Finding your family in someone elses tree - Ancestry

[yorkshirecath]

I have just found a huge chunk of my family tree on Ancestry.
It came up as one of those quivering leaves and it linked me to another family tree that has lots of info i don't have.
Now it gives me the option of merging my records and putting all that info in my tree.
I have 2 problems with this.

1. Firstly, doesn't that sort of take the fun out of doing the searching a bit?

2. I feel like i'm stealing! This other person has done all the hard work and i'm just going to sit back and copy it!

What are your thoughts?

Cath x

[Jan1954]

1. Firstly, doesn't that sort of take the fin out of doing the searching a bit?
Yes. I like to be given clues, but not the whole shebang.


2. I feel like i'm stealing! This other person has done all the hard work and i'm just going to sit back and copy it!

What are your thoughts?

Cath x

Ah, but have they listed sources? Can these be checked?

That's the problem with being given a whole tree on a plate. I'd use it as a foundation for my tree, but check and research everything that I'm told.

Good luck,

[Peter_uk_can]

If it was me I would print it out and then take each person in turn and do your own search. A red and green marker will be useful to decorate the tree.

You may need 2 red one's...;)

[Mutley]

I would not personally merge another's tree with mine until I had checked and double checked all the sources.

What if they had gone wrong somewhere along the line?

[Alan Welsford]

There's at least 2 trees on Ancestry, and maybe 5 or more on Genes Reunited which include some of my ancestors.

The problem is that if you take those lines in those trees back a further generation, then the people listed are not always my ancestors. :confused: Sometimes I have no idea who those people are, because they apparently crossed several counties, just to become my ancestor :D

I'm very happy to scour any tree to see if it might give me pointers to branches I've yet to follow. You can usually tell quite quickly if someone has been reasonably thorough, or not. You get also to spot trees plagiarised from others, as they repeat the same mistakes.

Also, I'm more than happy to be told which parish I should find a baptism or wedding in, as I don't particularly enjoy squinting at microfilm readers, so if I can go to the right place straight away that's great, (a bit like using the IGI really!).

But few of these trees accurately document their sources, so in general I would copy nothing from them, without verifying myself first.

I make one exception to that. If someone supplies details of themselves, their husband, their marriage & their children, I usually take that at face value. I'll still record a source, but that source is "Information supplied by...".

A.

[Peggy]

"I feel like i'm stealing! This other person has done all the hard work"

But HAS the other person done all of the hard work, or any of it? Are sources shown, and are they something better than "world family tree" or "IGI" or "Smith gedcom"? If good sources are cited, you can check them. If not, the other person may well have copied the tree from someone who copied the tree from someone who copied....

I'd NEVER merge another tree with mine. I might tuck some of the info into my database, carefully labeled as unverified, pending research. I use my database to keep all sorts of notes and ongoing research items, so it wouldn't be unusual for me to have someone named "John Unverified Smith" with the source "online tree - no sources provided." :-)

Even if you know that the info is 100% accurate, the tree may include whole branches of the other person's family, including in-laws, which have very little if any connection to you.

Peggy

[yorkshirecath]

I agree with all of you.
I've just contacted the person as they are actually related to me and have printed out the family tree as possible data. :)

[christopher_n_lewis]

I agree with the others about using other people's trees as a pointer, but confirming all the facts. I know there are trees on the internet that are just wrong, as they have clearly been compiled from internet information ignoring the bits that don't fit. I've checked the original documents and come up with a far more interesting, but cohesive, story.

Secondly, contact the other person. Presumably this is what they want if they have made their tree public on Ancestry. I'm still undecided about having people contact me - a help or another source of bother...

Christopher

[Helen Jane Skidmore]

Hi

I feel that I am stealing if I copy information from other trees which is why I always contact the owner of the tree and ask their permission, and if I use information from someone elses tree, I acknowledge them in my tree outlining details of what information I have used.

Normally people are happy to share information - and I always double check the information for myself.

I made my tree private after I discovered that someone had copied all my families details onto their tree. I e-mailed the owner a number of times to confirm the connection between our trees - and they never answered! I learned my lesson!

As far as I'm concerned if the owner is contactable, it is courtesy to ask, it also opens up links to other areas of the family.

