While we, as researchers, endeavour to provide a solid paper trail to document familial relationships - there are times these records simply don't exist. So we have to rely on whatever paper trail we can uncover, and then use deductive reasoning and critical thinking to fill in the gaps. It's not ideal, however, poorly documented ancestors didn't know they would have descendants looking for them over a century later. And then write our discoveries and research rationale and add this information as a report to the poorly documented ancestors in our tress to enable other researchers to follow our information and logic stream.
This episode is also available as a blog post: https://genealogyadventures.net/2020/12/20/researching-poorly-documented-ancestors-harriet-roberts-northampton-county-nc/
