General Chat

If I was not so tired I would spit! Had been do some research and whilst waiting for chef to arrive with dinner. I put my father's name in.

Now I checked 7 trees and all had howlers in them evidently passed on. My father served in the Military in WW2 - news to me. He was a master mariner in Merchant Navy and as he said - his job did not change.

Also he died in Lower Saxony, Germany - now if memory serves me right Daddy died in my home in the UK and the only others there were my younger brother and my six month old daughter.

The worst thing is that one of these researchers boasts that he has researched since mid 90s as a teenager and has had several articles published in gen.magazines and names them. He offers to help anyone he can. He is from USA. and just my personal feelings, another planet. :-S

It makes a mockery of genealogy Chris. Why do they do it?

I recently found my parents listed here on GR. None of their parents, siblings or offspring so gawd knows how this woman has connected them to anyone. Pm's unopened of course :-|

Ah - the wonders of Ancestry :-D

Mind you, we probably all made howlers the further away from our 'roots' we get, especially when we started out. Once you've slept on it you can have fun compliing a scathing PM to the semi-proffesional researcher. Less 'up themselves' people would probably appreciate being given the correct info.

In the days of the 'glitch' that opened your tree to anyone you replied to with a query, I once had a bloke 'steal' my tree.
The annoying thing was, I was giving him info on my dad's stepdad - no relation to me (dad was adopted when he was 16, when he promptly left home and joined the Navy - so not even a father 'figure'), and dad's side are all Cornish.

Fortunately, I saw what was happening and quickly closed my tree.

I managed to see what he'd done, though. He'd copied my mum's side - absolutely NOTHING to do with a stepfather on the Cornish side - the Cornish side weren't on my tree.
He had my Suffolk ancestors born in Hampshire, Romsey ancestors born in Southampton etc......
I told him his theft had created some 'interesting' couplings, and it would be best to remove them. He didn't. He has over 3,000 people on his 'tree'.
The majority are probably wrong :-|

Apparently, some people think the more people they have on their tree, the better.
But I bet they haven't 'looked into' the lives of even one of their 'ancestors'.

I prefer trying to find 'characters'..................
.........okay, criminals and oddballs......'lunatics'....scouring through 'petty sessions' for the drunk and disorderly... :-D

True, some people just want to have the biggest... whatever!

A few years back, someone contacted me about one of my relatives, and gave me access to his tree.

I found loads of my rellies on his tree! No idea where he got the information, it certainly wasn't from me!

The connection? ....

His brother's wife's great-grandmother's sister married my great-grand-uncle! :-0

:-(

It is a waste of time contacting those idiots on Ancestry. I did so years ago and ever so politely pointed out that they had a major error in their tree (my sister m to a man b 1723). One reply called me rude, others insisted they had the correct info as there were x number of trees with it on. Talk about innumerate, as they also had my sister's (and my) father correctly named with the correct y.o.b. of 1899.

On the other hand, when I decided to check out my other lines on Ancestry I did find a descendant of one line which had had me baffled. And I was provided with proof that it was correct.

I had 1 on Ancestry. Found my gt gt uncle was on another tree, the man had about 10000 names. Found most of my paternal line on there.

He had so many on I couldn't see the link to him so sent off an e-mail to find his relationship to my family.

My gt gt uncle had remarried in his late 50s after the death of his wife. He married a widow in her 50s. The woman in his 2nd marriage was the man's gt gt aunt. By all means put Uncle Job on the tree but the rest of the family are no relation and as there weren't children it should start and end with Uncle Job.

No wonder he had so many on his tree. No doubt all those people that were only relatives by marriage had all their families on his tree.


:-|

I think most of us have had some sort of issue with "researchers" on Ancestry .

So many will blindly copy anything.
If ithe same info appears on multiple trees, then it MUST be correct.

I spent many years researching one set of ancestors and their 6 children.
I obtained info from Wills and rare documents held in my local library.
I shared my info with two people who chose to put it on public trees.

Since then MY carefully collected data grew arms and legs.
My ancestors acquired more children ( apparently born and raised over 100 miles from home?)
Both ancestors have been allocated impossible parents which can apparently be tracked back over another 200 yrs!
I don't know who their parents were but,... I definitely know who they were not!

It only takes one person to get it wrong and everyone else jumps on the bandwagon
No less than 23 trees have acquired my ancestors and much of the research that I undertook myself.
Any parts that didn't quite fit with their family were simply ignored
Claiming them as their own, the vast majority stem from children who were NOT born to tmy ancestors
Even with the definitive documents that I supplied to both of my original contacts, I discovered that THEY too altered their own trees to reflect the majority!
If it appears on SO MANY trees, then it MUST be correct!

It makes a mockery of genuine research

One tree has an ancestor of mine born 1920, which is correct, father Alfred the Great!!

Andy

Oh Gosh Andrew that is a bit bonkers!

I used to get really annoyed when I see my research being used where it doesn't belong but, I dont care anymore because I know that my info is correct.
I simply never share it anymore.

I do laugh when I see tress where the parents were born hundreds of years before, or even after their kids!

Common sense goes out the window.
As I say, I did the research. My ancestors were fairly wealthy, middle class farmers.
All of their 6 children married, inherited from their father and were all members of the farming community.
The interloper kids who were apparently born 100 miles south of the family home were: a baker, a joiner and a coal miner .
Oh ... and according to the trees, their mother died in 1854.???
Oddly her widower remarried in 1832 and wrote his will in 1837.

She was mentioned many times in this will as:
"My Late Wife, Mother Of My Six Children"

It doesn't help when a ancestry 'hint' finds a potential birth in 1680 for a person who died in 1904.

Andy

So true Andrew. Its conceivable that we've been misled about their pob if we've taken it from census. But with a Vital Statistic hundreds of years earlier? Ridiculous!

they're all time travellers.

Or they've been beamed up by Scotty :-D