It is amazing how much guesswork is uploaded to surname lists. If you are informed, you will instantly know what is not worth reading or believing. You will also need to find out who else has been working on your lines. You don't necessarily want to recreate all that research work if voluminous records have already been compiled. Join your genealogical and historical organications and place queries in their journals.
Place queries on the internet, but always ask for documentation from internet users.
The most important thing to remember at this point is that no matter who gives you their research, it is your ethical responsibility to prove what they claim is true about your family. You can do this by going back to the documentation they gave you and looking at the record yourself. WISE More and more people are finding the internet any easy place to find their genealogy. Some unfortunately have never even visited a library to look at the original records for whatever reason. Remember that information about your family on the internet can be far from accurate.