General Chat

I am doing a fam tree for my cousin's wife who is in her sixties. She was able to tell me her grandparents names but no more. Via a lovely lady called Tracy on here I was able to establish via 1911 census, the christian name of her grandfathers father - her gt grtandfather. I then tracked the family through via census returns and noticed that between 1861 census and 1871 census the man had remarried. Out of sheer curiosity, as I was able to access Ancestry on a friends computer, I inputted the grandfathers name and lo and behold someone had a tree with him in. As it was a public tree I took a look. Everything agreed with me except that person had the second wife as marrying the man in 1882 and yet she showed as wife on 1871 census. I was puzzled so decided to track the info myself. I discovered that the first wife Margaret died in March 1861 and that the man re-married Isabella in 1863 NOT 1882. This meant that the person whose tree is is has got the wrong marriage date and the wrong person. Co-incidentally the person whose tree it is did have the correct christian name of Isabella but entirely the wrong surname and place of marriage. Now, do I carry on with my own research and say nothing, or do I contact this person and point out the error. I feel this is something I should do as they could now be following a wrong line but somehow it seems rather cheeky of me in a way. Just not sure what to do. Any thoughts ?

I have had other people correct me on my tree and I am always so grateful for their input. I had a connection recently with a correction. I would rather be told than waste time and money going down the wrong track.

Gail

I would probably tell the other person that I had researched the same family, but that some of my results/conclusions were different.

Explain that the link was via your cousins wife and that they might be related to her in some way.

By saying that your results are different rather than theirs are wrong, it makes it more polite and hopefully they will be ready to open discussions with you.

They might also be very pleased to be put on the right track and could tell you where they got their own info from.
I have been grateful when other people on genes have put me on the right lines.

Tess

Thank you both. I think I will take the bull by the horns and contact this person and point out what I have found in the hope that they will maybe then go back on their own research and check. Thank you again.

No one likes to be told they are wrong but whenever this has happened to me, after the initial moment of annoyance, I am always grateful to the person pointing out the error.

Another difficulty I find is where someone has clearly accepted information from someone else without checking it first.

Having found some errors in my wife's tree last year, after some new information came to light regarding her great grandmothers maiden name, we made the necessary changes. Imagine our amusement when checking ancestry trees we found our original errors on seven other trees. I sent messages to all of the tree owners with corrections but only received replies from two, who both happened to have been in contact previously.

I am very polite when pointing out errors, but to date, after many many times of doing so, I have never had an answer and they have continued adding.

The thing is on Ancestry, they put Ancestry Matches,on the Family Trees, and they are not always correct., and the people copy them, without going into it.
I corrected a person who had my 3 x great grandad marrying twice, and the first marriage, he would have only been eight years old when he married. So I pointed this out to them.

Mo

Margaret, I have found Ancestry to offer me many 'false' lines, so do be careful and tell your friend what you have found and perhaps discuss what you have found with her.
I have noticed the mistakes, as I have been following my certificates.
Good luck with your searches... and so nice of you to help someone in that way.
Fun, isn't it?
Deanna X