Why just relying on the web for research is not enough

I can say from personal experience that much needed information is not on the web, but is available in old family histories, old town histories, old cemeteries and small libraries as well as knowledge that is only available from personal or web contact.

I recently found a large amount of history about my MAY, BURRINGTON and THOMPSON ancestors from discussions with others who pointed me to new sources of information and in some cases provided me access to rare books they owned. Much of this info was not on the web or was on the web only as fragments without documentation of any type.

Of course vital records many of which are either not online or online only as transcribed summaries are still the best source of documented information.

Some information like there are "THOMPSON" family stones in old Cemetery for 1800's in an area I was not aware of the family having been in are personnel knowledge of others. Some of my New England ancestors moved often and the children also moved to various areas. This makes it easy to loss track of branches and chunks of time in tracking family connections.

I have visited some of these cemeteries in areas new to my research and found that yes it appears that my Ancestors were in the area. In others it seems to be an unrelated family with one of my surnames.

Research in old Cemeteries that have stones for family members has the added bonus of turning up unknown siblings and even additional spouses of family members. You may also find the maiden names of wives in some cases and even some info on the spouses family.

In short assuming that everything you need for genealogy research is online is doing yourself a disservice.

Zos