Getting the Water to the End of the Row

Since I mainly grew up in Arizona, irrigation was always part of my life. At some point, I began being responsible for irrigating our property. One of the objectives of using flood irrigation was to make sure that all of the property got irritated, i.e. the water got to the end of every row. Across the United States, row irrigation is no longer as popular as it once was. If you fly over the country, you will see that circular, overhead irrigation systems are more common. But getting the water to the end of the row is still a good analogy for finishing the job.

Here is an example of failure to get the water to the end of the row.

One reason I failed to get the water to the end of the row was that the irrigation ditches had weak banks. Before reaching the last place to be irritated the water would all run out of the break in the ditch bank. In the case above, the reference to Mrs. Mary Unknown is an analogous break in the bank.

Rather than recognize this as an end of line situation, the researchers have ignored this weak link and carried on with an unwarranted assumption. Not surprisingly, there are no sources in the Family Tree to support this assumption.

Unfortunately, the situation is quite common. Sooner or later, a close examination of every single pedigree will either show this kind of unsupported information or an end of the line.

You just might want to examine your pedigree closely for weak spots that may indicate that all of your further extensions along that line are unwarranted, unsupported, and pure fantasy.