What does this say?

[Chrissie Smiff]

Thanks Sylvia

I have just been looking at some trees with Conroy and Edith in them and I sometimes wonder where they get the information from. We have only been looking for a couple of days and the dates were easy to find. Yet a couple of the trees have the wrong year of death, names of children that don't appear to have been born, wrong places of birth, etc etc.

[Chrissie Smiff]

Found those now Sylvia At a glance they look better researched. They all have Ethel dying in 1951 though and I'm sure I have found her dying in Sept 1952 Hendon. Conroy died in Hendon too but many years later, he was in his 80's.

[JBee]

I thought Burbridge initially, but looking at the first April the first letter seems the same so now go with Ambridge. Also registrar Anne?

Oops just looked at Barnet at the top.

[wr.]

Wynne ............


there are several Family Trees on ancestry, both Public and Private, with Peter Ambridge West.

It might be worth your while contacting the tree owners at some point.

I can only find one at the moment, Sylvia. Would you be able to pm some details of these trees please?

Wynne

[Sylvia C]

Chris ............

I agree wholeheartedly about ancestry trees!

I use them as a guide line only .............. and start searching for real information

I noted that one of them had Conroy and Edith marrying in 1921, but no proof of it ............. when we found their marriage to be 1923

[Chrissie Smiff]

Oh yes Sylvia, that marriage was another of the mistakes I found. I can't understand it, with an unusual name like Conroy and all the other information, how on earth can you get 2 years out? The odd thing was that one of the trees I was looking at (I can't remember which one now) but they had an exact date of birth but wrong year of death for someone.

[Janet in Yorkshire]

Chris ............

I agree wholeheartedly about ancestry trees!

I use them as a guide line only .............. and start searching for real information

I noted that one of them had Conroy and Edith marrying in 1921, but no proof of it ............. when we found their marriage to be 1923

I think one reason for so many wrong dates AND other mis-information (including merging the data of two different individuals) on Ancestry trees is the result of people downloading data from another person's tree and then adding it to their own by merging, rather than by checking and adding each bit of information separately. I'm told this can result in some of the numbers being transposed and also some of the data going askew, if large amounts of data are copied.
I cannot believe that anyone entering the data piece by piece would end up with folks apparently dying before they were born, siring a child when only 5 years old, mothers giving birth when in their 60's or one man having 3 wives (of different forenames) with children of similar ages from each marriage, living with each family but in a different place in the same census year (also having a different occupation when recorded as head of each family.) The last example is actually the amalgamation of three Norfolk men, all of the same name and of a similar age, but all clearly traceable from birth til death, for anyone wanting to research them.

Jay

[JBee]

Just because more than one person has the same info in their tree doesn't mean it's right - it has to be checked.

Too many people just copy.

[Sylvia C]

Just because more than one person has the same info in their tree doesn't mean it's right - it has to be checked.

Too many people just copy.

Yes, indeed!!!


Like the man who "took" my great aunt and her husband to be the parents of his ancestors.

Same names, from the same county (Lancashire), all went to Newark, New Jersey .................... but there was at least 75 years difference in emigration.

My great aunt had children born about 50 years before she was born, according to the guy.


Luckily, he was a "good one" ............. I left a message on his tree, and he had removed them within 3 days

[wr.]

As an update, there is nothing new to report on this case. I pm'd 7 tree owners on Ancestry, over a week ago and have had no response from any of them. Apart from one, none of them had visited their Ancestry sites for quite some time. Since my message was sent, 5 of them are visiting every day or so. It's weird that when ever I've contacted other tree owners in the past, they've responded in a few days or less.

"Patience my dear boy, patience." as someone once said to me. ;)