Rubbish Ancestry Trees

[gloryer]

The howlers, like someone being baptised before they were born, or a woman giving birth in her 70s, or marrying her own son, are obvious. The difficult ones are where a wrong - but plausible - date or place or name is given and then repeated. Worst offender is my own gt x 2 grandfather who apart from having the irritatingly common name of William Williams, had the nerve to put 5 different birthplaces with 4 different dates on 5 censuses. I think i've got the right one, but I can't be sure. I also can't find a death or burial for him!

I though my John Johnson was an original name until I saw your William Williams...lol

[Macbev]

The howlers, like someone being baptised before they were born

I blush to confess that OH's paternal GF is one of those :( His birth was officially registered for October 1875, but he was baptised in August 1875.

Then I discovered his birth was registered by his Irish aunt, who waited until the birth of another niece and registered them as a job lot.....and (I guess) falsified nephew's d.o.b to avoid the late registration fee. I ran around in circles for years with this one until OH casually mentioned they had never celebrated his GF's birthday in October......it was always late July! Grrrr!!

[Little Nell]

On the plus side, I have been lucky with some things. To balance all the contradictions, mistranscriptions, damaged or missing records I did have 2 Family Bibles with dates of birth recorded, have managed to find most of my lot on the censuses eventually, had massive help online from genealogy sides including this one and am thankful that I also have surviving photos of 7 of my 8 great-grandparents.

[Guest]

thats amazing about the photos, do envy you.

[Janet in Yorkshire]

thats amazing about the photos, do envy you.

So do I Val. Shame we can't connect with Nell's ancestors and have a share in the photos :D :D

Jay

[Guest]

I'm sure we could become related;)

[gloryer]

wow never even seen any pictures of my paternal grandparents. I only saw a photo of my maternal grandmother after years of research

[Katarzyna]

I must be really lucky. I have all four photos of grandparents, 5 of my great grandparents and two of my maternal 2 x gt grandparents one of whom died in 1888. My gran had a suitcase full of photos, mostly with nothing on the back, so there are probably aunts and uncles there but I don't know who they are :(

[Guest]

you are lucky Kat I envy anybody with so many photos.

[jenoco]

I must be really lucky. I have all four photos of grandparents, 5 of my great grandparents and two of my maternal 2 x gt grandparents one of whom died in 1888. My gran had a suitcase full of photos, mostly with nothing on the back, so there are probably aunts and uncles there but I don't know who they are :(

I'm also very lucky with photographs - I have all great grandparents and one of 3x great grandparents, born 1797 and 1800. They died in the 1870s.

On the ancestry tree front, they seem to be incorrect so frequently and I've given up contacting people as it usually doesn't make a difference.

[kylejustin]

I've got photos of 7/8 great grandparents. My great grandfather and his family are the only ones i don't have photos of. Asides from his side, I have photos of all my 3rd, 4th and 5th great grandparents who came to australia. Except for a 4th great grandmother.

On my english side, i have pics of all my great great grandparents. I love photos, they are so precious.

Also have pics of two paintings of french ancestors, 5th and 6th great grandfathers. They are amazing. There are mentions of now lost miniatures in the family too.

Sometimes you get lucky and people share them on ancestry.

[PhotoFamily]

8 of 8 g'grandparents (one is presumed).
11 of 16 g'g'grandparents (two are presumed, one of which is quite tentative)
4 of 32 g'g'g'grandparents (all certain)

The photographers in the family account for several of the surviving photos.

Photofamily

[gloryer]

rather sad actually that my grandmother was a keen photographer and apparently she had a wooden chest with 'stuff' in but it got lost during house moves. It would have been nice to see a photo of my mum when she lived in new zealand but alas its not to be unless that chest miraculously turned up somewhere.

[Hippychick]

So envious of all the photos!

I only have pics of my grandparents. My aunt did show me a bunch of photographs she has which definitely include older rellies on my dad's side but we just have no idea who's who in them.

[Harrys mum]

My great grandfather died before his first birthday. It’s on several Ancestry trees so it must be right.

[Olde Crone Holden]

At least 20 people are descended from the sister of my 6 x ggm. She died aged four and the date of her death is written in the register next to her baptism. However the vicar must have been wrong about her death because she married "about 1750" , place unknown, father's name unknown of course and this must be right because " the person who gave me this information is a very good researcher".

OC

[gloryer]

I had the sweetest reply this morning from a DNA match..........
In the UK doing some digging back soon.......
well hello I live in the Uk and might even live near where you are digging if we are related...lol

[kylejustin]

I think most people are just lazy. Or inexperienced in where to look in regards to records and the info they contain. Also name collecting is a big way to make mistakes.

Some mistakes lie in not paying for records, such as bmd certs or wills. And some rely on transcripts and don't check the originals.

I have mauritian heritage, and many trees on the internet have my ancestors on them. Post 1810 records (british occupation) are not available, and mauritius makes it extremely difficult to research your heritage. Pre 1810 records are available as bishops transcripts from ANOM, a part of a french departmental archive that holds copies of most french colonial records.

In looking for direct ancestors on this site, it turns out a lot of errors occur in the trees. Dates, years and places of events are wrong. Some individuals have for some reason been merged (two sisters born in 1782 and 1786 for some reason). French birthplaces unknown, but looking at records, you find them- had an ancestor who place of birth was not recorded at marriage (was included for marriages in this period), or death (had been recorded prior and would be for later deaths), yet finding his wife's death gave me information on his origins...yet none of these records gave his parents names and everyo.e has them in the trees.

Unfortunately, i don't think the site is well known, and also it means trawling registers, which puts many people off.

[Harrys mum]

I know how the mistake with my great grandfather came about. An elderly aunt did the research before internet records. The name was common in the area in Essex. She found a family of James and Eliza with a son, William born about the right time, even with a couple of siblings with the right names. Just not our fellow. A parallel family was our lot.

What annoys me is when I contacted the owners of the incorrect trees giving them certs for proof and explaining how the mistake came about, almost all either ignored me or told me I was lying.

[Janet in Yorkshire]

I think most people are just lazy. Or inexperienced in where to look in regards to records and the info they contain. Also name collecting is a big way to make mistakes.

Some mistakes lie in not paying for records, such as bmd certs or wills. And some rely on transcripts and don't check the originals.

I don't have the BMD certs for everyone on my tree, but over the years I have read many parish registers and have used bp and burial records as my primary source; church marriage registers were duplicates of the GRO certs anyway. These are much easier to consult now as so many are online and you can download images of the originals. If people can't afford the official GRO cert, they could attempt to source and use the church registers as a substitute.

What many people do not consider is that not all records are online - they work on the principal that the event MUST be one of the ones they can access on their computer and so work on the "best fit" principle.

Those of us who've been playing the game for some decades know that official records may have errors. I have BCs for all my direct ancestors - however, according to these my grandfather's birth was registered the day before he was born and the baptism record for one great-grandfather states that he was christened a few days before the dob recorded on his birth certificate.

Via Ancestry, I had a lovely reply this morning from a lady I'd contacted last night to query a marriage pairing she'd put on her tree. I had an image of the marriage PR entry with age of bride, name of her father and of witnesses - two of her siblings. Also census details of the bride's family. This info showed that the lady had confused two women with the same name and had put the wrong marriage partner and GRO reference on her tree. She said she'd had trouble identifying a marriage, was very happy to accept my evidence as documentation and was grateful that I'd pointed out a possible error, as she wanted her tree to be "right."

We've all been there and come across these difficulties ourselves over the years. There's no disgrace in making an error, but what gets me is the absolute refusal of some people to look at the evidence and think again about possible alternatives.

Jay