They say size isn't everything...

[Jill on the A272]

The owner of the 38,000 person tree who opened his to me got huffy that I didn't open mine to him (its pared down to a basic pedigree now) because he didn't have a clue about the relative I asked about. The section I was interested in turned out to be all my own work from my early days even down to the typos on the notes.

[Georgette]

I've had contact with one of those too, Jill.

"Oh! We have 66 names in common on Hot Matches!"

"Yes, that's because you copied a chunk of my tree from another researcher without my permission."

[Jeanie with one n.]

What has 'interested' me lately is finding several trees on ancestry which are clearly a load of rubbish.
I had a contact from a lady re a William of mine. She had all his family spot on back to the 17th C.
The only problem was that he was not her relly who had been sent to Oz.
She knew from his marriage the name of his father and searched the LDS for a William + father Edward and plumped for mine.
Even though he came from a different county. And my William was clearly with his mother and not in Oz.
I contacted her and suggested that another pairing were more likely and before you could blink, she had taken all this couples details from the LDS and had added them to her tree.
It made me search the ancestry trees for my William and I came across 2 more trees that whilst they had most of the info correct, on different members they had obviously gone for best matching names on the census, paying no attention to the wrong place of birth and county.
Or to the fact that they were there on the census with other family members.
I spent a couple of happy hours posting comments on the trees pointing them in the right direction.
To be fair, they changed their records.
Doing the one name study is another issue. I have told 5 people that an Ann born in Cheshire is not theirs since that Ann was illegitimate but do they care. Nope!!
People then copy this drivel and it gets passed around.

[Elaine ..Spain]

One of the problems is that when someone has uploaded their tree to "Ancestry World Tree" or "Ancesty OneWorld Tree" it cannot be deleted or amended, so any incorrect information is there for eternity and freely available for others to copy. :(

[Kit]

I'm still trying to work out the reasoning one man has for having my parents on his Ancestry tree. The only connection to my family name is that his son in law is my cousins son.

I've found a few GR contacts who put not only the spouse but their family (parents, siblings) in their tree. Bit strange but I guess that way they have an idea of what was happening around their own family member.

[Guy]

I have a number of trees and databases on my computer and some on my website.
One has well over 11,000 names another over 2,500 plus some huge databases.

Are they 100% accurate, no, of course not. No family tree can ever be 100% accurate.
What I can say is every one has had thousands of hours of research behind it, but then I have been researching for virtually a lifetime.

Never forget some large trees may have had many years of research behind them, not all researchers have started with the rash of TV family tree programs. ;)

I notice a number of members here post their trees to third party sites like Ancestry, GR etc. etc. instead of hosting their trees on their own sites.
That is all very good but one does not have the same control over the data on a third party site as one does on ones own site.

I would recommend keeping ones research on a home computer and uploading to one's own site to allow access to others.
Cheers
Guy

[Christine in Herts]

I've found a few GR contacts who put not only the spouse but their family (parents, siblings) in their tree. Bit strange but I guess that way they have an idea of what was happening around their own family member.

Perhaps, like me, they're purporting to be doing this "work" for the sake of their children - so the spouse's family then becomes absolutely necessary.

Christine

[Grampa Jim]

Ex an I both started doing this Research before we married and joined our Trees together. Since then I have extended it to include the families of the other parents of my grandchildren. Not in every case, but some have actually asked me if I could do their research for them as I have the time to do so.

[Olde Crone Holden]

My One Name Study is mingled in with my own tree in one of my databases, because every so often, I can tie a floating family onto mine.

It is convenient FOR ME to have all the floaters in one place, easily accessible, otherwise I might never know where they were, or worse, forget about them entirely.

Perhaps some of the problem is due to people's different perceptions of "a tree". Because Fred only has his direct ancestors on his tree, he is outraged when he finds a tree like a telephone directory and is convinced it isn't properly researched. Possibly it isn't, to his standards, but that doesn't automatically make a telephone directory tree a useless or lesser thing than a personal tree, it's just a different approach.

I think those of us who have been researching a long time do tend to spread out sideways, having exhausted the main branch. In my own tree it has paid to go ever sideways, because my ancestors always married relatives! If I hadn't scooped up siblings of married-ins, I would never have known that they all had the same great great grandparents on both sides of the marriage.

OC

[kylejustin]

im always careful with trees on ancestry and especially oneworld- as people look at the hints and think coz ancestry pickedit up it must true.

i have an ancestor born in craig scotland. i know this because a rellie of mine travelled to scotland for a few years and did the research. someone else has the same family and the death info, but insists he is born on the isle of skye, 15 years after is actual birth!!

i also have a coates family tree on ancestry. some one copied the whole thing, from my great grandma going up. i finally contacted this person. she had backed my research by adding the census to her tree. i asked her how she was related to my great grandma. she said it was through the mother's great aunt, a powton. so, if she is descended from the powton family, why did she do the coates line going back to 1800, if she's not related to the coates family?

sure, large trees may be useful, but always take them with a grain of salt. and back it up by your own research. i have an ingle who married a bilson/bilsdon. the igi is the record not submitted, and it says bilsdon. pallots has the same marriage as bilson!!:( i can trace both surnames , but someone on ancestry has thought that the brides surname was bilsdon, and found a match from the igi, that is 4 years too young, and not born in the same place!!

[Phoenix]

Before I charred my feathers again, I had a new tree (for a friend) on Legacy. There was the facility to link up to the IGI and so insert exact details, where known. I've really appreciated this. Easier than typing and I've been to the LMA to check with the originals. I assume that all the software packages have that sort of facility these days?

If I were in another continent (or, let's face it, outside the M25) it would be very tempting to take it all on trust.