Question: If bad info is entered into ancestry.com, do they correct it somehow?

[grasswire]

I'm following a line; nine other family trees have my great great grandfather listed but the date of birth shown in each of them is wrong -- so wrong that he would have only lived to the age of six and yet had 4 children.

Obviously someone made a mistake, and then a lot of people copied that info to their family trees.

Does this happen often?

[AnotherMcIntosh]

1. Does this happen often? Unfortunately, it appears that the answer is "Yes."

Is the bad info corrected somehow? It may be that some corrections are made. But not all are.

[kickysnana]

2. The Decorah Norwegian Heritage Genealogiest deemed "Interent Genealogy is

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.

[polly7]

4. I let myself be led completely off track on one of my maternal branches

by following related trees at ancestry. The latest information was correct, but somehow they'd all latched onto an individual as ancestor who was completely unrelated. I was made aware of the mistake by someone researching the family on a genealogical message board and was able to obtain copies of original records. I did write the owners of the trees at ancestry and two or three appear to have changed some things, but a couple still show the wrong ancestor.

[grasswire]

7. something similar happened to me

I spent a lot of time following a line back and then learned (not from ancestry.com but from a post on another forum found by google search) that there's a clinker in it -- and even genealogical books are wrong on this one clinker. Two men with the same name arriving in the same year -- one is authentically in this line; one isn't. Oh gee, what a mess. The wrong guy came from a lot more wealth/royalty than the right one. Damn. LOL

[retrogal]

10. Can't always rely on books

Many genealogy books were done up and the better they were the more the genealogist was paid. I read that years ago so don't have a source/link right now.
As far as the royalty lines most are false. I was so excited to see one of my lines go back to royalty but after doing research with history books from my local library I realized the lines just didn't connect and many times generations were skipped or ages didn't match.
Most of the mistakes I have found come from LDS genealogy. Many don't take time to check the facts out. I want to know the history of the time period and of where they lived.
Good luck!

[AverageJoe90]

21. This happened to me with one of my maternal lines.

My great-great-times-something-grandfather John Fike, according to some, was supposedly born as John Fitch in Connecticut in 1718. It seemed plausible at first, but I'm not so sure now; I've been in touch with one of the regulars here who has this person in her tree and she informed me that she didn't think it made sense.

OTOH, there is a possibility that he might have been born in Pennsylvania but I will have to check on that and see what I can find(and yet a couple others say Virginia); at this point, it's looking more likely that he was born in North Carolina, as his sons were.

In any case, I didn't let that setback deter me and I actually was quite grateful for the help; always good to get in touch with others when you can, IMO.

[jwirr]

5. When researching it is usually the researchers responsibility to use the generation rules to check

if the data is correct in anyone else's family tree. I don't think the site ever does much editing.

[kestrel91316]

6. They have a function that allows you to submit corrections to census indexing errors.

Lots of their indexes have my family's names misspelled which makes the records almost impossible to find unless you already know where they lived.

If somebody else' posted tree has an error, no, you can't fix that. Take all info from other trees with a grain of salt and do your own research. They are useful for clues, not facts.

Several trees on there have my grandmother dying in the 70s, when I know for a fact she died in 1985: I went to her funeral, and have her certified death record, lol.

[CountAllVotes]

8. Yes

Someone out there has stolen my cousin. Damn that idiot! It is not their cousin, it is MY cousin.

[retrogal]

9. Oh no!!

That has happened to me more than once lol Some people just 'stick' someone with the same name in their genealogy even though this ancestor was born several states over from all the rest of the siblings and was married and died where he was born.

Sometimes it is comical what people will stick in their family line but people do get mad when you try to message them that they are wrong.

[CountAllVotes]

11. Frankly it irritates me

My cousin was one of few (Dad's family). I'd always known of her as she used to send us a Xmas card every year.

I even have "war letters" that she wrote to Dad when he was in WWII overseas.

She did not marry until she was about 60 years old and she had one brother who died in his late 40's.

As for the rest of that line, it has died out.

So to think someone has placed her (and her brother for that matter) in their tree is irritating to me at best.

