Correcting Internet trees.

[Redroger]

True, my wife's ancestor was b c1801, all his brothers and sisters are recorded in the PR. together with a note that he would write the baptisms on a slip of paper stuff it in his cassock, and then write it up later if he remembered.

[coombs]

And parish registers contain entries that are missed in the BTs.

[Redroger]

That is only to be expected as they are manually written copies before duplication methods, carbon paper in the first instance, existed. What had baffled me was baptisms on the BT but not the PR. Now at least there is a reasonable explanation.(See earlier replies)

[coombs]

That is why it is best to check both if the BTs survive for the period you want.

[DudleyWinchurch]

But if both exist and disagree, which do you follow?

I would assume PR would take precedence. 

I haven't yet seen the BT but was surprised to find a clearly researched tree on Ancestry that agreed with my research for a whole family for several generations up to the one person that links to my family who had a different father.

As there is a PR transcription on Wolverhampton Archives website, I thought that I should check this and, although I haven't seen the register myself, as yet, got confirmation from Stafford records Office that the father was as stated on the Wolverhampton transcripts.  However, on checking IGI (on the LDS site), there is an extracted record saying the other name.  This appears to have come from the BTs.  Obviously, I now need to find the original of this and check that too.

[coombs]

I have obtained many burial records for ancestors who have died post 1837. I have obtained many death certs but for some I know just their burial. An ancestor was buried in November 1859. I have not got his death cert. Sometimes the burial is enough but a death cert can tell you what they died of an can lead to interesting info such as if an inquest was held.

[Canterburynorth]

I have enjoyed reading this thread, its interesting to see other opinions on internet trees.

When I first started looking for my family last year, the first thing I did was google the name, and found a tree straight away,  it was very very helpful to me and I thought my GG Grandad only had one sister, turned out he was one of 14!

After seeing that tree which only had names no information, it gave me a little to go on and start checking, after I had made good inroads the owner of that tree contacted me through RC (its a small world) we have been in contact since, she is in the UK I am in NZ, any certs or registrations I get I pass on to her, shes great, I am glad we found each other.  I have seen her tree with the same spelling mistakes and missing people, on other sites, so heaps on people have just used it and not checked, her whole tree is on GR word for word, put there by someone else. If they can't be bothered to check details, its their problem

[coombs]

A lot of my ancestors did a lot of Atlantic hopping according to other trees when in reality they accidentally typed the wrong name when the drop down menu came down as they clicked the English places namesake places in America. According to one family tree my ancestor was born in Soho, New Jersey, United States when he was born in Soho England. I know his father was a coachman but not a sailor.  I only have 1 direct ancestor who Atlantic hopped when his wife died as he is on the 1900 census there.