Errors in trees - letting off steam!

[Jill Eaton]

I'm fairly confident in the work I've done on my tree but I'm far from infallible. Even with what looked like convincing parish register records I've still made mistakes simply because the dates of baptism, location and name fitted.

My tree is published online and I do update it when I update my computer copy. I do add caveats in the notes if I've got no documentary evidence to back up my conclusion so it's up to other people if they chose to copy my tree.

I would appreciate it (providing the contactor was polite) if I'd made a mistake and someone put me right. I'd want to know how they came to their conclusion and would like to see their resource material. But I'd be grateful not to waste time, money and effort on the wrong line

[JaneyH_104]

I’d put myself very much in the position of Jill (above).

I once contacted someone with a tree that contained a branch which overlapped with mine.  One crucial section was different, and after a few email exchanges and rechecking of sources I realised her tree was right and I had made a mistake.

While I would never adopt a branch of someone else’s tree wholesale they can provide useful hints to investigate further.  I find that a quick nose around is enough to decide whether the tree is reasonably good or not.  (Lots of references with attachments = good, links to other trees bad.)

As to the public/private tree debate I’m firmly in the public camp.  At the weekend I was contacted by a second cousin via my Ancestry tree - someone I didn’t even know existed.  We’re already exchanging photos and comparing notes, and it’s great fun to have a co-researcher!

[iluleah]

In the dim and distant past when the internet arrived I had been researching for several years, so my research was done at the records office and holidays were booked according to what grave yard I wanted to see/photograph........... so when I 'found' part of 'my' tree online I was horrified that it was wrong however returned to the records office to recheck all my work.

Yes my research was correct so I wrote to the lady, her postal address was on there and she lived only a couple of miles from me but I received NO reply! I wrote again, NOTHING, so 3rd time lucky and wrote again telling her I had all the copies of the records and had 'researched' my tree and would be driving past her house on my way to the records office a couple of days later and could 'share' this information with her.
Her letter arrived next morning could I mail her my 'tree' or post it through her letter box as she would be out and she would post it online for me. Nothing about correcting what she had already posted, nothing about what record proof I had

Something just didn't sit right with what she said, so online I searched and realised she was a collector and up-loader of 'trees' anyone's trees spurious or not, nothing it was very clear was properly researched, the errors were glaring.

I never sent her my tree and to this day the spurious one is still there and many people have clearly copied it blindly.

It used to bother me, it doesn't now.....

Since then I have had several people who I have helped but really they just wanted 'my whole tree' sent to them which I can never understand as 'my tree' is not their ancestry and their only real 'need' seemed to be to have lots of people in 'their online tree' or 'get back further' regardless of if records are proved or not.

[Kevin Burrell]

I have my tree on Ancestry and it is made public - mainly because I think it is correct but hope any errors I have not seen would be spotted by potential relatives. I am not bothered if other people want to steal parts of it for their tree (correct or not), if it makes them happy, fine. There are benefits from this - while chatting to my Dad one day, we started talking about the family tree - I had started putting it together for him because he lost contact with all his relatives when his house (and most of his family) house was destroyed by a V2 in 1944. Dad said he wished he could find out where they stayed in Birmingham when the family went up there in 1940 while his elder sister gave birth to her (illegitimate) daughter. No lie here - within 30 seconds of him saying that, I got an email from someone on Ancestry saying that they had seen my tree and they were a cousin of Ron (my dad) and hadn't seen him since he came to his mums sisters in Birmingham back in 1940 - giving the address as well - to say there were tears is an understatement. We would never have got in contact with them if my tree was not publically available on Ancestry

[Jebber]

Apart from a small skeleton  section on Tribal Pages, I do not have my tree on line.

 There are so many trees on Ancestry with wrong information about my family, or my family added to trees to which they have no connection, it would be a full time job if I tried to contact all the tree owners.  You can usually tell which are simply name collectors. If tree looks genuine,  I have in the past contacted some people offering proof for corrections, sometimes to be ignored, others have acknowledged their errors but failed to correct them, some have thanked me and corrected their tree.

Now,  when I find errors I leave a comment, these are obvious to anyone looking at the tree, it is then up to them or the tree owner if they want to contact me for further information.

[klmadz2301]

Many years ago when I was just starting out, I got a subscription to Ancestry. I knew a little bit about my father's side, and when i discovered all the online public trees I was jumping for joy. Being a very very new Newbie, I took one tree as fact. I managed to go back 6 generations in the space of 10 minutes. I thought I was the luckiest person in the world. But then on closer inspection, I realised that none of the info was correct. It had my John Fisher married to two different Mary's, one in England and one in America. I made the discovery that it was all incorrect because both Mary's were having John's kids at exactly the same time, on different sides of the world. The kids born to born couples, were all completely different (names) as well, so it wasn't just a case of wrong place. I was heart broken, but at the same time, i learnt a valuable lesson. In this case, I learnt that, for some people, if it looks good and the names match, even if dates don't, then its good enough to go in a tree.

Now, with a bit more experience, I've learnt that trees are not always correct and now I only look at them if I know my information is correct. But i very rarely look at online trees anymore. I prefer to look at records. I still make mistakes but now I know that those mistakes are my own and not from grabbing info from online trees.

[Pheno]

When I first did my Ancestry tree many many moons ago I made myself the home person and detailed my ancestors.  Subsequently I got married and added my husband and then all his ancestors.  Later my sister got married so I added her (very easy having the same ancestry as me) and her husband - another whole new lot of ancestors.  So now if anyone views my tree they see not only my ancestry but both my husband's and my brother in law's.

Not really a problem you say except that someone related to me took all my ancestry info from me and put it on his public tree - but took all my tree info thereby making both my husband's and brother in law's ancestry publicly viewable too.

Over the years I have finally got him to remove all that extraneous info and now my tree is private as once bitten twice shy and don't now know how to split my tree.

The error I made was in making myself the home person and adding husband and in law info to the same tree.  So newbies, make the home person a deceased person in your ancestry and create new trees for new stems. 

Pheno

[KGarrad]

Over the years I have finally got him to remove all that extraneous info and now my tree is private as once bitten twice shy and don't now know how to split my tree.

You can't do it on Ancestry
You need to copy the Gedcom file of your tree into some FH software on your PC, and do the split there.
Then load the split files back into Ancestry.

I went another route, and did my wives (both of them!) trees as separate trees in the first place
Usually I just put spouses name (from whichever generation) and their parents, into my tree.
Their siblings only become important when there is a lot of intermarriage between 2 extended families.

[Pheno]

Thanks KG - might just do that at some point.

Why on earth did he want all that info about my husband and brother in law on his tree anyway - no relation to him whatsoever!

Pheno