Am I being over cautious?

The further back a stem goes, the more cautious I find I get. I have a Richard Green, died 1561 (and yes, baptismal records lead to him), born 1492. He seems to appear in the history books, and he did leave a will (which I need to get a friend to read for me because I can't read it very well) which indicates there was money in the family. Trouble is, I am loathe to add any further people as I don't have any real evidence other than history. Am I being too cautious? I don't want my tree to descend into ridicule.

 

Edited to add, when I say appears in the history books, the family appear to be landed gentry, not royalty or anything very spurious

 

Never too cautious, I keep ignoring helpful hints on Ancestry for possible 5,6,7,8th grand persons as they have no sources to go with. I went for so long with no 'grand' parents except Maternal & Paternal, I feel I can go on without the rest. If they want me to know, they'll get through to me somehow.

 

I am quite lucky in that my Family Tree program has a Research notes section so if I am not sure of an actual line of descent, I can enter in the research I have done so far which leads me to believe this may be the line of descent. When you get back to the 16th and sometimes early 17th century parish records, they are less likely to be helpful. I am at the moment tracing a lot of Oxfordshire ancestors and many of the early parish registers just state that "so and so" was baptised or born with no other information and given that each branch of the family seems to give their children the same forenames, it becomes pretty impossible to attribute their parentage without some other information such as a Will. I hope your Will turns up trumps for you.

Janet

 

That's interesting Janet, I will have a look in BK to see if there's something similar. I have been mulling over putting notes of an ancestor's possible parents in that ancestor's record in BK but a research facility such as you described would be better, epecially with stalled research.

Regards.

 

Family Tree Maker has two "Notes" sections for each person. One is headed "Personal Notes" and the other "Research Notes" so I can use the Personal Notes column for information that I have been able to prove using one or more source, early Wills being especially useful for this purpose, and the Research column for best "guestimates", the latter being quite useful as more and more sources come online which may either prove or disprove my theories.

Janet

 

I've accumulated too many ancestors and too much info now to move to another database, at my age I might not live long enough to transfer everything.