Oh well ...

[retrogal]

12. I understand...

It irritates me also. Especially if they 'steal' your personal family pics that don't even belong to their family.
Have you tried contacting the person? Sometimes it works and other times they just plain don't care.
I took a break for a long time because of a man that was so rude to me.
On the other hand I met a 'cousin' who had the same pics I have of the same people but just different poses. We have had so much fun comparing our pics and sharing info. I have met the most amazing people through genealogy.

[CountAllVotes]

13. same here

I recently was contacted by my great great grandmother's family from Ireland. I was told that they suspected a connection to San Francisco but could never verify it. I have all of that info. on her and sent it to them.

This lady in turn sent me pictures of my great great great grandfather and even had a copy of his death cert. along with photographs of him, their homes in Kilkenny, etc.!!

Wow is all I can say!

I also found my mother's family that was never known who/where she was her entire life in 2008. I was contacted on Xmas eve 2008 by my 1st cousin I never knew I had and she lives in Indiana and she was in the same boat -- never knew a thing about the family. She has written an entire 200 pg. book on this family and she sent me a copy of it! again!

So this fool that stole my cousin ... well good luck finding any links from this line as there really aren't many to be found best I know.

[GobBluth]

14. I love Ancestry to a point, but damn those trees

I am fortunate that my maternal line, well my grandma knows what is what. Her father-in-law was a twin, his twin died in Norway before emigration to the States. Yet EVERY family tree has my great grandfather DYING (obviously he didn't as I wouldn't be here!) and his twin living. And then they have the twin as a girl (though it was a boy). BUT those trees did open up to the fact that my Great Grandfather had 2 sisters that died before they got here (1 on the way), which I was able to confirm with other sources (Norway is great!)

I keep one tree which I click on almost every hint, and then constantly am working to verify it otherwise. I keep it private, or else I would have people always contacting me, lol.

If I took all those trees seriously I would have a TON of ancestors that were born AFTER their mother died, or BEFORE their father was born. It's good for me to look at them, maybe I will get a name to search that offers up some little info, but don't take them seriously. And please, if you run into my tree, be careful, it's always a work in progress!

[grasswire]

16. I have decided to do this: only accept public records as truth

Everything else, I will be suspicious about and only think of that data as clues.

It's very sad that a whole lotta people are perpetuating bad information.

[PAMod]

19. Yes, this. /|\

This is exactly right. The only thing I'd add is ancestry.com and similar sites are also good for meeting other researchers/relatives. I've broken through brick walls with help from those looking at the same situation from a different perspective.

That's really the only reason I participate.

[grasswire]

20. even that can be annoying...

...when that person doesn't respond to a message and his/her tree is private. Maybe he/she has even left ancestry.

[Spider Jerusalem]

15. Not with their user-submitted trees they don't

and it happens ALL THE TIME. People just copy stuff from online sources or 19th century books with flat-out wrong data and don't check to verify; I've run across quite a few instances of this, the most common source of bad info is coincidence of names, it seems, mistaking a father who had the same name as a son for the son, confusing two people who lived in the same area and had the same name for each other, etc. An example: one of my ancestors was a Samuel Handy, who emigrated to Maryland in 1665. He married a Jane Sewell in 1679; in the mid-1800's one of his descendants did a genealogy of the Handy family, and had this Samuel Handy's wife as Jane Sewall, daughter of Henry Sewall who was secretary of the Maryland colony...the only problem with that being that Jane Sewall was married to a George Brent, and having children with him, at the same time as Samuel Handy and his wife Jane Sewell were having children, so it can't possibly be the same woman. And yet that erroneous info keeps being copied into family trees by people who aren't aware it's wrong.

[kdmorris]

17. No and the user submitted trees are usually terrible

I have turned off trees as "hints". If I do feel like looking at hints, I don't want to see some tree that claims that my great-grandfather was born to his brother when his brother was 5 because they were too lazy to check the dates.

[PatSeg]

18. Hey, I'm dead!

My oldest sister had entered some information on Ancestry.com a few years back and accidentally killed me off in 1983. Meanwhile, several people copied her information. I did send messages to the submitters, but not all of them responded.

