No absolutes in genealogy

People's lives are inherently messy, no matter how short or how long andtrying to completely quantify a life is probably unattainable. Evenhuge biographies, like Carl Sandburg's Abraham Lincoln do not do justiceto a life. So what can we hope to accomplish as genealogists? How muchinformation is enough? Where do we stop? Or do we ever stop incollecting information? If you are like me, you will always believe thatthere is one more document and one more place to look. The surprisingthing is, that this is usually and almost always correct. There alwaysis at least one more document and at least one more place to look. Inthe sense that the information we obtain is never absolute, that iscomplete, without qualification and totally unconditioned, given thisdefinition no genealogical research can be absolute.

In that sense, there is also always some additional information that maybe available to be known. There may be one more place to research andlook, if we only had the time and resources. Before we even approachsome absolute, we recognize that are time and space limitations on ourability to obtain additional information. Of course, from a practicalstandpoint, you can't keep finding new and unexplored documents aboutpeople in the very distant past. The documents might exist, but findingthem without unlimited resources becomes an extremely remotepossibility. But in any event, you can never assume that you havereached some absolute end of the available records or information thatmight be gleaned from another source.

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No absolutes in genealogy

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