General Chat

As I said I would love to have the money to buy a heap of certificates, mostly to get witness names for marriages and the cause of death for many rellies.

I look at some public trees and choke, not with laughter but with annoyance. I know my ancestor married one woman, had children, she died and he then married one of her sisters and had more children. People who have first sister in the tree have not researched her properly and she doesn't die until.....errrrr when? well she doesn't..her first name is changed to her sister's to tie in with that death. Accurate? Yeah right.

I like proof too, like anybody else. but unfortunately I don't have the money to buy 10 thousand certificates for that proof so I kind of have to sort of trust what I get/find to true

pout

Like Hilary, I had someone on here try to copy my tree.
What's really annoying, is that I was sending him info on my dad's stepdad - no relation whatsoever to me, and definitely nothing to do with my mum, however, he took what he could - and 'presumed' peoples places of birth - so it's useless info anyway.
I hadn't 'opened' my tree for him to see - it was a GR glitch.

Somewhere, there's probably a tree that has Hilary and I as cousins :-S

I always check any info myself
Before adding anything to my tree
I like proof

Though i do follow leads given to me by other peoples trees :-D :-D

I don't mind giving or receiving information, after all why re-invent the wheel, but try to follow the principles:
Always make a note of the source of any entry on my tree.
Wherever possible verify by reference to GRO record, census, etc. and note that on the tree entry.
Until it has been verified by myself I don't rely on its accuracy.

Caldervale - people should take other people's trees as guides, not fact.
If someone accepts a deliberate incorrect entry, rather than a genuine error, from someone elses tree, they should have queried it or looked for supporting records.

Don't take on so RMS. It wasn't alluding to in-breeding :-D
One of them lived in Essex, the other on Kent. From my point of view, it could have been easily understood if they'd both lived in the same area.
It's pretty obvious the families had close contact; one of the Kent branch was the executor of her Will.

Now Det, just because they were cousins doesn't mean anything! My gr grandparents are cousins as well as husband and wife SO There :-P

You know my grandpa married his sister-in-law. I wonder what grandma thinks about that :-0

Those unfortunate Family Historians suffering gross errors provided by the unscrupulous who provide blatant errors have my deepest sympathy. The upset instigated by their actions is utterly deplorable. Surely some form of redress is available. Their removal from the site is one remedy providing the information quoted is proved spurious. That can be difficult to confirm.
That's the downside of a very pleasurable hobby. It is something which hopefully is avoided with own research commencing after retirement in 1988. It is not without its own problems particularly in one instance where a deceased male has a child attached four years after his demise. "The age of miracles hath not yet passed".

What's really annoying me now is that I gave someone 100% accurate info and now see that they have added it to a public site but have added 5 siblings that never existed.
:-|

"How many trees have you seen where a wife apparently has the name maiden name as her married one?"

Given the popularity of Smith, Jones and Williams to name but a few not at all an unusual situation surely.

A guy in my tree with an unusual name married a girl in Lincolnshire back in 1840. In the same year, quarter and registration district another unrelated guy with the same first and family name also got hitched.

Same family wind forward to the 1950s. One of the family marry a girl with a very unusual name. Only problem is that another girl, same name, not related lived nearby with age difference only a year or so. Again lots of cock ups.

The of course you have the fun and games of cousin marriages and brothers marrying sisters and living near each other. Unless you actually know the family or fork out for certs there is no way to get it right without help form a relly.

When people research trees with next to no knowledge at all of the families they are researching and do not research into them either all sorts of errors are inevitable. OTOH if you just hide in the hole and don't share then you will always be blissfully aware of yr own errors and never meet (online at least) some of the good folk also researching yr lines.

I wish Ancestry trees had some kind of quality mark such as those used by YouTube, Facebook and PayPal.

As it is I find it difficult to see how people are happy with sloppy research and dud trees. I also find it difficult to see why they make things up so as to get a royal connection or link to somebody famous. It's a bit like cheating at solitaire.

A contact did something similar for one of our mutual relatives. She was able to prove that Miss T did indeed marry Mr T. They were cousins!

