I have no idea who Joseph Williams and Mary Phoebe Little are and have never heard of them. So I am pretty sure they are not part of our genealogy. However, because of the reasons I sent you today I am also really skeptical that Jenkins Williams and Uriah Marks are the correct parents. Too much information contradicts the courthouse and census records for this to be true.

I especially have learned to distrust and double check everything on the Latter Day Saints site. It is full of errors and is really only useful for giving you some ideas to check out for yourself. It is information submitted by people who often don't check their facts, make mistakes, and just throw some genealogy together using info from others who don't look things up and then all of the mistakes are repeated over and over in genealogies. Most research genealogists call the LDS genealogies "fairy tales." However, the LDS site is very valuable for all of the actual records it has stored from court houses, census, wills, etc. This is the really valuable information and what I love to see and research. I love to find a genealogy backed up by facts and research that is listed on the site.

Still, LDS is just a starting place to give you some clues that may or may not prove to be correct. That is why I only accept information as true that has court records, census records, grave records, church records, wills, Bible entries, etc. to back it up. These are much more accurate, but I know even they can have mistakes. When I find big contradictions, I back off and keep searching because I know something is wrong. Without finding records to back up your genealogy, you are just guessing and hoping and probably passing along incorrect information to the next generation. That is what makes genealogy such a fascinating hunt--you are hunting for clues and then gathering the facts to back up what you find. I would love to be able to say Jenkins and Uriah are the parents as many of us in the family have been searching for the parents for years, but unless some facts come to light that back this up instead of contradicting it, then I can't enter this information for future generations.