Some people really

[Janet in Yorkshire]

Certificates only contain the information given to the registrar.
In pre-internet times I spent many days visiting London and combing the GRO index books at St Catherine's House trying to find out about great-aunt May. I had no success until the eventual release of 1881 census, when I found that she had been named Sarah Ann, after her mother, whilst her birth had been registered in Q2 (April, May, June!)
I also discovered that she had not married in her native Norfolk but in Northumberland, using the forenames May Sarah. Only at her death was she registered with the forename May.

Jay

[Sylvia C]

Nelde ......

was her father dead by the time she was married?

Could she have forgotten his name??

[Nelde]

she escaped the farm by marrying in 1932. Her Dad, Jethro, died in 1941. Maybe her oldest brother, Tom, was a kinder father figure. But the family called him Gus not Tom.

[kylejustin]

I do have an example of not researching properly, though more lack of access to the orton parish registers and the mormons not uploading burials than sloppy work. Every one has the brides family well researched, but can't locate the grooms family, though his surname is scattered in the parish.

Turns out no one checked age at burials, though we all have the date. Husband estimated birth of about 1760 from marriage record (thinking 25 in 1785) estimates. Turns out was b.1737, from age at death! His whole family just opened right up with this info!

But there is a trade off: brides family secure with baptism in 1768 (makes her 17 in 1785), or so everyone thinks. No mention of her being underage on marriage, by banns. Burial record states b.1758! So her whole tree disappears, yet husbands appears.

[Sylvia C]

Kyle .............

she would not have been underage at 17 in 1785!!!

Check your legal marrying ages.


I think it was as young as 12, although some children in royal or very wealthy families would have been betrothed very young (toddlers), with the marriage taking place possibly around the age of 10.

[Olde Crone Holden]

Yes, 12 for girls, 14 for males, with consent of parents but in my experience, consent was often dispensed with in an age where the church was omnipotent. I have seen a note in the margin saying "with consent of the bishop". The fruit of this marriage was baptised 3 weeks later, lol.

OC

[JBee]

In one tree my bf died aged 6 in the US - another that he was born in a different country lol.

[Darksecretz]

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....

I hear lots of people saying that the 'hints' are rubbish and a waste of time 99% of the time when I check them they are always right.. I guess this also depends on how you use Ancestry? the only time I ignore a hint is if it is a tree, yes sometimes i'll look and see what the other person has but nine times out of ten i'll just ignore it and do my own searching!

[Janet]

Interesting to see that some people do not consider an "unsourced" tree as worthy of contacting the person concerned. But how do you know a teee is unsourced unless you make contact? Just because people have not put sources down on Ancestry trees does not necessarily mean that the tree is unsourced. Yes, I have trees on Ancestry and I have put down very few sources. In the beginning I decided that those people really researching a particular line would contact me and they did. Now with waning eyesight, it would be a too big a task to source it all. However, if I am contacted I do have all the relevant information either on my F Historian programme or stored in files, and the sources include BMD certificates for all main lines, Postcards/Letters/Census/Parish Records of all sorts. I have yet to find anyone on Ancestry or FMP who has been able to get the tree back as far as I have done, sourced or unsourced.


Hints on FMP are very good and Ancestry has improved greatly and mpst of their hints for my tree are correct so I have no arguments on that one. They also have incorrect ones but that is the nature of the game.

Having said all this I am finding many trees with so many errors in my own FH. I cintact most but many do not reply. Son me thank me for correcting!

Janet

[Sylvia C]

Janet ..............

I dismiss all trees without sources when applied to my families, because I've discovered they are always wrong ............. I'm not kidding. I haven't yet found one that is correct. That refers to both my own families and the OH's ......... we both have some ancestors who married 2 or 3 times, plus the same forenames occurring in every generation as well as several times in each generation.

It is very easy to tell the ones who have not done the research!

As a result, I'm very wary of any unsourced tree. I do look at other trees (if any), and again it is easy to see who has just copied.

I usually take trees as an indication of where I might look when helping others ........... if I can find any documentation fairly easily to prove or disprove the information found.

