Some people really

[Anne in Carlisle]

LOL Guy, I was only temporarily miffed!
Anne

[Sylvia C]

I work the same way .......

a sourced tree is worth investigating, the sources followed up, plus trying to find other sources that prove the ones on the tree.

Only after all that, do I accept that the tree might be close to correct!

[PhotoFamily]

Val

Some people don't like being told they are wrong...
OC

And there are the ones that have the family history handed to them by some family researcher in a previous generation - who drew a conclusion or made a leap of faith, often without access to all the records we can find now.

And they will not budge, or take a look at the records with open eyes.

I have a step-cousin whose mother told him that her grandmother was my great-great-aunt. Almost - she was the step-grandmother, and probably the only mother that the step-daughter knew. Once I said that my g'g'aunt was the step-mother, not the biological mother, my step-cousin stopped communicating. Sigh. Really, looking at the records, that's the only possibility - or the step-mother would have been age 15 at the birth of the daughter. And the birth registration would have been naming the wrong mother. And the dates on the marriage cert, and the parents' names on the death cert of the sister. I haven't retrieved the DC of the step-daughter that is his direct ancestor - I usually won't pay for certs for those not in my direct ancestry...

[Olde Crone Holden]

Oh yes, the people who have been told by a close relative that such and such happened. We look, we cannot find such and such but we find something else, usually illegitimacy, they flatly refuse to believe it and beg other people to find the marriage or whatever. They KNOW what they have been told is true because their relative told them so.

OC

[Guest]

When I found a contact with my Great Grandfather in his tree, I was told he had died being run over by a Horse and Cart ? he had actually died of TB.

[Sylvia C]

I was told that my gt grandfather died in the mid-1870s falling out of a train while preventing a small child from falling out, so was a hero.

It was easy enough finding his death ...... April 8 1877

I got his death certificate ............ died of head injuries at Clegg Street Station, Oldham, caused by falling out of a carriage.

I tried for years to find more information, and finally a volunteer at the Oldham Local Studies Centre found a report of the Coroner's inquest in a newspaper that had only been printed for about a year around that date.

Gt grandfather had taken a train from Clegg Street Station to the next station on the line, Parksbridge. As the train came into that station, he had opened the window to see how close they were to the platform. Unfortunately, it was the opposite window that he opened, and even more unfortunately, that door had not been locked properly, so it opened as he leaned on it. He fell out and cracked his head on one of the rail lines.

He was put in a wheel barrow and taken back to Clegg Street where he lay for 5 hours and then died. He then lay in a waiting room for quite a long period until the correct Coroner was notified.

The inquest took place on April 12, and the report took up 2 long columns in the newspaper, and ended by the Coroner declaring that he felt the family had cause to sue the railway company and its employees because the door had not been properly secured.

There is nothing more ............ I would think his family didn't have the money to sue, but his wife and 3 youngest did move from their home in Buckinghamshire to Durham where a son was already living, then to Oldham to another son. The youngest child was my grandfather.


No small child involved, so not a hero.

But I did find another family member ........... he was accompanied in the train by his nephew, whose surname allowed me to fill out the information on a gt aunt.


I think I am the only one of his descendants who has the proof of this, although I've tried to pass it on.

[Macbev]

I have witnessed a Family Myth in the making.

After much research (and some lateral thinking) I managed to uncover a cousin's antecedents. It was a complicated search, as the family in question registered all BDMs under one name, but appeared on the relevant census returns under another name. Eventually found that the original bi-identity was illegit. but the mother (after marrying another),subsequently married the father.

I thought that the cousin might have trouble following the sequence of events, so bought the relevant certs and painstakingly drew up a chronology of family events, culminating with the marriage cert of her grandparents, which cited the same address, and names, as the family (using its other identity) on the 1901 census.

