From marking landmarks to correcting applications: our duty to the historical record.

Whether we are submitting a historical landmark application for a 19th-century building or filing supplemental paperwork for a lineage society, the standard of evidence matters. The work we do as genealogists extends far beyond our personal family trees; we are actively curating the public historical record.

It can feel frustrating to be told by a lineage society genealogist that the documentation accepted for your grandmother’s application in 1960 is no longer sufficient for yours today. But this increased rigor is a feature, not a bug. It forces us to revisit old assumptions and utilize newly digitized, primary source archives that our predecessors simply couldn’t access.

When we take the time to correct a long-standing application error—rather than just accepting it because “it’s already on file”—we are preserving the true history of our ancestors. We ensure that future generations, and the societies that honor them, are built on a foundation of undeniable fact rather than convenient fiction.