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kickysnana

(3,908 posts)
2. The Decorah Norwegian Heritage Genealogiest deemed "Interent Genealogy is
Sat Sep 1, 2012, 02:34 AM
Sep 2012

evil" back about 1990.

And worse, it is copied wrong and then attributed to someone else and then not corrected when challenged. I finally gave up trying unless someone wanted to share information with me. So genealogies are only as good as the researchers methods (and typing.) That is why you need to follow the trail yourself and perhaps contact people to verify, hard to do it seems right now. (I always thought if I wanted to try again I would have to change my name to disavow all those wrong things with my name on throughout the web.)

That said. My gggrandfather Scott was a bit of slippery character with a maddingly common surname name living born in NY in 1813 among cousins and uncles with the same name. A relative who had married a Finnish woman and moved to Finland had been searching for anyone with a detailed genealogy and it turned out we were quite surprised because he is descended from the oldest daughter from a first marriage and I am descended from the youngest son in the final (third?) marriage. Both of us had proof of the second marriage and kids but we didn't know about each other. We traded information ca 1992 when ancestry did not exist. If we had not posted what we had, some of it not verified, we never would have found each other and verify more or at least not then.

I am descended from one of the early Bowen families MA>RI. Two previously published genealogies had two separate parents for the immigrant. We got together and paid large sums to two well respected Welsh genealogists to try to find out which one was correct. Each Welsh genealogist picked a separate person again with no clear new evidence one way or the other.

I have another ancestor that came from Alsace-Lorraine in France claiming to be a disowned Protestant who had fled Paris, a cousin to Bourbon royalty. She had several items that led people to believe her story. Again we got someone over there and someone went there to try to find out and neither could not prove or disprove her claim.

Ancestry does allow communication and post-it notes but if a person just copied someone else unless you give them the proof they probably are not going to change anything, is my experience but it doesn't hurt to try.

Both LDS and the DAR have done extensive rewrites of some genealogies in light of such errors. I just wish we had the search engines that we had back then that were not all commercially motivated as they are now.

When it works it is great but there is a lot of red herrings you have to plow through to get to the right place. Good luck.

Recommendations

0 members have recommended this reply (displayed in chronological order):

Does this happen often? Unfortunately, it appears that the answer is "Yes." AnotherMcIntosh Sep 2012 #1
The Decorah Norwegian Heritage Genealogiest deemed "Interent Genealogy is kickysnana Sep 2012 #2
This message was self-deleted by its author seaglass Sep 2012 #3
I let myself be led completely off track on one of my maternal branches polly7 Sep 2012 #4
something similar happened to me grasswire Sep 2012 #7
Can't always rely on books retrogal Sep 2012 #10
This happened to me with one of my maternal lines. AverageJoe90 Nov 2013 #21
When researching it is usually the researchers responsibility to use the generation rules to check jwirr Sep 2012 #5
They have a function that allows you to submit corrections to census indexing errors. kestrel91316 Sep 2012 #6
Yes CountAllVotes Sep 2012 #8
Oh no!! retrogal Sep 2012 #9
Frankly it irritates me CountAllVotes Sep 2012 #11
I understand... retrogal Sep 2012 #12
same here CountAllVotes Sep 2012 #13
I love Ancestry to a point, but damn those trees GobBluth Sep 2012 #14
I have decided to do this: only accept public records as truth grasswire Sep 2012 #16
Yes, this. /|\ PAMod Sep 2012 #19
even that can be annoying... grasswire Sep 2012 #20
Not with their user-submitted trees they don't Spider Jerusalem Sep 2012 #15
No and the user submitted trees are usually terrible kdmorris Sep 2012 #17
Hey, I'm dead! PatSeg Sep 2012 #18
Like some of the others... pipi_k Nov 2013 #22
I use the trees at ancestry as a first source... icymist Dec 2013 #23
Too many "errors" CountAllVotes Dec 2013 #24
I would use the user submitted trees as clues, not sources. OnionPatch Mar 2014 #25
Up to each editor of a tree and viewers to inform of any mistakes. I've come applegrove Mar 2014 #26
I sometimes write a message to one who has entered an egregious mistake - No Vested Interest Mar 2014 #27
I did that pipi_k Mar 2014 #28
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