Strange things you see on Ancestry

[deeahgwitch]

Both Dh and I have an account on Ancestry.
Today he showed me a rather strange match he had.
This match claims on their bio section that they are a full blood Native American being three quarters Cherokee, one eighth Comanche and one eighth Apache.
They have a Native American name.
Yet their Origin Regions are given as almost 50% Northern Ireland / Central Scotland
and almost 50% SE England and NE Europe.
With a wee bit of another European country.
Deluded much or are DH and I missing something ?

I spent a fair amount on ancestry around a decade ago. Five years ago I did my DNA. Got some fairly bizarre messages ‘I can see you’re half Irish, my great great grandad was Irish and we’re trying to track his side down… the only information we’ve got is that his name was John but don’t know his surname/any more information. Is his family on his tree’.

I replied that actually it looked like we were linked by our shared English heritage…

‘Are you sure you don’t have any John’s’

I once saw a census record for a 'Baby Christmas' - male age 0. I'd love to know what his parents finally decided to call him.😂

I am taken aback by the number of Americans who claim to be descended from Mayflower pilgrims, the Brewster family in particular...

I once saw a census record for a 'Baby Christmas' - male age 0. I'd love to know what his parents finally decided to call him.

Next census?

Most family trees on Ancestry and FMP are probably 90% cobblers.

According to a teacher at school I am direct descendant of Adam and Eve. And they got a shout out in some well known book so I know it must be true.

Ancestry keeps suggesting that 2 men in my tree are duplicates - they have different first names and baptism records and are clearly brothers. Other people seem to have accepted the suggestion, so it won't go away.

I randomly noticed because it happened to be next door to some of my lot. It just amused me at the time.

Agree about other people's family trees, which is why I never use them other than for a bit of a casual look. I'd never take anything from them without checking official records first.

Trees are full of so much shite, just blindly copied across. I have seen ancestors of mine born in rural Ireland described as being born in Paris, an error that's been repeated across multiple trees. Also someone with their grandfather born in 1680 something.

Agree about other people's family trees, which is why I never use them other than for a bit of a casual look. I'd never take anything from them without checking official records first.

I never look at 'other trees' until I've done all the research. I don't think I've ever learned anything I didn't already know, but found plenty of errors. And I never bother with the ones with thousands of people on. Those people must just keep adding names and not know anything about the people.

My great grandmother must be fizzing with rage in the afterlife, given that at least three total strangers confidently have her dying in a Tyneside workhouse when in fact she died in a perfectly respectable terrace in Workington.

I saw someone had their grandfather down as dying in the 1940s. I had actually met the gentleman in question, so I knew that wasn't right.

And my own great grandmother on someone else's tree, her birthplace but died in another county and buried in a third county, neither of which she had ever visited.

And women who would have been having children in their 50s and 60s if these trees are to be believed.

The lack of critical thinking on Ancestry is startling. Although I was initially impressed by my great-grandmother having a child at 59 until my mum quietly explained that the miracle baby was actually the secret offspring of its 16 yr old ‘sister’, a bit of census discretion that I suspect was fairly common (and who knows what that’s done to statistics around ‘last’ babies!)

My great grandfather, who had a somewhat unusual name but not wildly so, 'marries' some random woman in London in a few trees. In reality, he lived over the brush with my great grandmother in Ireland.

I also have one of those female forebears who is alleged to have had children into her late fifties and it's really frustrating me because it's one of my brick walls, and because it's 19th century Ireland I can't even check the census. In fact I'd warn anybody with Irish ancestry to take trees with a sack of salt because people are particularly creative with those, due to the lack of records.

One of the surnames I'm researching is so rare that everyone in the UK with that surname is related to me. I'm pretty much doing a one-name study so I do look up what other people have randomly put on their trees. Just a couple of weeks ago, I learned that one of my great-grandfather's many siblings sailed off to Canada in his early 20's which I had previously been unaware of, and I had wondered where he'd disappeared to (and yes, it is him!).

Just a couple of weeks ago, I learned that one of my great-grandfather's many siblings sailed off to Canada in his early 20's which I had previously been unaware of, and I had wondered where he'd disappeared to (and yes, it is him!).

Did you find out what happened to him in Canada?

Finding out about people's life stories like that is what makes family history interesting for me, not just adding loads of names to the tree.

What does “over the brush” mean @AInightingale ?

Er, that they weren't married at all! Well, I can't find any evidence that they were, and Irish civil records all survived the various disasters. They eloped to Ireland with their baby son born out of wedlock (her family strongly disapproved of ggf) and at some point, my ggm seems to have taken his name, but they don't seem to have officially married. (Moving countries does give you the perfect excuse to 'lose' your marriage certificate...)

A lot of Irish records were burned during the Irish Civil War in 1922. The Public Records Office was adjacent to the Four Courts which was set on fire.

The birth, marriage and death records pre 1922 all survived thankfully - I think. Maybe there were losses? All my other family records for the period are there, on the Irish govt website.

Can't remember the details, but I'm pretty sure I once saw a tree that claimed a child had allegedly died before their father was even born. I think Ancestry is a bit better at flagging obvious nonsense like this these days, though.

The ones that always amuse me are the American trees of my DNA connections that seem to think every ancestor was American-born way back into the 1600s; there's no way I could possibly share DNA with them if that was the case. It's wildly unrealistic.

Sometimes it's careless clicking on the drop down menus. I have someone on my tree who was born in Chelsea, Middlesex/London. He definitely was born there. Someone else has him on their tree born in Chelsea, somewhere in the US.

Having the DNA test has helped me greatly with verifying my family tree. Mind you, Ancestry tells me I have 98% Cornish DNA so I suppose my ancestors are fairly simple...

@AInightingale My great grandparents got married in Ireland so that great grandma could conveniently “lose” her first husband, who was still very much alive. I don’t think my grandmother ever knew that she and her siblings were illegitimate, or that her mother had been married before and had children with another man.

I don't think either of my ggps were previously married like yours @SydneyCarton though it's a possibility. My mother, very much a woman of her time (young in the 1950s) would have been shocked to learn that her father was likely illegitimate. Funnily enough, there's a photo of ggm where she is sitting with her hands clearly visible and there's no wedding ring!

I put people in my tree based on theories (but always try to mark them) and understand that sometimes something is a bit a bit of a punt to see what it does to ThruLines but there's some mad stuff usually copied from tree to to tree.

I've seen an ancestor that died before they were born and women supposedly giving birth over 60 in the 1850s. I've seen my own very much alive Mum, albeit very elderly, declared dead based on records an idiot could see is wrong several times and people getting v huffy when I politely pointed it out. Sadly, a couple of my lines are very much of interest to American people collectors. There are trees where my grandfather appears to have crossed the Atlantic several times in the 1930s and 1940s when he never left his farm. His wife is on many trees as a child bride and mother because someone picked a record from miles away and they all copied it despite the fact that a very obviously correct record in exactly the right place is easily found and actually matches her marriage record.

I'll stop now because I'm starting to rant.