Genealogy Chat

I noticed a post somewhere by our highly respected contributor FLICK on someone's Thread in which she bemoaned the lack of accurate research on Ancestry Trees.
I'm sure she was also implying that we should nail a very common practice that is to be severely cautioned.
Ancestry trees are NOT resources, to dive into and quote willy nilly on here, and at best should be used maybe as a guideline..and if one appears authentic and well researched, it should be checked before passing it on.with a severe health warning.

I spent five hours in Matlock records Office yesterday totally trashing one Tree..thatt had been severally repeated...i.e deliberately filched from whoever first posted the tree....this happens repeatedly..likr my mother is buried in three different US States......when i seem to remember interring her ashes in 2001 in Bristol UK...

Don't do it..its not big and its not clever....at best its careless...in the middle somewhere it's unfair to others..and at worst its a means of acquiring falsely many many thousand so-called "relatives" to brag about.

So beware of Ancestry Trees..and any information you gain from them to pass on...please attach the Health Warning..as I know many of you do.

Rant over..for now!!.

Derek.

Derek. I try not to look too much at Trees on Ancestry that refer to my family. Most of them are incorrect, and have had people admit they copied them from other trees on there.

Carol :-(

Actually you need to be wary of trees from any source, not just Ancestry. They should only be taken as a guide. You should check the original sources of all data from any tree that you are interested in.

Relieving a rant can be very good for one's health :)

It's the same no matter what site the tree is on including this one so not just on ancestry

My top tip is never take anyone's tree as accurate, one wrong entry will send that entire branch off into a fantasy land,

Do your own research, their is no fun in copying some else's work,
If you are stuck and think you have hit a brick wall ask for help,

If still hitting a brick wall, either put it on the back burner and return to it later because as time goes on more and more records are becoming available

or

If you must look at other tree's for info then make sure you check the info is true and accurate and don't just accept it because some one has it in their tree.



Roy

Oh dear I hope Flick does not read this as SHE is not a male

GlitterBaby, Flick is a SHE and not a MALE?

I must look it up in baby names book to confirm this :-D

Don't scare me :-D I was married once ;-)

Roy

Thanks Glitter...I've changed it.....you're always telling me off! :-(

:-D

I use ancestry trees to give me guidelines ............... and am constantly amazed at how wrong people can get information, and how that wrong information is copied from tree to tree.


Mind you, I do get a feeling of satisfaction when I succeed in proving the tree(s) wrong. :-D


Just had one this evening, a request for help where it was obvious that eldest child could not be the child of the putative mother on the census ...... unless she had married at the age of 15.

FIVE trees had copied the information without seeing the problem!

I manged to find the birth of the first child, on Lancsbmd, which often (but not always) gives the mmn, and which it did in this case. Then I found the marriage ..... and the death of the mother. All occurred within about 18 months, between censuses.

When you looked further ...... child was with paternal grandparents, and father was working elsewhere, a widower.



Personally ................. I have this problem where someone decided I was my brother's daughter. He was married to my mother, and my dad had gone into the biosphere.

The fact that brother was about 30 years younger than his "wife", and only 10 years older than me, had not been noticed by anyone.

THAT was put on a cd, and given out to 100 or more people, some time around 2000. So heaven knows where it all is now!




sylvia

Derek


could you make an addition to your OP ....... where it will be seen sooner than down here in the body of the thread.


There is another site called Mundia


www.mundia.com

This is operated by ancestry, and ALL Public Trees have been copied over to Mundia.

Mundia is a free site, so it can be seen by anyone who registers. And a lot of people are obtaining their information from that site.




sylvia

I would just like to make a slight technical correction - Ancestry trees have NOT been copied over to Mundia.

Mundia is merely another web portal that Ancestry have which allows those who register to access to Ancestry's public trees. No 'copying' has taken place.

I realize the comparison is not exactly the same but it is similar to the situation on GR where trees entered on to genesreunited.co.uk are visible to members on genesreunited.co.za etc.

Whilst I entirely agree with all the sentiments expressed re doing your own research please do not assume that ALL trees on websites are incorrect either. Many are not and it is a great disservice to those diligent researchers out there to tar them with the same brush as those who are less particular.

The challenge is in knowing which ones are accurate and which are not......!

Having spotted some extraordinary errors within other peoples publicly available trees I can but only agree with Derek. Extreme caution should be exercised and thorough personal research be carried out before accepting what you see as fact.

Via Ancestry's Recent Member Contact facility I am often notified that someone has downloaded a record relating to one of my ancestors. Out of curiosity I usually take a look at their tree. Over the years I have been amazed to discover how many of my ancestors who in the main were born, lived their entire lives and died in the UK, have somehow managed to sneak away from their wives or families in the UK in order to marry and produce children in more exotic parts of the world. Sometimes this has happened even after they had died which takes a bit of doing.