Meanwhile, my sister has since passed on and I'm sure she is having a good laugh at my expense!

[pipi_k]

22. Like some of the others...

I've also run into "hints" that say a guy was born before his own grandfather, etc.

And so many people are so eager to make themselves descendants of royalty that they put any old shit into their family trees.

In fact, one of my nieces got involved in some "Ten (or whatever number) things about myself" games on Facebook, and posted that our family is related to Anne Boleyn.

Seems her mom...my sister...had been telling her that for decades.

I have no proof of that on dad's side, and mom's side is a mishmash of mystery and misinformation that's making it all very frustrating to figure out more than three generations back.

Plus there's the small matter of History here, and no direct line going back to Anne herself.

Even my son got all worked up for a long time thinking we might have been related in some way to Lady Jane Grey, but our family name, I found out, was something entirely different when our ancestors came to Canada from France with the military, and only took the name (which did later become my family name) based on the regiment one of them was in.

I honestly don't know why people are so crazy about being related to royalty...as if being descended from ordinary people can't be interesting enough. I'm amused to find that some of my ancestors were pirates!

[icymist]

23. I use the trees at ancestry as a first source...

only to be confirmed by a second source when attached to one of my trees. My shoebox is quite full. Constant searching on outside sources (THOSE OTHER THAN ANCESTRY) have made my research satisfying and confirming. In other words, I use the family trees at ancestry.com as a tool, sometimes a source but, only with a second source. A lot of the information I find from searching ancestry outside of family trees will be true. Still. check. Re-check. Then check again.

[CountAllVotes]

24. Too many "errors"

The worst one I've found says my grgrgrandparents were not the parents of three of their children!



I've about had it w/ancestry.com!

Thanks for the reminder! I am plan to not renew my subscription w/them at the end of this month.

It is beyond irritating at this point.

One woman (whom I spoke with once) is a 3rd cousin to my late cousin in SF. She keeps trying to get my attention by doing stupid crap like changing the spelling of the name of my great grandmother's sister (so I see everything she does that relates to my family). *hint* *hint* and no, it is not going to work w/me as I want nothing at all to do w/this woman as I am NOT related to her techinically!

There is another one now too -- and OMG, her real surname is a real humdinger! I will not post it here online but OMG again! All I will say is this much -- if I had a surname like that I'd change it to just about anything but ...

So, yep, I'm done with them and all of their "errors" which only create more errors and the show goes on ...

NOT GOOD.

[OnionPatch]

25. I would use the user submitted trees as clues, not sources.

I made the mistake of taking user trees at face value in my early days there. I had to go back and do a lot of cleaning up when I realized how horribly wrong they can be. After that, I know to never trust user trees unless they have good documentation attached. I wouldn't say to ignore other people's trees because they often do provide great information, but you have to double check the sources and if in doubt, don't use it.

[applegrove]

26. Up to each editor of a tree and viewers to inform of any mistakes. I've come

across a few in the tree I put up. Sometimes you have to go with what you got.

[No Vested Interest]

27. I sometimes write a message to one who has entered an egregious mistake -

Ex.- showing a great-uncle married and with children several years after his known death date.
I try to keep the note friendly and volunteering, sometimes, to help the genealogist in his/her quest.

Sometimes the error is acknowledged and corrected, other times not, and one person has refused to accept the correction, arguing that a census shows someone with the same name & birth year as the one I'm citing.

Some family trees have thousands of people in them, people the genealogist couldn't really know the history of. It seems they just like to collect names.

[pipi_k]

28. I did that

a couple of times with the same person.

She just ignored me and went on with the same inaccurate info.

and, you are right...some people just look like they're collecting names, or using any means available to show they're "descended from Royalty".

I've seen grandchildren being listed as born before their own grandparents, and even people two hundred years apart being directly linked.

You really have to pay attention there...

I usually renew my membership every few years just to see if there's anything new. I look around to see what's up, then cancel after a month or two when I find nothing has changed...just more inaccurate crap.