A note to new and veteran researchers: Make sure the dates fit!
When you are researching an individual and find a tree on Ancestry, FamilySearch, Rootsweb, My Heritage, Geni, Wiki, or whatever, make sure it really does apply to your ancestor.
As I have been wading through the ancestral forests [get it? family trees!] on my newly discovered Keeling family of Virginia, the chronology has been oft ignored.
Two prime examples:
[1] Most of the trees [undocumented and documented] give the parents of Thomas Keeling [b. c1608] as John Keeling [b. c1582] and Alice Waterhouse [b. c1586]. Nice fits. John was about 26 and Alice about 22 at Thomas' birth. Then there's Alice's parents: Edward [b. c1533] and Margaret Turner [b. c1539]. That makes them 53 and 47 when Alice was born. A few trees show Alice with a brother born in 1587. The ages are possible, but very, very improbable for the 16th century!
[2] John Keeling [c1582 - c1642] is frequently documented as the Chief Justice of the King's Court in 1665. Not a bad gig for a guy who had been dead for a nearly a quarter of a century. John Keeling, the Chief Justice, according to his bio on Wikipedia, was born in 1607 and died in 1671.
Please! Look at your birth, marriage, death and event dates - if they don't work chronologically, you probably have the wrong people in the mix somewhere along the line.
Just because somebody posted it on the internet, it don't mean it ain't wrong!
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