The problem with Ancestry in particular is when a 'new' middle name or initial is shown on a census. You check the box to change it, forgetting that will also change the maiden name to her husband's surname.

My Aunt married a man with the same surname as her maiden name. I wonder how many have seen that and wrongly assumed I must have made a mistake!

A also think that so many daft trees out there are caused by the owner's failure to locate a marriage

How many trees have you seen where a wife apparently has the name maiden name as her married one?

I saw one yesterday involving a female relative who married a.... Mr Reid.

Whover owns the tree, entered her name from census returns as .. Reid, forgetting that this was obviously her married name.

The tree owner also managed to find parents for this " Miss Reid"
They were also comprised of a Mr Reid married to a Miss Reid.

My relative's maiden name was Johnston!

:-D :-D :-D

I know my gg grandfather was a horse keeper for the railway before he moved from Ireland to Glasgow in 1873. In Scotland, he became a general labourer.
Why his grandson thought that he was a Veterinary Surgeon is beyond me.

It's the occupation he provided for his grandfather when registering his own father's death.??
Hope no descendant is frantically looking for this ancestral Vet!

The weirdest one I have come across is that of my father's death - according to a person's tree, my Dad died in Bavaria I think - that was somewhat of a shock as I had thought Dad had died in my home in UK with my younger brother and baby daughter there! :-S

Isn't the whole point of research?...is just that...research... not copying.

Last week I spent about 40 hours researching the Desmond query which I asked for help with on GR. It's a total of 10 people.

All stemming from a person Mr. Daff was looking at for our historical group, a chap who died in 1947 and we wanted to let his living family know what we had found. I am one of those annoying people who just wont give up!

Now call me picky but when someone is an ag lab in 1861 and in 1871 they have suddenly become the modern day equivalent of a neurologist I would double check it's the same person....lolol but hey! if it's the same name add it to the tree and never mind he also has changed wives and swapped his kids at the local market.









:-( :-(

Whilst clearly there are these so called name collectors around, and I have come across a few in the years I have been researching, it is very wrong to assume that just because you come across a large tree it must be a work of fiction or simply a collection of copies.

In the past I have undertaken a number of mini one-name studies, usually for connections I or members of my family have a relationship with, and often for relatively rare names based in specific localities. I have also researched trees with other fellow genealogists, again usually where there is a connection to my family. All this work, accumulated over 15 years, is contained in one single master tree database which now amounts to several thousands of names. Various copies are periodically loaded onto a number of websites including this one and Ancestry, for example.

The main thing is not to take anything you find as read. Always try and corroborate from as many sources as you can and use all the information you have. If you choose to ignore something because it doesn't seem to fit i.e. believing must be an error on the census, for example, you are probably looking at the wrong family. Similarly if you rely on something just because it looks as if it might be right then check it out further.

Of course there are errors in any tree no matter how well researched. I would probably go as far to say that I regularly find some in every tree I examine in detail. Some are real howlers, as per many of the examples related in this thread, others are more subtle and only become obvious when you start digging much further.

although my tree is a little on the large side
i do try and not to branch out to much but my down full is i get bored when i get stuck and i just seem to slip a little side ways and the research
just keeps going on and on.

but my tree is made up of mine and Ho side all in one
so when you look at it you do have all four sets of grandparents branching out

and yes im the same when i see other trees with well over the top with a million and one names

and i can not see the point in copying trees
to me its all about you enjoying and doing your own research

We all "meet" relatives when we're researching... and swap info.

There would be at least ten of us (including me) who keep telling a "know-all" that our 3xgreat-grandfather was NOT a bigamist!

Two men of the same name, born in opposite ends of Ayrshire..... married to different women....... unless ggg grandpa was very fit and fond of walking, I don't think he fathered all those children... he and his wife had 12!

There's a connection there..... that ggg grandad is on my dad's side...... the first born son married a daughter of my ggg grandparents on my mother's side... the sister of my gg grandmother (who I was named after). phew.