Ancestry family trees full of lazy errors

[Zaphod99]

Perhaps FindMyPast & Anc should introduce TripAdvisor-style ratings for user trees, rated by other subscribers.

Once I see trees with more than a low thousands number of names, I tread carefully.

Zaph

[Guy Etchells]

I was wearing gloves as you normally do when handling original documents, but once got to touch the 1802 removal order for my ancestor and his 2nd wife. The removal order was repealed as his wife was too ill to travel to Redlingfield from Framlingham, Suffolk. She died in October just 3 months later. She was 62.

Yes I got conned into the turn of the century craze of wearing gloves, I am glad it is now recognised that wearing gloves when accessing old paper artifacts destroys more of them than not wearing gloves.
Best practice has reverted to washing hands before touching paper artifacts as the wearing of gloves makes the fingers less nimble and leads to a likelyhood of torn edges.
Cheers
Guy

[mckha489]

I was wearing gloves as you normally do when handling original documents, but once got to touch the 1802 removal order for my ancestor and his 2nd wife. The removal order was repealed as his wife was too ill to travel to Redlingfield from Framlingham, Suffolk. She died in October just 3 months later. She was 62.

Yes I got conned into the turn of the century craze of wearing gloves, I am glad it is now recognised that wearing gloves when accessing old paper artifacts destroys more of them than not wearing gloves.
Best practice has reverted to washing hands before touching paper artifacts as the wearing of gloves makes the fingers less nimble and leads to a likelyhood of torn edges.
Cheers
Guy

Back in the days of international travel I went to London Metropolitan Archives to look at a document. It duly arrived in a tray, as a bundle wrapped in parchment. Still covered in the soot from 1795. By the time we (my daughter and I) had managed to open it, desperately trying not to spread soot everywhere, then viewed and photographed it, our hands were BLACK.  Then had to be escorted what seemed like miles (as they don’t want water near documents either) with our hands in the air to a place we could wash. (It smelt like the soot from 1795 too  ).

[pharmaT]

I was wearing gloves as you normally do when handling original documents, but once got to touch the 1802 removal order for my ancestor and his 2nd wife. The removal order was repealed as his wife was too ill to travel to Redlingfield from Framlingham, Suffolk. She died in October just 3 months later. She was 62.

Yes I got conned into the turn of the century craze of wearing gloves, I am glad it is now recognised that wearing gloves when accessing old paper artifacts destroys more of them than not wearing gloves.
Best practice has reverted to washing hands before touching paper artifacts as the wearing of gloves makes the fingers less nimble and leads to a likelyhood of torn edges.
Cheers
Guy

Back in the days of international travel I went to London Metropolitan Archives to look at a document. It duly arrived in a tray, as a bundle wrapped in parchment. Still covered in the soot from 1795. By the time we (my daughter and I) had managed to open it, desperately trying not to spread soot everywhere, then viewed and photographed it, our hands were BLACK.  Then had to be escorted what seemed like miles (as they don’t want water near documents either) with our hands in the air to a place we could wash. (It smelt like the soot from 1795 too  ).

That is actually really cool. Seeing old documents is amazing but ones that no one appears to have read for so long is even better.

[LizzieL]

Perhaps FindMyPast & Anc should introduce TripAdvisor-style ratings for user trees, rated by other subscribers.

Once I see trees with more than a low thousands number of names, I tread carefully.

Zaph

Love the idea of a star rating 

[Tickettyboo]

Perhaps FindMyPast & Anc should introduce TripAdvisor-style ratings for user trees, rated by other subscribers.

Zaph

Love the idea of a star rating 

Have you thought that through?

So, you have a tree (which you believe is correct and you've backed up it with sources etc  to show how you arrived at that conclusion)

47 other folk have a tree that disagrees with your findings but don't supply sources.

Which tree do you think is more likely to get the most negative reviews?

Boo

[pharmaT]

That's a very good point boo, people could mark you down for different reasons.  I mean some people on here would mark me down because I have been researching collateral lines giving me "too many in my tree".  I once had a woman really annoyed with me for researching her 3x grt grandparents, apparently the fact that they were also my 3x grt grandparents was not good enough reason apparently.  Another guy is adamant that my Dad is wrong on my tree, i have the original certificates on that line back to my grt grandfather not just copies that I ordered.  On the flip of that coin i once had someone tell me how wonderful a tree was because it had got back to biblical times.

[Kiltpin]

Perhaps FindMyPast & Anc should introduce TripAdvisor-style ratings for user trees, rated by other subscribers.

Once I see trees with more than a low thousands number of names, I tread carefully.

Zaph

Love the idea of a star rating 

 

So do I, but even a star rating has built in dangers. Newbies could see these trees with 10,000+ entries and give it 5*, thinking that that was the type of tree to aspire to! 

We will just have to carry on, reserving judgement where needed. 

Regards 

Chas

[LizzieL]

Oops, I've got just over 12,000 on my tree - so I'm in the "one star, and if I could give you zero, I would" category.
 I've been researching since the 1980's and was lucky enough to be given a tree for my maternal grandmother's line which had been very well researched by two distant cousins in the sixties and seventies. I checked it and couldn't find any errors. I could only add very small bits to it when more records came on line. That branch came from a small area in Yorkshire and the name was not common which made it easier, but nevertheless they must have spent weeks if not months in record offices.