Trees that are Wrong

[dirtynips]

Why do people copy trees that are plainly wrong? Or are badly researched?

People find something on the internet and take it as gospel.

This happened to me. My grandparent had a very unusual surname of German origin, and I ended up doing pretty much a one-name study. Almost everyone in the UK with that surname is distantly related to me. However, there were two unrelated individuals (I think they were sisters) from Germany who also came to the UK early in the 20th century. Someone else researching British husband of one of them has assumed a family connection and co-opted my entire tree in to theirs and put it on Ancestry. He mistook one of them for one of my grandparent's many sisters as they had the same first name, but I know he's wrong because I know who she really did marry, and it is someone else entirely. There is no family connection at all.

Presumably because the OP has done some proper checking and found out that the other researcher has made a mistake somewhere, and is barking up the wrong tree.

I've been having an argument with a woman in America who has copied the whole of DP's tree based on the wrong assumption that his grandad emigrated to America in the 1950's. I've told her and even provided details of the man with the same name from the same city who emigrated but she's not having any of it.

Numerous trees online, on Ancestry and other sites, are full of mistakes, and some are complete rubbish.

Anyone who's a serious genealogist knows that.

It happens all the time, all genealogists know that, and have come across it.

I can give you many examples

To put things in the kindest light, perhaps they feel unsure about their own abilities to research their tree and so simply trust what somebody else has put up.

In the example I gave we're talking about members of DP's family that he grew up with and that I've met. If you say to someone that their tree is wrong because you know this person has never been to America let alone emigrated there and they refuse to believe you what can you do? There are people who are only interested in numbers of people in their tree and will collect trees with very little verification. They may have 30,000 people in their tree and 90% is bollocks. I'd rather have a few hundred people that I know are correct. Even then you can't say it's 100% correct because your great granny might have slept with the butcher and you actually have no biological connection to your great grandad side of the family.

Just one example of the process I went through in one case. I was in contact with somebody who is a DNA match (we are 8th cousins once removed) and she mentioned that what she had found on the FamilySearch website differed from what I had mentioned to her.

She said:

"I just looked on FamilySearch and it has Richard Rodway as son of William Rodway and Ann Cox. Do you have sources to correct that record?"

My reply (I'll leave out the links)

We're looking for the father, Richard, of the Mary Rose Rodway who married Henry Stinchcombe in 1872. There are three possibilities for her father; one is Richard born in 1830 in Hawkesbury to William and Ann, another is Richard born in 1825 in Gloucester to Thomas and Elizabeth, and the final one is Richard born in 1828 in Cricklade Wiltshire to Rose.

When Mary Rose married on 16 Jun 1872 the Marriage Register showed that she was a Minor (ie under the age of 21) so she must have been born after 16 June 1851.

The Civil Registration Birth Index shows that she was born in Q3 (Jul-Sep) 1851 so she married a couple of months before her 21st birthday.

Ancestry doesn't record it but on FindMyPast it shows that her mother's maiden name was Stokes. So we are looking for a Richard Rodway who married a woman named Stokes sometime before 1851.

To take things backwards from there, at the time of the 1871 census, Mary Rose was working as a housemaid in Cheltenham but there is no record of the rest of the family in 1871.

In the 1861 census Mary Rose was shown as living with her father Richard, mother Mary E and brother Stephen G in Cheltenham. Richard was 33 (so born approx 1828) and he gave his place of birth as Cricklade, Wiltshire

Then in the 1851 census taken just before Mary Rose was born, Richard was shown as 23 (so born approx 1828) and is shown living with his wife Mary E as lodgers in Littledean. He again gave his place of birth as Cricklade, Wiltshire

The Marriage Registry shows he married Mary Emily Stokes on 10 Apr 1850 in Tidenham. The name of his father is shown as Stephen. In reality, Stephen was his grandfather (Stephen had already died in Cricklade, Wiltshire in 1819.)

