General Chat

I have decided after a long time to put my tree onto the website of the above. I am only putting my deceased ancestors and would like to ask a question,. Having put my known lineage up to a certain date, it appears to fill out with details wihich are also known to me, so far so good. Now my know line goes back to 1550 but this tree on above site has added information going way back to 1455,,, very interesting but how reliable is all of this.. Thanks

not very most of the time

you should be clear that for many years LDS members "witnessed" BMD events and created entries as they saw fit. This especially applies to years before 1650. LDS have been having a clear out best to ignore their old database.

Always get 2 pieces of evidence for any bmd event NOT including OP trees. A lot of information is not online at all if it is online not in a FH site. eg war records apprenticeships feudal fines (rents).

spelling of family names tends to vary with time


good luck

Just watch out that members of LDS do not acquire your family members and add them to the data base of the church so they can be "saved".

I know that some of my ancestors who were not Mormons are now "saved" after they were put up by an Australian descendant from a group who went down under in the 1840s. I have to assume that she and some of her ancestors had joined the Mormon church, but she scooped up other family connections who were not.

Much of the information she has on there from pre 1837 is wrong.

To add to it, I tried to contact her at the address given on FS ................. no reply, and when I went to the White Pages, no such name in there, and the town directory had no such street. So even her personal information was incorrect.


In my humble opinion, you would have been better to have paid the sub for ancestry and put up a private tree on there ......... and that is saying something!!!

I already have a tree on ancestry

It's an interesting point so I have just had a look for my family on there, someone has added my grandfather, wife and two of the children...but why not the rest of the children? They have also added the spouse and family of one of those children, my grandparents, and my 2 uncles but not my mother? ...but I don't have any link to the person that has added them.

Not familiar with how the trees on there are set up so will investigate further.

basically I don't trust any addition to my tree that I haven't proved for myself...especially since according to some I can't exist lol.

I am lost as to how to find the person who has added my relatives, shirt of emailing the email address which is all the info they give, they have a name which doesn't show up in England so assume USA? The only one that I can find with that name, in USA, works in a US correctional facility.....would there be a roaring trade in getting prisoners to collate info and add the trees to FS? :-S

EDIT answering my own question, it appears that the FB lady is the right one as she has obvious connections to LDS.

What is surprising is what has been left off? ie assuming she has taken the details from censuses/bmds why are there children missing from named couples? It's an odd place lol.

Rose .............

That could be a possibility, especially if the facility was in Utah :-D

EDIT:- just seen your edit!

Yes, those added and those left off are often interesting. Almost even more than the "massaging" of records to get what is thought to be correct.


in my case the person gave their name and full mailing address in Australia, plus an email.

I started by emailing her

I did a lot of digging online after there was no response to my approach, and that is how I found out there was no such street in the small town .................. it wasn't just a matter that she had moved, but that there was no such address!.

None of my immediate ancestors went to Australia in the 1840s and 1850s, it was siblings in 2 generations ................ a brother J and sister H went out in the mid-1850s following their uncle who had gone out in the 1840s, all were already married and had family. The brother and sister went out on an "assisted agricultural" programme. I don't know about the uncle.

More children were born in Australia, and then J, his wife and younger children went to California on board a Mormon ship, allegedly to proselytize on the California goldfields ................ only they never went further than California, becoming "well-respected pioneers of this valley" by the time they died around 1920. All were hatched, matched and dispatched in either the CofE or Episcopalian (American equivalent of CofE) church.

Older children stayed in Australia, some already married .................. I have not traced them (don't usually follow siblings of ancestors), but assume some at least much have become Mormons.

I assume that J found the Mormon ship was a cheap way to get to California, and that he "forgot" or ignored the promise he'd made :-D

The LDS will 'baptise' any ancestor on their website to the Mormon Church.
This was why they first started - they went round parishes, noting BMD's and systematically 'baptising' them into their Church.
A few parishes realised what they were doing and refused to allow them access to their BMD's.
Now it's much easier - just offer people a family tree, and 'baptise' those on it - hence some missing people.

I use the site only for the RECORDS section, pay no attention at all now to the family trees or "contributed" information (aka made up)

Same here, Sylvia! :-D

:-D :-D

many ancestry trees are almost as bad re made up facts :-D

I agree again, Sylvia.
Americans appear to 'grab' a name and claim it as 'theirs'.

I'm not too sure about 'Genesreunited' trees either, after a glitch a couple of years back.
It opened trees to whoever a person replied to.
Some 'charmer' tried to 'steal' my tree.
He was in such a hurry, he ended up with my Suffolk ancestors born in Hampshire!!

:-D :-D :-D