Gobsmacked

[bullet]

I recently very politely contacted a person who (through Ancestry) had 'taken' my grandmother to America, and married her to one of her relatives.   I explained that I had her birth, marriage and death certificates, ( she was my mother's mother) and that maybe she had the wrong person.  She emailed me back to say when she put her ancestor's name in the search box, my grand-mother's name kept coming up so she put it in her tree, even though the spelling was incorrect.    I explained that in the 1881 census the name was misstranscribed but by looking at the rest of the family listed, she was in fact not hers.  I also said that the reason being was that in many cases, people who were not familiar with the English language were used to transcribe documents.    I suggested that by buying certificates that the correct information could be found and could offer more leads to other family members by witnesses, informants, etc.

This morning I received another email saying she had no idea that people other than Americans transcribed the documents, and in no way was she ever going to buy a certificate to authenticate her findings and that it was now time to 'pack it in'!    I had a look at her tree to try and help her in some way, (you never know, we could of been related somehow,) and it was quiet long going back a long way.  - I wonder now how much was in fact true....

[iluleah]

It doesn't surprise me, many people now copy and paste anything they find online and think they are researching and yet don't have any real documents to back up any of the 'tree' they merrily continue to build....and 100% defend 'their tree' as real and they don't want to hear they have unrelated people in their tree.

Thankfully I started researching way before the internet, way before online trees so learned how to research correctly and prove each person, however now we are all guilty of wanting everything yesterday so with the internet it makes it easy and quick.

When the internet arrived and the LDS site which had some trees on it, there was a lady who lived about 2 miles from me an LDS member who had used the IGI to build a tree which was part of my family line and I got in touch with her several times before she answered me, her tree was wrong, I had all the copies of real records and wanted to ask her about her tree and share what I had researched, she wanted everything I had and we met, but that is all she wanted she was not prepared to tell me anything and so I left as she was a FH hoarder and really didn't care about real or not. Today I see that tree of hers copied and pasted on every website as that is how people "research" they copy someones elses tree, so not one of them are correct....and I can't remember how many times I have sat in records offices and from the beginning researched that line to make sure I have researched correctly ( I have but it must be FH OCD).

[groom]

She emailed me back to say when she put her ancestor's name in the search box, my grand-mother's name kept coming up so she put it in her tree, even though the spelling was incorrect.

I think that the television advert we get here, and presumably they get in America, is to blame for that, as it says that all you have to do is type a name in and your whole tree is revealed (or similar). It makes it sound so easy and doesn't warn that you have to check and double check that you have the right person.

[Ruskie]

Iluleah, Your LDS member neighbour is supposed to "hoarde" names:
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/mormon-church-baptising-thousands-of-dead-victorians--atheist-or-not-20170306-gus640.html

There is a huge amount about this on the internet but the above was the first article I grabbed. 

There have been various (sometimes heated) discussions about this on rootschat too. I vaguely remember reading that church members are assigned quotas and encouraged to collect as many names as they can (I don't know if this is true or not). That is one of the reasons we are told not to take too mich notice of the member submitted records on FamilySearch, as many are guesses and "best fits" - and you sometimes see entries such as John Smith's wife is entered as "Mrs John Smith" for example.

[Rosinish]

Bullet,

I couldn't resist but your reply back was a bit of a 'ricochet' 

Annie

[a chesters]

I have serious reason to believe that my grandfather would complain severely if he was "baptised" into the Mormon faith, as he was a Methodist minister until his death aged 97, in 1974.

Going several generation back, the family was a faithful Methodist family, with both sides seriously engaged.

AC

[iluleah]

Iluleah, Your LDS member neighbour is supposed to "hoarde" names:

I didn't really mean it in that way, although I do see how it reads.

I understand how the LDS work. FH is big business for their church raking in billions worldwide and many moons ago the person who started me researching or rather taught me how to was ( and still is) a LDS member and spent the first 30 yrs trying to convert me ( I love her to bits but she is wasting her time with me on that one) and yes they collect and send in at that time 200 names at a time, in fact ( not sure about now) but anyone could send them data, as they believe everyone is related and it is all about proving that but that goes along with no checking of facts or where data is from as well as continuing "the LDS is largest growing church" of course everyone who is dead is 're baptised' into the LDS regardless of their religion in their lifetime. There was a huge media stink some years ago when they re baptised the Jewish victims from the holocaust.

[iluleah]

Iluleah, Your LDS member neighbour is supposed to "hoarde" names:

I didn't really mean it in that way, although I do see how it reads.

I understand how the LDS work. FH is big business for their church raking in billions worldwide and many moons ago the person who started me researching or rather taught me how to was ( and still is) a LDS member and spent the first 30 yrs trying to convert me ( I love her to bits but she is wasting her time with me on that one) and yes they collect and send in at that time 200 names at a time, in fact ( not sure about now) but anyone could send them data, as they believe everyone is related and it is all about proving that but that goes along with no checking of facts or where data is from as well as continuing "the LDS is largest growing church" of course everyone who is dead is 're baptised' into the LDS regardless of their religion in their lifetime. There was a huge media stink some years ago when they re baptised the Jewish victims from the holocaust.

[Andrew Tarr]

I understand how the LDS work. .....

[off topic]  Iluleah, I think you just followed this with some sort of record - a sentence of 144 words with just two commas.  Well done