OH I have it wrong

[panda40]

I did something similar and spent twenty years researching the wrong line. The only problem is I now know the names of my rightful ancestors but they are proving to be a big problem with false information and confusing information given on certificates etc. I much preferred the wrong family they were easier to trace.
Regards
Panda

[Ayashi]

Ayashi your comments about NPE are oh so true. I really can't understand why people bother researching prior to Victorian times because even if 1% of births are NPE, it makes a mockery of the rest of it.

Martin

Of course, if your father or grandfather isn't actually blood related to you, oh what a mockery that makes right off the bat.

In any case, one has to trust the paperwork and trace the paperwork and that's the true challenge. Even if the father isn't blood related, he'd still have been the Dad so if nothing else he's the one who influenced the family tree even if he didn't actively contribute to the gene pool.

I use the DNA results to back up the paperwork but even that's not 100%... if the lady had a liaison with the father's brother, father, cousin, etc, the DNA would still come back related. I've got an illegitimacy in my family where one of four brothers is suspected to be the father but I have multiple matches to his father's side and none yet to his mother's side, although when I asked tree owners they all told me they'd not taken a test, so who knows there.

[J.R.Ellam]

This is the problem with doing family history, one mistake and you have the wrong family.
I started by going to the Local History and Archives departments and had 4 note books, (1 for each family.) But luckily several years ago my program went do and I had to go through my tree and I found several errors. One I had I thought they had died in infancy but they were married in another parish and they spelt the surname wrong. A lot of trees online have the original data and people are still following that.
With the advancement of online research it is getting easier to find these errors and I am still finding mistake and yesterday a regular rootschat contributor pointed out a mistake in my tree.

John

[brigidmac]

Zin.can totally empathise
My mother spent 10 years researching her gmother Charlotte ROBERTS who'd left her therewith a foster family  and goneback tio live with her parents in Birkenhead

mum
visited streets and graves where her ROBERTS ancestors had lived in WALES

 Roots chat conversation led me to discover ours was a different Charlotte ROBERTS who  lived nearby had similar profession

I spent a sleepless night thinking how to break it to my mum

But in the end the new Charlotte was more sympathetic younger and her mother had died when she was a teenager and she didn't go back to live with her parents

But took the birth father to court
And we have a DNA match wirh the grand son of her."repectable" marriage

Zin I have turned my family stories into performance comedy stories
I could definitely do a comedy sketch about people whose grandparents aren't who they think they are"

Silver linings as they say
I wish you luck with your new branch hope it doesn't take to long to "re.knit"