WHAT IS THE POINT? by "Fed Up"

[Rena]

I don't have a Family tree online, but the ones I have seen that relate to my line sometimes have glaring errors. A male relative of mine, according one online tree, married his second wife six years after his death? I usually message them with the correct info.
Carol

lol - you've reminded me of the introduction I had to making a family tree,

I had visited the local Church of Latter Day Saints FHS and was taken through the process by a helper.  He found that they already had a tree of my gt. grandmother Lucy Speight, which he kindly printed off for me.

I went home and eagerly entered the details into the freebie gedcom programme that I'd downloaded.  Then discovered a blib - investigation showed that a son had sired his own father!

[Sandrafamilytree]

I do very much like looking at other people's trees and considering the clues they hold... the only thing I find really irritating is when people make no attempt, on Family Search shared trees, to explain the changes they are making. If someone 'corrects' someone else's work, it is not asking a lot for them to add a note to say why they think the change is needed!

[Top-of-the-hill]

  I suppose I get uptight about that particular part of my tree because I feel close to them; I was brought up in the same village, in the house my grandfather lived in all his married life, and I know them very well! I have found this man in muddled trees on several public sites over the years.

[Biggles50]

There is nothing wrong with putting ones tree online.

As usual there is a big But.

1 - Only you have to have control of its content.

2 - Anyone alive on your tree has to be shown as Private to anyone viewing your tree

3 - Follow rules 1 & 2

Personally I would never ever put any tree on familysearch, it is just not safe enough for me.

Nor do I trust any online family tree, I always assume they are full of errors.

[Erato]

"I always assume they are full of errors."

What you find written on a death certificate or on a census might be wrong, too.  Or in an obituary or a newspaper article.

[MaecW]

It "might" be wrong but it is not very common as these are official documents which people usually take care to try to get right. On the other hand far too many on-line trees are just quick compilations by people who have little understanding of even the most basic checks and have cobbled together various strands of information without looking for supporting evidence. They remind me of the Victorian period "family historians" who created a supposed history by taking a few names and then doing a quick trawl through the local parish records for similar names without actually checking whether they were related.
A quick check of twenty on-line trees containing one of my G-grandfathers and his descendants , all of whom I have well documented, shows sixteen of them contain errors : Wrong marriage, wrong children, wrong birthplace, children to wrong parents, wrong death  etc.  Mostly things that are easily checked by reference to PRs and Civil Registration.
What is particularly galling is that so many do not post their sources so it is not possible to check the validity of their entries.

(And a question for Erato here : what is the point of posting a tree on-line if it is inaccurate and without sources ?)

Having said that, I have found that trees posted by serious investigators can be of great help in tracing ancestors by pointing in new directions. I have recently gone back another three generations on one line after a tip from an on-line tree that had picked up a misspelling in the formal records that I had missed.

[Sam Swift]

A few years ago, I painstakingly drew a family tree for an aging relative - in pencil (in case I made a mistake). I have an online tree, based on official records. The spelling of the one side family surname varied over the years and in various official documentation and censuses etc. etc.... and so was spelled 4 different ways. spelling differed in different individuals within the same family even within the same generation and differed on their birth / marriage/ death certificates and or censuses.

As Erato says, even official documents cane be incorrect. At least two members of my family have even had their first name written incorrectly by the registrar. In my father's case his mother ended up correcting it herself.

Anyway, on my paper family tree, I used the same spellings that I have on my online tree, that being what was most commonly used for the individuals.

I sent my work of art to my relation who promptly got quite upset about the spelling I had chosen and was adamant that the family name had an a rather than and e (or it could have been the other way round). I explained how spellings could vary etc but they were having none of it. Luckily I told them to just rub out the offending letters and alter them.

You'd be surprised how many people in this day and age automatically make assumptions on how names and surnames are spelled when there are even more variations now than there were in the times when people could not read or write.

In the case of my paper tree, I didn't see it myself as an issue, but of course it isn't my surname. I get enough trouble with my own. I understand that in the long distant past that these spelling variations were normal, but of course whatever spelling was used may not have been how the individuals thought their name was spelled.   
 

[Sandrafamilytree]

Over the weekend I was looking at Census records and I found some of my family members (a father, mother and three children) at a particular address...

...then I found exactly the same family recorded as boarders at a totally different address a couple of miles away.

I wonder what was going on there!!! 

[Kiltpin]

For the longest time, I have said that spelling is an adventure rather than a science!   

I have a twig that feeds into a minor branch of my tree. 

A mariner, who was only known as Jack (as in jolly Jack Tar), married and produced 3 sons. When they were adults, the first called himself Jackson (the son of Jack), the second Jackston (Jack's town). The third son took himself off to Holland and was known as Jakobson (Son of Jacob) 

Then there are the Whannells, who after 2 generations had morphed into Windmills! 

Regards 

Chas