[Olde Crone Holden]

If I am absolutely desperate I will consider an unsourced tree. I have a mental limit of three facts to check. If none prove checkable, I give up at that point. If there are ludicrous mistakes, I give up before I start!

OC

[Anne in Carlisle]

The ones that REALLY annoy are those which give an exact birth date but give the source as the GRO index for births. (Yes I know later death indexes give birth dates but these are not the ones I mean). They may well have a birth cert or found the date on the 1939 register but they don't say and therefore I assume they are copying. It is perfectly easy to make your own source list on Ancestry, you don't have to stick to ones found in their data. I attach certificates if I have them and have a regular source for the 1939 register, for one example.
Anne

[Guy]

Janet ..............

I dismiss all trees without sources when applied to my families, because I've discovered they are always wrong ............. I'm not kidding. I haven't yet found one that is correct. That refers to both my own families and the OH's ......... we both have some ancestors who married 2 or 3 times, plus the same forenames occurring in every generation as well as several times in each generation.

It is very easy to tell the ones who have not done the research!

As a result, I'm very wary of any unsourced tree. I do look at other trees (if any), and again it is easy to see who has just copied.

I usually take trees as an indication of where I might look when helping others ........... if I can find any documentation fairly easily to prove or disprove the information found.

I would suggest there is a misunderstanding of how the display of online trees has developed on the internet to lead to that conclusion.


For the first 10 to 15 or even 20 years of the internet there were very few family history programs which would transfer sources to the internet from a home computer.
That means many very accurate well researched trees (developed form viewing the original civil records and parish records) were uploaded without sources.
Many of those trees were researched by the very people later generations relied on to supply the transcripts that founded much research from the mid 1970s to around the year 2000.

Rather than discounting trees out of hand if they do not contain sources I suggest one looks on those trees as an index to possible connections and confirm or dismiss their conclusions based on evidence from at least three unconnected sources as one would do with any other record found.
As I have said before there is always a problem of ones mind jumping to conclusions (or making facts fit) when assessing others work, leading to a less than thorough examination of any sources of information or the availability of alterative information.

Cheers
Guy

[Janet]

The ones that REALLY annoy are those which give an exact birth date but give the source as the GRO index for births. (Yes I know later death indexes give birth dates but these are not the ones I mean). They may well have a birth cert or found the date on the 1939 register but they don't say and therefore I assume they are copying. It is perfectly easy to make your own source list on Ancestry, you don't have to stick to ones found in their data. I attach certificates if I have them and have a regular source for the 1939 register, for one example.
Anne

Interesting because I have in the past given an exact birth/death/marriage date without the source, but my thinking is the exact opposite. I do this because I do possess the BMD certs with the exact dates, so I assume that other researchers giving exact dates will also have the BMD Certs, particularly where they just say source as being GRO.

On my main line my Grt Grandfather had 10 children. The first thing I did many years ago was to purchase all Birth Certs and found all marriages bar one. So looking at trees I know exactly where info is missing/wrong. At this juncture I am not looking at sources, just individuals. Some have obviously copied from each other but others I am unsure and when I contact or I am contacted the first question I always ask is which sibling line are you coming down. I have photos which others do not possess so if they do not contact me they will be missing out. I recently found one through a school which it is doubtful anyone else will ever get, because my family were the only ones who happened to go to the same school, and the link is very obscure, so all those not wishing to get in touch with so called "unsourced trees" beware! Just one member of that family eludes me, but I notice nobdy else has the info either!!

It is also interesting that in the past I had many contacts which is where most of the info on other trees came from, but now I get very few queries so maybe my "unsourced tree" is being passed by??

Janet

[Janet]

I would suggest there is a misunderstanding of how the display of online trees has developed on the internet to lead to that conclusion.


For the first 10 to 15 or even 20 years of the internet there were very few family history programs which would transfer sources to the internet from a home computer.
That means many very accurate well researched trees (developed form viewing the original civil records and parish records) were uploaded without sources.
Many of those trees were researched by the very people later generations relied on to supply the transcripts that founded much research from the mid 1970s to around the year 2000.

