to help family historians, who have found there is an adopted member in their genealogy, that is a good one to turn to, because the truth is this takes a special type of research.
We read stories all the time about families who took in their nephews, nieces, grandchildren, but often there were children who survived devastating losses, such as the Flu Epidemic of New York in 1918, wagon trains lost all but a few people to illness or range fires. Often children were just picked up by whoever came along and added to the family.
So, in our above scenario you have suddenly found your family...well isn't your family, what do you do next? Well, I can tell you what I did. I cried! Thankfully I was only into the 5th generation, but that was bad enough, and I had discovered others using the same lines, names and links as I had, so I was able to pass the information along to the Real Family of that research.
The problems came when I was backing up to what was right and deleting the rest...I wouldn't advise doing that by the way. Instead I found it was much faster and more accurate, with a lot less "hanging chad/names" to create a new tree and add your information up to the breaking point.
It's not easy, it's not fun, but if you are very careful you won't accept the information that got you on the wrong track to begin with. Or in the case of the above scene, when your journal has shown your line was slipped into the one you thought you were a part of.
My oh my, it's almost enough to break your heart. Just take a year off and clear out the research of the wrong line and out of your records, Then start working on building it again. Hopefully that journal will mention where you came from! One can only hope.