Regards
Helen

[Neil Wilson]

|help|I have been hit with a bigger problem. You have to sign up to A****y as a full member before you can contact anyone who has a link with your own tree.
I found 2 links yesterday whilst looking, one with the correct date and place of the person's birth and death. So do I go for the 'free' month's offer and cancel straight away or just hope another member of the family will connect to the person for me

[MythicalMarian]

I always ask permission of the person - but then I do recheck the sources too. This is crucial because I did find a person with a whole batch of descendants from one of my Leicestershire lines that all seemed to fit and go back to the 'common' ancestor we shared (a 3xgreat grandfather). However, a couple of dates bothered me, so I did my own checks through the census and BMDs etc. and found that the person in question definitely had the wrong man linked to my family. I found proof of this and sent him the census references concerned - but I never heard back. I did a bit of digging of my own and found that his ancestry was Irish, not local to Leicestershire. Whoever had researched the tree for him had clearly not done much exhaustive searching, and when confronted with two men of the same name on the same Leicestershire census had plumped for the 'wrong' one and twisted his baptsimal age to fit his own known facts.

Other than this, however, I have been in touch with genuine cousins through A* - so I may be one of the lucky ones.

[LancsLass]

I completely agree it takes all the fun out to copy straight from other people's trees although it is useful to take hints. I have also had bad experiences with people copying my research to the web and taking all the credit for!

However, I would recommend extreme caution particuarly with the so called One World Trees on Ancestry. In my experience they can be terribly unreliable and as a number of people have pointed out it can be impossible to make contact with those on Ancestry. I have made some useful contacts via Genes Reunited since mostly you enter into dialogue with them but that site seems to encourage the whole concept of copying so again use with caution.
Sarah

[SUSSEXDER]

I completely agree it takes all the fun out to copy straight from other people's trees although it is useful to take hints. I have also had bad experiences with people copying my research to the web and taking all the credit for!

However, I would recommend extreme caution particuarly with the so called One World Trees on Ancestry. In my experience they can be terribly unreliable and as a number of people have pointed out it can be impossible to make contact with those on Ancestry. I have made some useful contacts via Genes Reunited since mostly you enter into dialogue with them but that site seems to encourage the whole concept of copying so again use with caution.
Sarah

So which site is Trustworthy.?:confused:

Sussexder.

[Sandyhall]

Hi
even worse is when you find that your cousin who no one has spoken to for years (because she ran off with another man) has taken all of your tree from A******y, changed your Great Grandmothers Surname then e-mails you to tell you you've got the wrong name WHEN you have her Birth and Marriage Certificates to prove you do your research.
P****d me right off she did. Goes without saying I won't be sharing anything with her.

[v.wells]

Hi
even worse is when you find that your cousin who no one has spoken to for years (because she ran off with another man) has taken all of your tree from A******y, changed your Great Grandmothers Surname then e-mails you to tell you you've got the wrong name WHEN you have her Birth and Marriage Certificates to prove you do your research.
P****d me right off she did. Goes without saying I won't be sharing anything with her.

That would P*** me off royally too! I wonder if putting a copyright stamp on the tree name would be a help to scare people off from stealing. There must be something that we can do besides making it totally private.

At least you KNOW that what you have is true and correct. (You could also make a small public tree and make her dead:D)

[Jan1954]

(You could also make a small public tree and make her dead:D)

Vanessa! You shock me! http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee187/Jan_07/faint.gif

(Brilliant idea, though |laugh1|)

[Browneyes]

I just wanted to say thankyou for this thread! I definately agree that source/evidence is important. It's not just a case of 'thankyou very much' and moving onto another person is it? I am learning so much from this forum. THANKYOU.

Browneyes.

[pipsqueak]

I have allowed linking to my tree, and I have added other people's information to mine under certain circumstances. In one case the other tree belongs to a close relative whose research is fully supported by documentation and I trust it absolutely. I refuse to associate with anyone who doesn't allow people to contact them.