Rather than discounting trees out of hand if they do not contain sources I suggest one looks on those trees as an index to possible connections and confirm or dismiss their conclusions based on evidence from at least three unconnected sources as one would do with any other record found.
As I have said before there is always a problem of ones mind jumping to conclusions (or making facts fit) when assessing others work, leading to a less than thorough examination of any sources of information or the availability of alterative information.

Cheers
Guy

I would very much agree with this.

Janet

[Anne in Carlisle]

Yes, Janet, I'm sure it is. You don't have to add sources from Ancestry but if you just add your own source label 'Birth Certificate' 'Death Certificate etc people would know that you (probably!!) had at least SEEN the certificate, even if you do not hold it yourself.

I'm sorry but I would still not bother (my time is not unlimited!!) to look in detail at trees which have an apparently unsourced birth date (for example). Mostly they are just copied from other trees. Maybe someone does have the actual certificate but how are we to know? Quite often those dates emerge as baptism or burial dates, which are not the same thing at all!
Anne

[Janet]

Yes, Janet, I'm sure it is. You don't have to add sources from Ancestry but if you just add your own source label 'Birth Certificate' 'Death Certificate etc people would know that you (probably!!) had at least SEEN the certificate, even if you do not hold it yourself.
Anne

Very true Anne, but like you my time is very limited!! I am not particularly concerned about lack of contact, because I keep tabs on other trees and could contact them if I wished. They all have far less info than me on their trees, and I am the only one who has linked the villages through my previous work in the County Record Offices. Nobody else has got beyond the one village, so I wait and see....

To me it is more important now to get all my info written up in PDF form with all the sources and Photos/Documents etc into booklets. I have done this for one main line, now distributed to all American and Irish cousins. I have completed 3 Projects on the English Main line, but still have 3 more projects to do, but time is running out! The tree to me was always only the necessary part tp get to the characters underneath and the Social History of their times.

Janet

[Guy]

Yes, Janet, I'm sure it is. You don't have to add sources from Ancestry but if you just add your own source label 'Birth Certificate' 'Death Certificate etc people would know that you (probably!!) had at least SEEN the certificate, even if you do not hold it yourself.

I'm sorry but I would still not bother (my time is not unlimited!!) to look in detail at trees which have an apparently unsourced birth date (for example). Mostly they are just copied from other trees. Maybe someone does have the actual certificate but how are we to know? Quite often those dates emerge as baptism or burial dates, which are not the same thing at all!
Anne

Yes, but are you actually accessing the sources and the related alternative information and evaluating those sources or do you, when you see a tree with many sources accept source and the tree as correct?

Many people when they see a “fact” that is supplied with two or three sources accept that fact without looking at the sources evaluating those sources and also looking to see if there is an alternative available.
Many, if not most, simply see there are sources attached and assume that as there are sources attached the person the fact relates to must be correct. They do not even think that the sourced birth could actually related to a burial the following day in the burial register, therefore excluding that individual from being the person that married and had children 20 or 30 years down the line.

Facts mean nothing if the conclusions drawn from those facts are false!

Cheers
Guy

[Anne in Carlisle]

Guy ...... We've had this conversation before!!!!! Be careful what you assume about me. ;)
Anne

[Anne in Carlisle]

An example. At least 5 Ancestry trees have one James Sykes (who married Charlotte Arrand) dying on 20 Sep 1936. I have no idea, because none of them have a source for the date, where that date came from.

Further investigation shows that no-one called James Sykes had a death registered in Q3 1936, anywhere in England and Wales, let alone the likely area of Lincolnshire. A little more searching shows James and Charlotte alive and kicking on the 1939 Register and that he probably died in Q4 1941. I cannot find any Probate listing or newspaper reports so can’t be certain without a death certificate.

This is how I investigate each and every person on my tree as I work through it, checking as I go. I do not and never have taken the first source that someone gives as gospel. As for those without a source for a fact I take little notice of them. In this case and many others those trees are in error and unsourced, just copied from each other. So far I have spent about 18 months doing this checking. Hope I have enough time left LOL.
Anne