Genealogy Chat

Having recently viewed public trees on this and other genealogy sites, I had doubts regarding the validity of a certain surname, three trees had identical details. Having purchased a marriage certificate it transpires that all three trees had incorrect details suggesting that one had copied details fron another. Always check source of infomation before adding wrong details to your own tree, the incorrect info could spread through several families in your tree.
Jon

John I totally agree. I never copy anyone's tree without first checking myself.

I have seen so many mistakes especially on Ancestry Trees where people just copy others. For instance my gt grandfather who never set foot out of his village in Lincolnshire is down on various tree as having died in Denton, Colorado USA instead of Denton Lincolnshire. I know he is there as I have seen his grave stone'

Jennifer

I try to make a point of filling in the "Source" field.
That way I can tell whether I have verified the data from parish records, if I have a certificate (I've got dozens, it would be frightening to add up the cost, so I don't count them. Lol) or if the information has been supplied by a GR member of family member.

That way I, or anyone who has access to my tree, can assess the reliability of the entry when looking at it.

Some of my ancestors from Amesbury in Wiltshire are on other trees showing Amesbury, Massachusetts in USA! I'm sure they were in UK!

Pigletspal, this has happened to me too. I had a lot of correspondence with a distant family member who it turns out had gone really astray in his research. As soon as I shared my evidence and findings I never heard from him again! Other people have reacted similarly. I think they can't deal with starting over maybe, but I find it very strange.
Jan

What I find amusing is when someone offers to do me a big favour and send me information about one of my lines of research which they claim they or a close friend has put together. Only, when it arrives it turns out to be an extract of my own tree!

What is even funnier is to see that it contains errors and omissions that I corrected months or even years ago.....!

Of course, we all make errors, but sadly there are few who bother to check and just take things at face value.

Last week I sent someone a report on a family branch and they pointed out that I had put Kidderminster as the P.O.B. when it should have been Kidsgrove. I put it down to FTM trying to anticipate names based on previous input - no excuse, I know, I should have spotted it was wrong at the time.

This person is the first to have ever pointed it out so, at least, there are some out there who are doing things properly, checking and questioning information. Others who have received details of the same branch have simply taken it face value.

I totally agree John. My cousin copied my tree from here, with mistakes! It did annoy me at the time, but then I came to the conclusion that it was his problem, not mine!

I knew my information was correct because I did the research myself!!

I have had a response from a chap in USA only today who had Bradford Devon being the place of birth and marriage for members of a family in my tree, it should be Bradford Yorkshire.

I asked if this family was his blood line or through marriage, it appears it's his BILaws family. He;s corrected some of the entries but not others.

Frances

My tree on ancestry is private, but the first tree I started about 2 years ago has 4 names in it, and I had forgotten about it so it is still public.

It contains John Wrigley born ca 1875 Lancashire, his wife Hannah, and Hannah's parents, who are my gt grandparents.

Gt Aunt Hannah and John emigrated to Newark, New Jersey days after their wedding in 1902, and died there. I have not yet found John's death but I believe it was in the 1940s

I got notice that there was a match with John Wrigley.

I looked at the other tree.


Hmmmmmmmmmmm

he had John Wrigley b 1760 Lancashire, d 1823 Newark, New Jersey

Wife Sarah AND wife Hannah

.............. and Hannah's parents as the in-laws ...... born about 90 years after Sarah was born.


I couldn't find a means to contact him ....... so I finally put a comment on his tree re the fact that my gt grandparents and Hannah could in no way be connected to his John Wrigley, one only had to look at the dates to see that.


Within a week, he had removed my relations. No acknowledgement of course!




sylvia

My tree on ancestry is also private. I never copy others information I just use it as a possibility when I hit a brick wall.

A lot of trees are unsourced so nothing in them are validated and I only add validated information to my tree.

Anyway were is the fun in copying other peoples research? I started this hobby because I wanted to trace my family tree not have someone else do it for me.

I do not see the sense of adding names for the sake of adding names. For me it is better to try and get an essence of their way of life. The trials and tribularitons if you like. and people do make mistakes.