Was she impressed? You bet she wasn't! Her son had recently discovered the internet and googled the current family name. He was much astonished to discover the name was shared by a great many black Americans, descendants of former slaves and immediately concluded he was related to them. Much more exciting than my findings. I admit there may be a connection with someone in the slave trade, but if so, no evidence has yet emerged....certainly not in the branch I investigated

And so, whenever I meet up with that branch of the family, I have to bite my tongue rather hard as they trot out their 'theory', knowing I am interested in such stuff and assuming I will be amazed and impressed! I'm not sure to this day that anyone has taken on board my uncovering of the dual identity of their ancestors.

[Tora]

Looked at 6 trees today of one of my ancestors. They had up to 8 sources with links. Every one had the death for 1838 and a census for 1841.

Tora

[Anne in Carlisle]

Looked at 6 trees today of one of my ancestors. They had up to 8 sources with links. Every one had the death for 1838 and a census for 1841.

Tora

Yes, that'a a particulaly annoying tendancy. I can see they may have found alternative information but have just left it all on the tree and not bothered to try and evaluate which (if any) might be correct. All copied from each other of course.
Anne

[Janet in Yorkshire]

There are several trees which show one of my relatives as having three different named wives, each of whom bore him a number of children. He appears in many census returns in three different places in the same year, in each place he is consistently with one of his wives and their children. Said relly did not lead a double (or triple) life - the census returns in the tree are for three different Norfolk men, of slightly different ages and with the same fore and surnames.
What really irritates me is that the trees all have the relevant census images attached. Obviously the tree holders cannot have actually looked closely at these, otherwise the consistently recorded differences in age, occupations and places of birth should have sounded alarm bells.

Jay

[PhotoFamily]

I have witnessed a Family Myth in the making.

Woops, I actually participated in starting a wrong-tree. Birth cert (Dr William's Library) named a mother w/ her father's name. There was a baptism for a child with that name and with the correct father's name in the right time/right area. Plopped it in my tree (so did cousins).

Then pages of the family Bible came to light, and gave this woman's date and place of birth. Not in London. I did find the correct baptism in the correct place, but several trees out there are still wrong.

[Guest]

I would think probably ,we have all added a fact that was wrong at some time, I made lots of mistakes when I first started , including buying the same Cert more than once, how stupid is that ? I do add some hints, but then go and check it out, seems a lot of people dont really care ,whether its right or not.

[Elizabeth Herts]

It's very easy to make a mistake in our family history research and many of us will have added incorrect information to our trees. However, I think most of us who visit this site would immediately correct our mistakes as soon as we become aware of them.

My mother started the family history research, long before computers and the Internet. What she recorded was done in good faith and overall she did a very good job. The mistakes she made (just a few) were only uncovered by me once more information was available online and images and transcriptions became available. For instance, one of our lines was taken further back as a result of a baptism which many people accepted. However, later, when images became available, another researcher and I compared notes and discovered that the said baby was buried just a year later. Many people still have this baby as our ancestor.

[Guest]

Elizabeth your mother must have been very determined, it must have been so hard then, how old was she when she started? wish my family had begun one before I did.

[Elizabeth Herts]

Val, my grandmother always talked about her family and ancestors, so my mother grew up knowing a lot about them. She started to research in the 1970s/1980s, so she would have been in her 50s and 60s when she started in earnest. I remember going to Somerset House with her. The only censuses available weren't indexed and you had to make an educated guess where the person lived and trawl through the images, often with no result after hours of searching. I remember the censuses one by one coming online and finding the ancestors.

She used to write countless letters to family history societies and individuals. I still have some of the replies. She made a lot of friends through her research.

[Sylvia C]

My gt grandmother was my gr grandfather's second wife. She was born in 1829 and married in 1852, having at least 2 illegitimate children in 1846 and late 1850/early 1851.

Her father was married 3 times, in 1823 (d. before 1828), 1828 (d. 1837), and 1845. Only the 3rd wife appears on any census. Gt Gt grandfather is on the 1841 census, with my gt grandmother still at home.

Much research had been done on that line during the 1970s and 1980s ............ and everyone had gt grandmother as the daughter of the third wife.