In the 1841 Census Richard is shown as 12 and living with his grandmother Mary and aunt Diana in Cricklade Wiltshire.

There is then a record of the baptism of Richard on 19 Oct 1828 to Rose Rodway in Cricklade Wiltshire. There is no record of the father.

I think the fact that he gave his place of birth on two censuses as Cricklade and that when he married he gave the name Stephen for his father is indicative that it was this Richard that was the father of Mary Rose.

The other possibility was the Richard who was the son of William and Ann. He was born on 8 May 1830 in Hawkesbury and then baptised on 30 Jul 1830 in the neighbouring church in Wootton under Edge

Then in the 1841 census he is shown living with his older half-brother, Charles, in Hawkesbury. There is no record of him in 1851 - his brother Charles had married by then.

Then in 1859 there is a record of the burial of a Richard Rodway in Hawkesbury who was aged 29 (so was born approx 1830).

I think it is very likely that the Richard who was buried in 1859 in Hawkesbury was the son of William and Ann.

The other possibility was the Richard born in 1825 to Thomas and Elizabeth. He married Sarah Ann Baker in 1863 in Gloucester.

but how can you. w so sure that you’re right and they’re wrong

the OP told this person her findings
this person believes her own findings

DNA connections and or paper trail of evidence.

I only bother to contact people to tell them correct info if I can see it's their direct ancestor. If they ignore me, that's entirely up to them. Often they say thanks but still don't update their tree (presumably they don't have a current membership).

It’s the hints on ancestry and then copying it all into your tree without checking the sources. I’ve avoided incorrect information by doing my own research and checking out the source documentation.

I've had ones that even a basic understanding of life would show were wrong. Eg my grandmother's youngest brother (of 3 who survived WWI) have him become a Lord by hereditary in the 30s ( the two older brothers died in the 1970s).
Absolutely no way just conflated two born in the same year with the same surname.

presumably that is precisely what they think they have gathered? otherwise why so sure otherwise?

If they have alternate evidence, it's not in their tree as I would look at their tree before contacting them. If they respond with alternate evidence, I'd be happy to look at it and update my tree if I were wrong. This hasn't happened yet but you never know.

Generally, as my previous post, people just aren't that bothered. They've gone as far as they wanted and have lost interest & don't care if their tree is accurate.

The main problem is people who know nothing about genealogy and don't bother to learn, but just copy stuff from other people's trees. They may see the same thing on several other trees and assume it must be right, not realising that lots of people are doing exactly the same as them.

I've seen plenty of trees with impossible events in them, such as a woman having children before she was born or after she died. They simply copy things with maybe the right names and places, without checking to see if the dates make sense, for example.

Not to mention the trees with 50,000 people in them going back to Adam or Jesus of Nazareth.

Drives me nuts. It's SO easy to create a tree on sites like Ancestry and so easy to get things wrong. And the problem is, that people copying in wrong information is then suggested as a "hint" for other people, perpetuating the cycle.

I recently did some work for a client who had traced his tree back (properly, using documents and proper evidence) to an ancestor born in the 1820s in Scotland, so pre-civil registration. He was seeing lots of Ancestry trees naming the same couple as the parents of this ancestor, but couldn't find any evidence and was suspicious. He was right to be!! This ancestor's later life was well documented as he went to the US and became involved in local politics and (I forget the exact names) there was lots of references to William Anderson, son of William and Mary.

Hardly unique names. What had happened was that people had gone on family search or similar, searched for William Anderson, born c. 1820, father William and mother Mary, and gone with the first result which was a baptism somewhere in Aberdeenshire. There were other options - Andersen misspelled, Willm not William, Maria not Mary - that sort of thing. I did a lot of digging into the ancestor's life and came across an article about a dinner held in his honour, right at the very bottom of that article it said something like "William Anderson was born in Ayrshire in 1819, son of..." so totally blew the Aberdeen baptism out of the water.

Try telling the dozen or more people on Ancestry that they've got it wrong though....