In my family tree there comes a point where the information is missing - we know that our g.g.grandfather was born in one area of Cornwall from the census (same area as the rest of the family ), but the birth record just isn't there - even on Cornish OPC.

Unfortunately, someone at some point has seized upon another person of the same name in a different part of Cornwall (definitely incorrect) and he now appears on trees from Canada to Australia!

My brother has been trying to correct this for years, but it seems people would rather have incorrect information on their trees than a gap!

this happens a lot unfortuantly

You have to have the certs or look at parish records to know the dates of birth mariage death, otherwise it is only guesswork.

on a tree on ancestry my grandmother died in Portsmouth USA, she would have had a giggle at that she never left this country even on holiday.

Skulduggery also happens!

One of my first cousins, Dxxxx, worked on the Cadd family, from Buckinghamshire in the late 1970s and through the 1980s, poring through parish records in several villages, going to Somerset House etc. My brother was also involved in aspects of this work.

I have a 20 page booklet that cousin put together of all the ancestors that he had determined, going all the way back to John Cad(d) born 1720 in one of the villages.

Because of that, I believed that the Cadd family line had been completed when I began searching in 2003, but one day I googled Cadd.



.................. and discovered that here was a One Name Study Group on Cadd. The originator was a Dxxxx Cadd

I made 2 or 3 attempts to contact him, mentioning the information that I had, my brother's name, and the fact that I thought we were cousins ........... no response.


Then in 2006, Australian cousins gave me a CD that they had somehow acquired. It had been produced for a Cadd Family Meeting in 2005, and was allegedly the complete data.

It even had a protected password! But said Ozzies had found out what that was.

I looked at it when I got home, and I discovered that my father had somehow got lost. Instead, my brother (10 years older than me) was my mother's husband and I was their child.

They did have brother's birth year correct, and Mum's birth year was also correct!


I thought this should be corrected (!!) ...... so I once again tried to contact Dxxxx Cadd through One-Name-Studies

No response, even though I had sent 3 International Reply coupons to ensure a reply, which cost me over $30 (ca £15) .......... and eventually I contacted the Registrar of ONS

6 months later, the Registrar told me that Dxxxx Cadd had been removed from ONS, and the Cadd study had been deleted. I have since been told by another contact that Dxxxx had re-married and lost interest in genealogy.


Why did I have this problem?


Well, I had TWO cousins, brothers, both of whom had forenames beginning with D. The eldest had done the study in the 80s, and the younger had "stolen" the work from him and then passed it off as his own on ONS.

AND I had the proof and knowledge!

How do I know this??

There are 3 other brothers ........... all of whom have become interested in genealogy in recent years, we have been in contact through GR, and I got the story from one of them.


There are members of the Cadd family around the world ..... some emigrated to Australia and then to California, others went direct to the US. Consequently there are at least 3 trees that I know of in the public domain .......... on rootsweb.com and on ancestry ............ plus this CD. And there are several groups studying various aspects of the family.

Plus it is on familysearch.org 'cos some apparently became Mormons, or someone else has entered all the names.

As far as I can make out, every single tree is based on the work that was done in the 1980s 'cos they match almost completely ........ a minor date change or the addition of a child being the only differences.

Even the records in Salt Lake City may be based on this work because we were there in about 1988, and there were no Cadds in their files at that time.


BUT no-one has managed to get any further back than John Cad b. 1720 ..................... they have got his wife's family back to about 1540.

He's apparently one of those ancestors who was dropped off by an alien space ship!


sylvia

I often find inaccuracies in Ancestry Public trees.......usually as a result of people determined to add names to their trees without botheing to do all the work.
Where i find I have indisputable information, i offer corrections..which you can do on Ancestry....Would be interesting to see how many of these get accepted!!

Derek

Anyone with access to public member trees on Ancestry might be amused or appalled at the attempts of some Americans to "prove" they have family links to famous peeps in this country

If you have Ancestry..just enter Florence Nightingale 1820 Italy into the Public Family trees........Her father (born 1794 Yorks) was also born in any number of American cities!!

Bit of a farce really!!

Derek

I could hardly believe my eyes: I saw someone has the Queen and Prince Philip on a tree on Ancestry (actually there are a lot!) and someone has both of them already having died!