I determined within a few months of starting my own research that she had to be the daughter of the second wife, and that her 2 children could not be definitively declared children of my gr grandfather!

[Olde Crone Holden]

I did quite a lot of family research before the advent of the internet. It was agonisingly slow progress and I made many mistakes, mostly because it was not easy to compare records in the way we can now do with the click of a mouse, sitting in our PJs at our own computers!

I once depressingly calculated that the first 35 years worth of research I carried out could now be done in two evenings at the computer! However, doing the research in a physical way did open my eyes to other records and sources of information that are still not available online and probably never will be. So many records are still in private hands or languishing in obscure little depositories. I met some wonderful people and I also met some terrible rude officials who thought all archives were their personal possessions and that young women (me, at the time!) should be at home doing the washing or something - one archivist did actually say to me "shouldn't you be making tracks for home now? Your husband will be expecting his meal".

I think the single biggest thing the internet has done for me is to illustrate how easy it is to go wrong even when you carry out your research with earnest intent. The lack of a death cert in my early research led me down the wrong path for one of my ggm. Once I was able to search deaths online I realised that ggm was actually a late second wife, no blood relation at all. Years of research down the drain.

OC

[kylejustin]

I find it worse when people make mistakes and haven't logged in for ages. Seems some never get the message either. Hope those are just busy and haven't died in the meantime. It always feels impolite leaving notes on the tree in that situation.

They other annoying bit is when people have your family in their tree, but aren't connected to them? Even messaging them, if you get a response, they state "oh i was researching for so and so...." yet have no interest in being in contact? So delete them then?

Also ancestry itself is as bad as the users. Giving you a "hint" which is a census for someone who died in the 1600's! Like seriously? I don't think their system is as smart as it should be. Abd when they give you hints for siblings, muddling them up. And family trees where nothing is the same as yours except the name? Different place of birth and death, different parents, wives and children....

[Sylvia C]

This thread, and posting about my gt grandmother, has led me to spend the last couple of hours checking what new records might be online to help sort some of the problems.

I've just looked at this tree on ancestry ...........

Elizabeth Ellard b.abt 1829, Preston Bissett

Parents:- Richard Ellard 1794–1863 and Louisa Cox 1815–1869

Spouse:- James Cadd 1826–1885

Children:-
Sarah Cadd 1851–1858
James Cadd 1855–
Elizabeth Cadd 1859–
William Cadd 1861–
Hannah Cadd 1864–
George Cadd 1867–
Roda Cadd 1870–
Albert Edward Cadd 1872–1914

Spouse:- Joseph Cadd 1824–

Children:-
Thomas Cadd 1848–
Jane Cadd 1851–
Alfred Cadd 1853–
Emma Cadd 1856–
Jesse Cadd 1858–

Spouse:- Unknown Spouse

Children:-
Bethia Cadd 1847–
May Cadd 1853–


This tree states 15 attached records, 19 sources + photos :D


Louisa would have been only 14 when Elizabeth was born

This is the James Cadd who fell out of the train carriage in 1877 (see earlier)

I won't go into the other spouses and children!

[Nelde]

I discovered a chuckle today. Recently discovered that one can order certificates from the province of alberta where my family landed after leaving England in 1908. The records are not indexed so one must go through the list searching and searching. but i knew these people and had a close idea when they married and died. The certs arrived in the mail. My great aunt was baptised Martha Sophia but always called Pat. On her marriage certificate she has written her name Pattie Sofia, correct residence, correct place of birth and her father is Thomas.... ..LOL Thomas was her brother. Her mother is Charlotte. The other siblings have the correct father and list the mother as Mary Charlotte or Lottie.. The father Jethro is recorded on one as being born in Wantage, Kent. So some errors might come from Certificates. Now don't tell me her father could have been Thomas. My grandfather Thomas may have been old enough to be her father but that would have been incest with his mother and he had left home to do his apprenticeship. Rumour has it that Auntie Pat was desperate to get off the farm and maybe she was hiding her identity or maybe she had other reasons.