It happens on the internet all the time. People read a headline or the first few sentences of an article or post and then “respond” to it without reading the entire thing. The headline may not give the entire story and the first few sentences may simply be written to generate a response.
It’s not quite the same with looking at genealogical records, but there’s a good point to be made: look at the entire document or record before drawing a conclusion. A death certificate may give “new and exciting” information only to have an informant that you suspect really didn’t know anything about the family.
One legal document–especially in a court case–may be slanted towards one person’s perspective.
And anyone document in a person’s life may give so few details about that person that the information can realistically be interpreted in more than one way.
Don’t jump to conclusions and wait to react until you’ve read the whole thing. And even then–be careful reacting. There could be more to the story.
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