Some people really

[Guest]

just found I thought a contact on Ancestry , but when I checked the tree they have a woman born in 1892 marrying in 1878 , surely they could see this is wrong.

[Sylvia C]

sooooooo many people on ancestry have sreange things like that.

I'm waiting to find a tree that has me as the child of my brother and my mother :D

A second cousin who didn't check and didn't really know what he was doing managed to lose my father, put my brother in his place despite the fact that he was only 10 and my mother 36

He then made a CD which was handed around at a family name meeting he organised in the late 1990s ....................... now I'm waiting to see a tree with it


He did remove his tree from One name Study Group after I had to contact the Secretary of the Guild because said cousin wasn't responding to me.


But I do have a maternal great aunt and her uncle who were "stolen" from me to become the parents of children born almost 100 years earlier

Luckily that tree owner removed them after I left a message on his tree

[Guest]

Thats worse than some of mine, I dont know how they can enjoy doing their tree, when so many mistakes are made, whats the point?

[Darksecretz]

it beggars belief that people don't check! no matter which tree I'm working on I still try and make sure that things are 'right' before they get entered and even if I am not sure then i'll make a note in the comments box to say why I have done what I have done!

[Caroline]

Perhaps a typo. I had my great x2 grandmother being buried 100 years after she died - nobody told me so I've no idea how many people thought I was daft for the time it was there!

I've been using the hints lately just to construct a quick tree to track down a particular family. I've accidentally created duplicate people and "ancestry" (or me) has given them odd relationships as well but the real horror show which explains why some trees are so odd is my experiments with FTF 2017 and syncing - duplicated people and sources all over the place - chunks rubbed out etc. etc. and I am NOT going to individually check every person who I have ever entered every time I sync so the errors would stay! I've stopped using it (total waste of money!!) but it's still there until I can get round to loading up a correct one from Family Historian. Makes me wonder how many of these strange trees are caused by this type of thing.

I came across a tree the other day too where somebody had an awful lot of Smith children and I thought, how silly making all these connections because they had the same surname - then I checked/googled and saw it was a known person in the Mormon church who practised multiple marriages.

[Anne in Carlisle]

I think also there are many people who think it would be 'quite interesting' to make a family tree. However through lack of time or misunderstanding of methods they make mistakes. I guess then its difficult for them to sort it out (we understand how to change relationships and how long it might take to sort out a big problem). My impression with some poor trees is that they have been started and abandoned. Then other inexperiencd people come along and copy it word for word.
However it is quite easy to spot a 'good' tree. They are the ones with lots of sources, attachments and notes and NO sources to 'Ancestry Trees' (which is not a source at all!)
Anne

[Caroline]

I think also there are many people who think it would be 'quite interesting' to make a family tree. However through lack of time or misunderstanding of methods they make mistakes. I guess then its difficult for them to sort it out (we understand how to change relationships and how long it might take to sort out a big problem). My impression with some poor trees is that they have been started and abandoned. Then other inexperiencd people come along and copy it word for word.
However it is quite easy to spot a 'good' tree. They are the ones with lots of sources, attachments and notes and NO sources to 'Ancestry Trees' (which is not a source at all!)
Anne

The downside to using FH is that my sources get uploaded as Unsourced Citation.

I do wish Ancestry would allow you to reference the actual Ancestry trees correctly instead of the generic term. That was one thing I came across in trying the hints for the little tree. If I'd been able to see which trees had been used I'd have found that my great great childless uncle had a niece whose husband had an online tree ......much more quickly. :D

[GallowayLass]

My old FTM alerts me when I hit a wrong key and try to enter a birth date for a child before either parent is old enough and also if a marriage is too early for the birth dates of the couple and I can easily correct it. I often suffer from dumb thumb!
Do all tree programmes not do this including building a tree online at the big name sites?

[Anne in Carlisle]

The downside to using FH is that my sources get uploaded as Unsourced Citation.
:D

Yes, that is annoying but mine do at least keep the name I give my source such as 'Parish Records' which hopefully does at least show I have looked for and found it!
Anne

[Dossie]

I do agree. I once had a real barney via the Internet when someone on my tree was determined that I had my late father's birth and death wrong. Even when I told her that I was holding both certificates in my hand as well as his marriage and my birth certificates. I offered to send her copies but she said there would be no point as they were wrong. I don't know what got into her. Anyhow she never kept in touch. Maybe she had been tracing the wrong family and was miffed at herself and not me. Such is life I suppose.

[Olde Crone Holden]

Mind you.....I did once very grandly tell a contact that his tree was wrong because the man he claimed to be descended from died unmarried. I had the death certificate, the monumental inscription and an entry in the local directory which showed he was living with his brother shortly before his death.