A great deal of these inaccurately reported happenings seem to appear in the trees owned by someone who lives in the USA. This is not a racist slur, as I am usually very pro America. I think that it is most likely due to the fact that unlike in the UK where we have more centralised BMD records, in the USA these records are more fragmented, being held by individual States, each with its own set of access rules.

As has been said by others it is important to judge the information found in others trees by trying to evaluate the dedication of its owner in ensuring the accuracy of its content. There is no hard and fast rule but as a general guide I find that the more people in the tree the more likely it is that the tree contains inaccurate information. Whilst there is no certainty that a tree with even only a few individuals is accurate, be most wary of trees which contain many thousands of individuals as the chance of inaccuracy in those trees is much greater.

I'm afraid that its a case of Caveat Emptor.

Good morning..Jonesey..i have to agree with you about the American prevalence of inaccuracy..I deliberately didn't specify the USA in my "rant"..but sadly it is true......they go completely potty about finding a link..however tiny or dubious, to the UK.....My own name is Scottish..and a Scottish heritage, true or false, is insanely attractive to the Americans.....

I think a tree..wherever it may be found, is much more likely to be accurate and genuine, the more detail it contains....like dates of baptism marraige etc..which come from Parish registers....and often personal things like where ones Grandfather died,and of what cause..

I have seen some superb trees..all fully documented...usually unique...and usually with a reasonable number (only) of relatives..
I have very little interst. in fact none, in having a 15th cousin, 64 times removed!!

Thanks for your answers.

Derek.

I have been helping a distant relative over the last couple of days and finding a tree on Ancestry really did help. Not a very well documented tree but it gave me the clue that solved one problem but I would not dream of copying anything from anybody else's tree that I had not confirmed myself.

As to odd places, I think that at one time when typing in place names on Ancestry trees, the software made certain assumptions, eg type Boston and the software added "Massachusetts"; type Birmingham, and Alabama was added. I know I missed a few of these at the time and was quite surprised that I had one of my Ancestors born in some very exotic location! Maybe that is the reason for some of these odd places?

You may well be right Potty. Ancestry software does indeed have presumptive text. If you don't fully have your wits about you when entering such a detail as birthplace Boston or Birmingham it will indeed offer several alternatives. It still requires you to either complete the additional location detail or click on one of the places the software suggests however.

I have seen some hilarious howlers. One I recall was an individual's profile that had the individual in the USA in 1860, 1870 and 1880 census records with children born in the USA inter census. The same profile had the individual in England in the 1861, 1871 and 1881 census records with a differently named wife and children born in England inter census, in some cases the children born on both sides of the Atlantic were born in the same year as one another. My ancestor, a cordwainer in England, obviously popped backwards and forwards across the pond to become a labourer in a paper mill in Massachusetts whenever the shoe trade in London went slack. ;-)

I agree there are some glaring errors in Ancestry trees (probably elsewhere too when they get copied over) but sometimes..........! that can turn out to be a bonus.

Recently I discovered my grandmother on an A tree married to the wrong husband, correct birth date and marriage date - wrong death.

On further checking it turned out grandad had used an alias on his WW1 attestation and for a few years after. No idea why?? he had given the correct marriage wife and children details so an odd way to cover any tracks, if that had been the purpose.

If it hadn't been for their wrongly assuming their relative was married to my grandmother I would never have uncovered grandads army records!

I did mail them to point out the error and to say that I was actually grateful for it. not sure if the penny dropped though as they then asked for any further children :-S

I got a tip on ancestry of a match with my great aunt Hannah on someone's tree.


yeah .............. it was a match, because they had taken Hannah and her husband John from my tree!

Hannah and John born Lancashire, married 1902, immediately emigrated to Newark, New Jersey.

........ .... they were looking for Hannah and John, born Lancashire, and emigrated to Newark, new Jersey in 1810!!

They hadn't noticed that my Hannah and John were born 90 years later than their putative children :-D


I sent a message to the tree owner, and posted a message on the tree .......... and he removed them within 3 days.


I didn't get an apology or a message from him, but at least he removed them!




sylvia

I spent most of last evening writing pretty ripsnorting disdain to no less than six people who had filched wholesale large portions of a tree..not mine, belonging to a person i was helping.

Now bearing in mind that all these people had repeated exactly the same mistakes..so none of them could possibly have done their own research..one of them had the grace to apologise, and actually admitted what he had done..and another laid into me.."how dare you ! etc....." claiming that he had in fact done his own research....

you can't win!!

Derek....

Ancestry transcribed someone's occupation as "jam cover" . Had me wondering for a couple of seconds (did she put the lids on jampots?) ........... then I realised she was a tambourer.

duh :-S

Much rather see the original documents and try to decipher them myself.

If the occupation is mis-transcribed, what else is wrong?