Following the records trail

Yes, genealogy records can be wrong. Recorders sometimes misheard names or misjudged ages, informants occasionally gave inaccurate details on purpose, and transcribers introduced further mistakes when copying handwritten originals into searchable indexes, so a single record should never be treated as the final word on its own.

Some genealogy records are missing because entire collections have been lost to fires, floods, wars, or years of poor storage. The 1890 US census is a well-known example: a 1921 fire destroyed nearly all of it, leaving a twenty-year gap researchers still have to work around.

No, not all of them. Governments typically seal recent birth, marriage, and death records for several decades, often fifty to one hundred years, to protect people who might still be alive, releasing them to the public only once that privacy window has passed.

Genealogy records usually don't reach back more than a few centuries. Government-issued birth, marriage, and death certificates typically only date to the 1800s or 1900s, while church records of baptisms, marriages, and burials can push research further, often back to the 1500s in parts of Europe.