Errors in trees - letting off steam!

[Penholder]

Gripe number 1:

Many years ago a distant cousin had a friend who was learning calligraphy.   She drew up my cousin's tree, which obviously overlapped with mine, and also added in extra parts of my tree.   The tree was not a finished work by a long way - is it ever?! - so there were some assumptions on dates and errors that came to light due to later research.   Also 'M' was used instead of '=' for 'married'.

My cousin deposited a copy of this tree in her local record office and from there it has made its way onto various on-line websites, seemingly as gospel.   Apart from the fact that no-one seems to have bothered to check the information, every time I see my 3 x great-grandfather with the erroneous middle initial 'M' I want to scream!!

Gripe number 2:

One of my 2 x great grandfathers was illegitimate.   His mother had been a widow for two years before he was born.   She married again a year or so after his birth and said she was a widow.   The marriage was in her local church so a lie wouldn't have worked.   There is also a death certificate - not hard to find despite a very common surname once the new GRO indexes came on-line.

In the next census she is living in the right place with her second husband and her two youngest children from before that marriage BUT on more than one tree of people descended from the illegitimate son she is living with husband no. 1, magically resurrected, in a totally different part of the country with different children.

Gripe no. 3

On yet another line, there is an extended family made up of children from their father's first marriage, an illegitimate daughter of the second wife plus subsequent children from the second marriage.   One of the father's daughters has the same first name as his wife's illegitimate daughter, who has taken her stepfather's surname, and there is a note saying they are twins.   Sorting it out wasn't the work of a moment but the girls aren't even the same age!

Sadly I could go on...

[Josephine]

I hear ya, Penholder.

This type of thing used to get my goat until I realized that, while some of us would only "publish" a tree online (or in some other public way) after it was as close to proven as we could get it, many people are the opposite: they only have their trees online and treat them as they would trees on their home computers -- as works in progress. Some innocently believe they've got the right info, some start off enthusiastically but then lose interest, some add speculative info that they may or may not intend to prove some day, etc.

When we see such trees, we have two choices: 1) ignore them or 2) provide them with the correct info and hope they use it (although this doesn't always happen).

In the cases that you listed, it's easy to see where people have erred. I made a similar mistake once (thinking one daughter was another one who had actually died because they had the same given name and the age on the census might have been wrong) but it wasn't on a public tree and I eventually sorted it out. But I had to keep picking away at the problem and it wasn't easy and I can see how others might not be as persistent (*cough* obsessive *cough*) as me. 

Regards,
Josephine

[casram]

trouble is some people are more interested in numbers than facts. One tree online has an ancestor of mine giving birth aged 120 and after being dead for almost 70 years. When I pointed this out to the owner of the tree the response was "so what, I have checked my tree and am happy with the information." !!!
Carolyn

[hurworth]

I managed to confirm who the paternal family were of an ancestor who was born in the early 1800s.  Through her paternal grandmother she descended from quite an old family and some of her cousins were fairly well known.  So, I put the information out there.

It's the subsequent grafting on of branches to this family that irks me.  People have grabbed the info, found two people with the same name and assumed they're the same person, simply because they're both from Scotland and their fathers had the same first name.  In some cases I have wills that prove that David or whoever isn't the same David who pops up in North America. It's the tree hints at Ancestry that cause the problem.  People need to be more critical when they look at tree hints before they copy the tree.

I've made headway with a different branch and it isn't on any public tree.  It's only on private trees.   I haven't done the work that takes this branch WAY back, but I managed to contact a descendant who has researched the family and confirmed our link was two brothers born in the early to mid 1700s.  I'd rather keep it private unless the distant cousin who has done most of the hard graft decides to make it public, but also I don't want all this tree grafting to occur.

The distant cousin has been researching for decades because there's an extinct title in Scotland, and he thinks we could be descendants.  In his case the descent would be through his patrilineal line.  The family certainly was related in some way - we know that from witnesses at baptisms, tutors in wills and other records that they were close. 

 

[philipsearching]

Ever heard the saying "online trees are only fit for dogs to p*ss on!"

Sadly, the number of inaccurate trees online prevents us from trusting any to be accurate.

By the way - if I believed everything in online trees I would be descended from Odin, my gt-gt-gt-grandfather died before he was born and another ancestor had seven children before he was ten years old.

Philip

[hurworth]

Ever heard the saying "online trees are only fit for dogs to p*ss on!"

What a shocking suggestion.  It might short-circuit.

[[Ray]]

Hi

It's fairly obvious that it is not your tree.

Ignore it, get on with life, enjoy your hobby and your life.

Ray

[mgeneas]

It is because of the 'bad' trees that I have my trees online. At least my versions are 'the truth' (to the very best of my ability)

[dowdstree]

Well Philip that is some expression    but I wouldn't necessarily agree with you.

There are some online trees which are pretty accurate (as far as records will allow)

I hold my hands up to having trees on Ancestry but they are private and will always remain so. It is convenient for me to use this as my work base and I have a paper trail too as proof and to backup my findings. I tend to ignore their "shaky leaves" unless I can prove the hint. Given up on trying to contact those who have glaring errors and just let them get on with it.

On the positive side I have been in contact and met up with cousins not very far removed through my Ancestry Trees. Amazing results and information exchanged. A few brick walls came tumbling down for us.

Dorrie