Well, haha, egg on MY face, or what! Turned out he had married five months before his death and left a pregnant wife. The monumental inscription I had found was a mention on his parents' grave, he was actually buried elsewhere. Fortunately my contact took it very well and gave me lots of information. Spooky thing was, he knew about me from his mother and grandmother, but no one on my side had ever mentioned him and his family.

But yes, I have seen many an online tree with 5 year old grandfathers and 100 year old mothers. Grrr. The best was my 3 x ggm who had 44 children, some born in Lancashire and others born AT THE SAME TIME on the Mormon Trek. She gave birth to her last child at age 71, 6 years after she had died. I mean, apart from anything else, someone actually sat down and typed that all out.

OC

[Guest]

its incredible isn't it ? I dont see the point, may as well take up knitting instead.

[Olde Crone Holden]

Val, lol, I wouldn't want to wear anything they knitted!

OC

[Guest]

and whats wrong with knit one drop two

[Guy]

I think also there are many people who think it would be 'quite interesting' to make a family tree. However through lack of time or misunderstanding of methods they make mistakes. I guess then its difficult for them to sort it out (we understand how to change relationships and how long it might take to sort out a big problem). My impression with some poor trees is that they have been started and abandoned. Then other inexperiencd people come along and copy it word for word.
However it is quite easy to spot a 'good' tree. They are the ones with lots of sources, attachments and notes and NO sources to 'Ancestry Trees' (which is not a source at all!)
Anne

Sorry Anne but sources do not make a ‘good’ tree, a person can fill pages with sources but if they point to the wrong person they do not help.

Unfortunately some people look at a well sourced tree and think that must be correct because of the number of attached sources and they do not think to check the sources and see if they actually confirm what the tree owner is trying to show.
A source just shows where to find the record used, it is then up to the person viewing the trees to evaluate that source and see if the conclusions are correct, many, if not most do not bother.

I would actually prefer an unsourced tree as it would then be up to me to search the records and see if I could find evidence to prove the relationship rather than view a sourced record with a preconceived idea the record I am looking at is correct.
If one views a record with that idea in mind it is easy to fall into the trap of making it the facts.

Cheers
Guy

[GallowayLass]

I can see both sides here. If I am looking for someone and find a list of ancestry trees, I would choose to start looking through the ones with plenty of sources rather than none. However... I have often found that even with loads of census pages and even a baptism, the person is not the correct one. Most frustrating.
In OH’s tree I have a woman who was born, had an illegitimate daughter, married and died in Glasgow. In numerous trees (all blindly copied from one faulty tree), the said woman emigrated and married and died in Australia. I have contacted every single tree owner to let them know about the mistake and have offered proof should they want it and not a single one has bothered to reply.

[Guest]

some people do not like being told they are wrong, its very hard to work out what to actually say to them without them getting offended.

[Anne in Carlisle]

Guy, obviously I don't just take their tree as Gospel, what do you take me for???! But at least they have shown they have tried to do it properly so long as one of their sources is NOT 'Ancestry Family Trees'. I'm not saying their tree would be correct but at least it is worth a look to see what opinion the tree owner has. By not using AncestryFamily Trees as a source they have at least shown that they do have an opinion.
Anne (somewhat miffed!)

[Olde Crone Holden]

Val

Some people don't like being told they are wrong and others believe that if enough people say the same thing, it must be right! I have someone in my tree, died aged 4, the death is recorded on the same page as the baptism AND in the death register AND these records are available on family search. Yet at least 22 people claim to be descended from her and her marriage "about 1750". I have challenged all of them to tell me when exactly the marriage took place and how they know it is her. None of them can, of course but one woman said she had copied the tree from someone who was " a very good researcher" (oh yeah?" but anyway, lots of other people had the same tree and "they can't all be wrong". They none of them seem to grasp the fact that if THEY didn't check anything, then why did they assume anyone else did either?

Anne, yes I work the same way. A sourced tree is worth checking. An unsourced tree rarely is worth checking.

OC

[Guy]

Guy, obviously I don't just take their tree as Gospel, what do you take me for???! But at least they have shown they have tried to do it properly so long as one of their sources is NOT 'Ancestry Family Trees'. I'm not saying their tree would be correct but at least it is worth a look to see what opinion the tree owner has. By not using AncestryFamily Trees as a source they have at least shown that they do have an opinion.
Anne (somewhat miffed!)

Sorry you took it that way Anne I removed a comment mentioning “not that I thought for a moment you would accept without checking” that had I originally added before I posted here as I thought you would view it as patronising.

Perhaps I should have left it in then you would have felt patronised rather than miffed.

Bang goes another New Year resolution. ;)
Cheers
Guy