I don't believe it!

[David Tuson]

I will not mention any family names as I don't want to embarrass the authors but surely before a family tree is published you would expect the detail to be checked for accuracy and sensibility. Just look at the following from a family tree on the web and see the mistake.


A lady was born in 1753 and died in 1780 aged about 27.
She married in 1778 and had three children.
Her husband died in 1781 so she remarried and had further children in 1783 & 1785 in a completely different country.


Another family tree for the same two people have additional children born to the first husband AFTER he died. And it includes the children from her second marriage as step-siblings.


The moral for me is never believe anything unless it can be confirmed by certificates, register records or newspapers.

[Nicolina]

finding children born after the husband dies is not strange to me. I have one born two years after the mother's husband died, yet the Parish record clearly gives his name as the father. The following child is given as the child of Widow C*. Three more illegitimate children followed to B. C., single woman.
I'd love to know who their father(s) were.

[Wilkes_ml]

I have seen children supposedly born after the death of their father.....that is why viewing the original register or image is so important. I've seen a few comments in the registers such as Nicolina has...but never where the deceased husband is named as the father, except in one case when the father actually did die a few weeks prior to childs birth, leaving his poor wife with 3 young children and a newborn baby.

I also have seen some strange connections in Ancestry trees...I have been making contact to try to point out the mistakes so they can be corrected. I've certainly made a few mistakes on my trees as it is so easy to just "attach" a document or person to the wrong person with the same name.

I think the majority of mistakes comes fom taking familysearch as gospel and believing it covers the whole of the UK and is complete! It is so easy to just take the first baptism that comes up.....

for example, I found a tree yesterday that had my ancester in it..he was brother to Ann, who in reality was born & baptised at Dartford, Kent in 1828, married then died in 1857, buried on the same day as her four month old daughter (her first and only child). However the tree shows her emigrating to the USA in the 1840's and living to a very old age! About half the other trees had her grandfather born in Madeley, Staffordshire rather than Madeley, Shropshire. One other tree had one person having children born in the 1840's and 1850's followed by one son born in 1880's...This "son" was actually a grandson.

Sometimes I do wonder if I am wasting my time contacting all these tree owners to offer them information so they can correct their trees, as I'm sure many won't correct them.

[Allan F Sparrow]

I'm afraid there are people on Ancestry who are quite prepared to fool around and poach anything they notice.
There was a case where a search showed me that someone had "lifted" a part of my tree, and when I contacted that person,
enquiring how he/she thought we were related, the reply was apparently clear but really cryptic, as there seemed not enough
information for me to check. Persistence paid, however: I worked out a missing link from what was available, and found, as
I expected, that we are not related at all...

Allan (I have been hanging around, though not contributing recently)

[Megan Roberts]

For a long time I hummed and haa'd about whether to make my tree freely available, and in the end I decided that there were so many incorrect trees out there, many repeating the same error over and over again, that it would be better to put an well sourced tree on line, and just maybe that would help others and if people were finding more than one tree with contradictory information that they would stop and review and see which if any could substantiate their position.

Lots of people have "harvested" my tree, and often I don't know what they do with it. If they use it incorrectly, well (in my view) that's their problem, because ultimately as the old saying goes "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink"!

If anybody (and no one has) is daft enough to challenge my tree, well I can substantiate it; can they?

Finally of course there will come a time when I am no longer here, and at least all the work I have and will continue to do, will be out there!

I know that many will not share my view, and I respect their right to hold different views.

[silverday]

I have never put a family tree on line, but I have looked at others. I have contacted other people, particularly when I have the certificate to authenticate something. Offered to send certificates or help with information. I have only ever had one person contact me. There are so many errors on Ancestry, you would think people would be happy to have the right information. There was one instance where I was able to give correct information. That person never even bothered to change her false information.
Ancestry do appreciate it when you can correct something.

[Sandyhall]

I no longer allow anyone to share my trees on a certain Ancestry web site, after a cousin insisted I changed my information about my Grand dads Brother (who died in france, his name is on the War Graves site buried in France) named on the war memorial in the village he was from and I have a copy of his birth Cert. from the records office with all the right info. he is on the census etc, etc.

No thats not him she insisted that was someone else, she got politely told where to go. I now laugh every time a match comes up to my tree with hers and anyone else who she has shared the wrong info with.

A lot of people connect to and copy information From "Ancestry's Family Tree" that they made years ago when it first started out, not knowing that none of the information saved hasn't been checked by anyone at Ancestry for authenticity. Information you saved (whether right or wrong) was automatically added to their World wide family tree. So never add anything that you haven't double checked for yourself.

Always look on the original pages of anything on Ancestry the transcribing is appalling.

[Wilkes_ml]

Yes, I have certainly had my tree "lifted" whilst it was available, as I took a photo of my ancester's grave stone 15 years ago and attached it to my tree, and now it is appearing in someone else's tree...which I don't mind if I was mentioned as the source....In the last 20 years, I have always mentioned contributors as sources to my own research, and assumed that everyone else did this (the same way writers aknowledge their contributors when publishing their books or articles).

Now, I make my trees private when I am updating them, in case I inadvertently make an error and then put them public again when complete.

[Wilkes_ml]

I have now worked out that my photo probably wasn't actually lifted from my tree at all! I submitted it to the "Find a Grave" website some time ago, and have just realised that Ancestry now has the "Find a Grave" indexes....so freely available to all!