Is it proof?

You've gathered a lot of information on your ancestors. Does that mean you've proved beyond a reasonable doubt that your statements are the truth?

You're information pertains to genealogy, your family history. We are not in a court of law. There is no such thing as beyond a reasonable doubt in genealogy. That's a term lawyers like to use and juries like to hear. Discard it from your thinking right now, along with preponderance of evidence. If you want to learn more about why these terms aren't used in genealogy you can go here and here.

The term you want to learn and embrace as a genealogist is the Genealogical Proof Standard.

But does it prove that you're a direct descendant of George Washington?

Have you followed the GPS (Genealogical Proof Standard)? Do all the dots from one generation to the next connect? Did you find documents showing that his daughter is your great, great, great, great grandmother? You did? Great. You have created a fabulous fiction tree and you did not follow the GPS.

Am I positive about this? Oh yes. And obviously better using Google than you are doing family research. George Washington did not have any children of his own. He helped raise Martha's two children from her first marriage (she was a widow when they married) and later they raised two of her grandchildren.

Whatever supporting documents that you found did not pass the GPS. You went in with a preconceived idea and ignored all the "facts" just so you could support your theory.

Unfortunately, what you prove today, might be disproven tomorrow. How can this be?

You're using what's available to you today. Tomorrow in some city where your ancestors resided, the city council may determine the old abandoned church on the corner of First and Main needs to come down so they can sell that lot to commercial business so they can not only generate commercial property taxes on that lot, but increase their city sales tax revenue by the new business who will build there. If we're lucky, they will go through that church to make sure no records were hidden away. In my example here, they did go through the church and in a cubby in the attic they found three boxes of old records. Marriage records. Baptismal records. Christening records. Records of funerals held in that church that dates back to 1795.

Until we look at those records, we won't know what we'll find. Maybe nothing pertaining to our ancestors. Perhaps you'll learn that the parents you have listed for your great, great, great grandfather are not his parents, but his grandparents, or his uncle and wife. You could find a funeral record for John and Jane Smith with a notation that their young son was taken in by John's brother Thomas and wife.

All you have to do is add the new documentation and sources to your family history with the corrected parents. Make a notation that it was previously believed that Thomas and Mary Smith were the parents, but John and Jane Smith were discovered to have been his parents after the discovery of old documents uncovered in the old Puritan Church located at First and Main in Any Town, New York, USA on 7 Jan. 2012. Or whatever date the records were discovered. Also note who has custody of the records now. There you go. You were wrong, but once you found new documentation you corrected the error and it keeps your credibility in tact.

But based on GPS, your previous and present research were sound. You've lived up to their standards in the past and today.

If you adhere to GPS you can't go wrong. If you don't adhere to GPS, you probably will go wrong, time and time again.

I think all of our ancestors deserve to have their story told reliably and honestly. It's the same belief most genealogist have.

Go find your proof. Don't worry if your proof is disproved as more and more documents are discovered in musty basements and dusty attics.