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My focus, generally, is mainly on who my previously unknown ancestors—the unidentified parents of known individuals. However, this objective cannot be reduced to a single project. Researching ancestry is, by nature, an iterative operation. Each successful problem resolution sets up more problems to be resolved, and a complete line of descent is made up of several distinct problem resolutions.I could give any number of examples here, and they would all take a while to explain. So, of course I wish to provide one anyway. Consider this your tl;dr warning.Let me start with an ancestor whose name was already familiar within my family when I began doing research. We knew of Shepard Bates Cowles (1826–1911) from a short biography of him that was printed in 1900 (The City of Grand Rapids and Kent County, Mich., Up to Date: Containing Biographical Sketches of Prominent and Representative Citizens [Logansport, Ind.: A. W. Bowen & Co., 1900], 622–4, via Internet Archive). It said that Shepard’s parents were Sylvester Cowles and his wife, Sophronia Mason. These statements may be confirmed by his official death certificate, recorded eleven years later, based on information provided by his son, C. S. Cowles (Death Records, 1897-1920, Seeking Michigan, accessed 11 June 2018).Both of these records provide acceptable resolution of the problem of determining Shepard’s parents, who count as contemporaries of both their son and their grandson. But now it may be asked who Shepard’s grandparents were. This is best conceived, not only as a separate problem, but two separate problems: Sylvester’s parentage on one side, and Sophronia’s on the other. The standard Cowles genealogy—based on research that was already in progress in 1900—proposes to resolve them both, by stating that Sylvester was the son of Reuben and Elizabeth (Rice) Cowles, and Sophronia the daughter of Joseph and Betsey (Wood) Mason: Calvin Duvall Cowles, Genealogy of the Cowles Families in America, 2 vols. (New Haven, Conn.: Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor Co., 1929), 1:164, 165, 353, 354, via Family History Books, FamilySearch.However, the information from these sources is not all correct. Comparing the two publications already reveals some inconsistencies:“Sylvester Cowles, father of Shepard B., was born in Amherst, Mass., March 12, 1795, and died in Ohio in 1880. … Mrs. Sophronia Cowles was a native of Cummington, Mass., was born in 1800, and died in 1879” (Grand Rapids and Kent County, 622)“SYLVESTER COWLES, son of Reuben … b. March 5, 1795, in Amherst, Mass.; bapt. April 23, 1797; d. June 27, 1878, in Brunswick, Ohio; m. Jan. 1, 1821, Sophronia Mason, b. July 21, 1801, in Cummington, Mass.; d. Sept. 18, 1873, in Brunswick, Ohio” (Cowles Families, 1:353)The main objection to be raised against both of these statements is that—unlike the statements on Shepard’s death certificate as to their names—they need not have reflected direct personal knowledge of the facts. In other words, in both cases the information seems to be secondary rather than primary, as defined by Board for Certification of Genealogists, Genealogy Standards, 50th Anniversary ed. (Nashville, Tenn., and New York: Ancestry.com, 2014), 70, 72, 77. Proper research procedure generally requires us to seek sources (originals, or high-quality derivatives) bearing primary information for the dates presented by Cowles Families (an authored narrative, generally regarded as a source of secondary information).Various sources on Sylvester and Sophronia produce the following results:Amherst, Mass., Town Clerk, Genealogical Records, 1600–1891, 38, 39, DGS 7763892, FamilySearch.orgp. 38: Reuben Cowles, born 1749 July 22, son of Jonathan and Sarah, married 1778 Nov. 26, by Rev. Dr. Parsons, Elizabeth Rice, daughter of Adam and Lois, died in Amherst, 1824 Mar. 13.p. 39: The nine children of Reuben and Elizabeth include Sylvester, baptized 1797 April 23, married Sophronia Mason of Cummington.Amherst, Mass., Town Clerk, Births, Marriages and Deaths, A:63, DGS 7009210, FamilySearch.org“Be it Remembered That on this first day of December AD. 1821 Intentions of Marriage between Mr. Sylvester Cowls of Amherst and Miss Sophronia Mason of Cummington have been duly entered in the office of the Town Clerk and afterwards published as the Law directs“Certified Dec 15—1821“Attest Elisha Smith Jr Town Clerk”Medina Co., Ohio, Probate Court, Birth and Death Records, vol. 1, death records section, DGS 4016757, FamilySearch.orgp. 41, no. 1626: Sylvester Cowles, age 82 years, born at “Amerst,” “Hansher” County, Massachusetts, died in Brunswick, June 27, 1878p. 20, no. 758: Sophronia Cowles, age 73 years, born at “Cumington,” Hampshire County, Massachusetts, died in Brunswick, Sept. 18, 1873William W. Streeter and Daphne H. Morris, The Vital Records of Cummington, Massachusetts, 1762–1900 (Hartford, Conn., 1979), based on town recordsp. 45: Sophrona Mason, daughter of Joseph and Hannah, born 1 July 1800. Sophrona Mason [again], daughter of Joseph and Hannah, born 21 July 1801.p. 109: Sylvester Cowls of Amherst and Sophrona Mason of Cummington, married 28 December 1821. There is also an intention of marriage recorded here, as in Amherst, that spells her first name “Sophronia.”p. 133: Joseph Mason and Hannah Woods, married 3 June 1790.p. 208: Sophrona Mason, daughter of Joseph and Hannah, died 24 July 1800.Thus: Sylvester Cowles, born 5 or 12 March 1795 and baptized 23 April 1797 in Amherst, Massachusetts, son of Reuben Cowles and Elizabeth Rice, died in Brunswick, Ohio, 27 June 1878, married in Cummington, Massachusetts, on 28 December 1821 (intentions published 1 December 1821 in Amherst), to Sophronia Mason, called “Sophrona” as a child, who was born in Cummington, 21 July 1801, daughter of Joseph Mason and Hannah Woods, died in Brunswick, 18 September 1873.These results leave more problems to resolve. Reuben and Elizabeth’s parents are known from the above sources, but Joseph and Hannah’s are not. In fact, there is no birth record of Joseph or Hannah, or other information on their parents, in Cummington records. Determining their parentage requires establishing where they had lived prior to Cummington—an added challenge in itself.In fact, my identifications of both sets of parents are in print. Hannah came first: Austin W. Spencer, “Joseph and Mary (Whitcomb) Wood of Tolland, Connecticut, and Dalton, Massachusetts,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register 166 (2012): 109–18. Her husband is the subject of a more recent article: Austin W. Spencer, “Joseph Mason of Cummington and Plainfield, Massachusetts, and His Family,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register 172 (2018): 212–20, 332–40.My own body of work demonstrates that even the most basic objects of genealogical study cannot always be obtained just by reading off the contents of published or unpublished pieces of writing. It often requires the collection of every relevant source and a careful assessment of each source’s value as evidence. Even if some problems can be resolved immediately, other questions await at every turn.