Zenith

Anyone who knows me in person knows that I avoid social networks and blogs. It's not because I'm antisocial but because I know that the majority of people simply aren't interested in genealogy. Which is pretty much all I talk about these days! :cool:
That's a different story here. Everyone here is "into" genealogy in one way or another, from wide-eyed novices to qualified genealogists with decades of experience. My kind of crowd!

I'll give you a little bit of my background so you know where I'm coming from later. I'm 37 yr old with 3 kids and I have a background in laboratory science and IT. I had an aptitude for systems analysis and database design at college even though I didn't enjoy it. I suppose it comes down to that aptitude born out of laziness. The fastest way through the course was to get it over and done with quickly. |laugh1|

My mum started looking into the family history in the late 90's and had made good headway into her side by the beginning of last year. In February 2009, I thought I'd have a look at what the fuss was about. I got a free trial at the A place and gave it a go. In 3 days I'd matched mum's findings along with supporting BMD index references. By the end of the week I'd found most people going back 4 generations on both maternal and paternal sides. I made a couple of mistakes and had to prune whole branches back but I'd already got the bug. I've been paying a subscription since then.

Now I've noticed something about my approach compared to some other people's approach. I overtook 10 years of mum's family research in 3-4 days. She said I wasn't being thorough and proving a family link before going back another generation. The thing is that I was proving links through a combination of BMD and census entries along with IGI providing likely information. All I was doing at the end of the day was a database collation exercise, something that I'm particularly good at (if I do say so myself!).

So my question is this:
Is it so wrong to assume a family link if you have BMD index entries and census returns showing that a person is related to their parents?