Just for fun, I did my husband's American tree and accepted all the connections that came up just to see where they would lead me as long as I recognised common family names and known places of residence. I ended up going all the way from rural Kentucky to North Yorkshire over a few hundred years.... they I pressed the magic button that says "find famous relatives" and we find he is supposedly related to everyone from George Bush to Geoffrey Chaucer! Of course we took it all with a pinch of salt since none of it beyond the range of US census years is supported with documents that we can see, and we did have the occasional 7-year-old parent or a child older than the father, but it was a highly entertaining evening nonetheless. I shan't be putting it in my book though ;)

[Squaredancer]

Finding my family on someone else’s site (as part of her tree) was what kick-started my interest in finding my ancestors. I’ve found a lot more and been helped a great deal by people on these forums – and my postings are certainly useful to the same person who’s taken some of them and added to her tree. My lot are very distant relatives of hers. Unfortunately the date of one marriage is incorrect and somehow one of my relatives has acquired a middle name that he didn’t get christened with, and my father has lost his first name. Oh well… :D

On a funnier note, I’d read somewhere (on these forums?) that some people have Mickey Mouse in their Genes Reunited trees, so I searched on a few more unlikely names. It’s amazing how many people claim to have Mickey among their relatives, along with Miss Piggy, Julius Caesar, Homer Simpson, and even Queen Victoria! I guess they must get some odd kind of kick out of it. :confused:

[Dargie]

Beware of sharing trees!!

On G***s Reu****d I thought I had a match on a Parker name. My great grandfather LEEKS died leaving three children and great grandmother remarried a PARKER.
In the 1881 census the three Leeks children were listed as Parker but they then always went by their correct and original last name of Leeks.
The gentleman who had the Parker name in his tree had my grandfather and two siblings as son and daughters of Parker, not step children but natural children born to him.
If ony he had gone to the 1871 and 1891 census he would have found out that they were indeed children of James Leeks and not Oliver Parker.
A little information is a dangerous thing! One census cannot give the whole picture.

Incidentally I emailed him and politely told him that my grandfather was not the child of Oliver Parker and gave him the correct information, with sources so that he could check for himself, eg will details, birth certificates etc.

I guess it worries me that my grandfather's details should be out there when obviously so wrong. We get protective of our ancestors don't we?

I have never had a reply!! Last time I checked he had not changed his tree.

|shakehead

Marj.

[oxon57]

So which site is Trustworthy.? :confused:

In one word - "None".

There is no such thing as a reliable site.
Actually, if you want to be pedantic, I suppose you could say that there is no such thing as a reliable source, because even original records may contain clerical errors etc., but, ignoring that, the only thing that is reliable is information that you have personally obtained from (or checked against) original contemporary sources.

I stress "contemporary", because information given years after the event took place, such as in biographies (including authoritative-looking works such as the Dictionary of National Biography), a birth date or place given on a death certificate, etc., is very often completely wrong, having been given by somebody who was confused and/or had a tendency to work on the "if you don't know, then invent something rather than risk looking ignorant" principle.

Quite apart from the possibility of typing errors etc. by the compiler, even where sources are given, it is not unknown for, say, somebody to look at an IGI entry that says "Extracted marriage record for locality listed in the record", assume that this means the parish register, and quote "Parish Register of St Whoever, Anytown, Someshire" rather than "IGI" as their source in order to make their work appear more thorough than it actually is, when, in fact, the IGI entry is (as they would have found if they had clicked the source link) taken from a transcript, so yet another finger in the potential error pie.

[busyglen]

Finding my family on someone else’s site (as part of her tree) was what kick-started my interest in finding my ancestors. I’ve found a lot more and been helped a great deal by people on these forums – and my postings are certainly useful to the same person who’s taken some of them and added to her tree. My lot are very distant relatives of hers. Unfortunately the date of one marriage is incorrect and somehow one of my relatives has acquired a middle name that he didn’t get christened with, and my father has lost his first name. Oh well… :D

On a funnier note, I’d read somewhere (on these forums?) that some people have Mickey Mouse in their Genes Reunited trees, so I searched on a few more unlikely names. It’s amazing how many people claim to have Mickey among their relatives, along with Miss Piggy, Julius Caesar, Homer Simpson, and even Queen Victoria! I guess they must get some odd kind of kick out of it. :confused:


Just for the record....there are people with the name of Julius Caesar. There was one living in my hometown in the 1800s and he was a doctor. :)

Glenys

[Browneyes]

I know someone called Mark Anthony.... :D . There are people named after actors and actresses and in the future people will find famous sports personalities and all sorts of names on their family trees....very different from names passed down from Grandparents etc!

Browneyes.

[Davran]

There was an article in the latest issue of The Norfolk Ancestor (Norfolk FHS) about unusual Christian names (from an article published in 1871). It's a very amusing article and lists a variety of eccentric names, including Makershalalhasbaz (from the Bible), Green Leaf, Christmas Day, Sing Song, Tempest Sleet and Shooting Gallery!

So our ancestors were just as dotty about naming their kids as people are today.