Never judge a book by its cover, nor a file by the contents of the first few pages. I have two examples in my own research where doing that would have caused me to miss out on documents relevant to my research.
The first case is a probate file. When the county archives were receiving the record from the courthouse there was an attempt to organize the papers in file folders which resulted in the the combining of the probate files of two men who had similar names. Most of the papers in the file folder are those of the man who died leaving a will but two of the pages are from another man a similar name who died intestate. The folder was microfilmed and is listed this way in databases of the online companies who carry this record. I sent an explanation to the county archives and they now have this noted for the file there. I've also posted comments to the digital records with an explanation in hopes that others could see that the contents were for 2 individuals.
The next example involves a Revolutionary War pension file where two men of the same name were combined. The first 10 pages of the file are for a soldier and the remainder are for a Widow's pension. When closely examined it becomes clear that the two men are not the same person but are people with a similar name. Had I only read the first 10 pages and decided that wasn't my person of interest, I'd have missed out on the remainder of pages(almost 100) which contain a wealth of information.
You should:
- Be familiar with the person you seek and their associates. (What distinguishes them from others of the same name?)
- Understand the source type
- Know what should or shouldn't be in the file(ie. the significance of admin vs executor, etc.)
- Seek an explanation when things just don't make sense or items are missing
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