Take the research further or record and move on?

 

                                                               Family tree branch based on an SAR application

My progress on filling out my family tree has been halting at best. There are too many other things happening at this time of year. As you can see by the scan of the family line that heads this post, I've filled in the lineage that was outlined in the Sons of the American Revolution application which I found on Ancestry in December. The pension records I reviewed for Charles and Jane Tripp also contained proof of James Lanfear being married to Elizabeth Woodworth, so I'm pretty confident about the information tying the applicant back to Selah Woodworth. At the other end of the supplied data, I expect the applicant, Clarence Edmund Hyatt, would have had intimate knowledge of his parents' dates and probably had accurate information about his grandparents too. I also thought that any entries in an application to the Sons of the American Revolution would be of a high caliber. But was I justified in that belief?

I looked into the Ancestry database, U.S., Sons of the American Revolution Membership Applications, 1889-1970. According to the page about this source, these were applications approved by the Sons of the American Revolution between 1889 and 31 December 1970. There is a caveat though, in that present applicants basing their current application on an old SAR application might have to supply further documentation as older applications may not meet current genealogy standards. There is no mention of what year constitutes an older application.

Should I look into the application I have further or just accept the information on it at face value? A random overview of both Ancestry and FamilySearch shows that there is more information available about SAR and DAR applications and possibly documentation that accompanied them. Should I take my research further in this direction or just accept what I have? On the one hand, I want to continue with the expansion of my family tree and on the other, there could be treasures to uncover if I go further with my research on the application that I found and I might even pull up further applicants who also fit on my tree.

Sources:

Ancestry – U.S., Sons of the American Revolution Membership Applications, 1889-1970