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Findagrave can be a tough one. I've adopted the graves for my grandparents and their parents. And for darn sure, I'll be the one who enters my parents and in-laws when they pass. Can't do much about my gg-grandparents, but at least I know the succeeding generations are correct.
Good luck, and I mean that sincerely. I had a similar situation, but much closer to home. Spread across a host of Ancestry trees there was a gentleman with the same first name, MI, and last name as my father linked to my grandfather. Their birthdays were only a couple months apart. The major difference was birth location, with the other guy born in a state where my grandfather never lived or visited. Of course, I was blessed with an abundance of documentation, most of which was not available online. For some silly reason, I felt it necessary to try to fix it in other trees. In most cases, I was ignored entirely. A couple were equally convinced their info was correct and I was wrong. As I recall, I had one lady thank me and correct her tree. At some point, I finally accepted I can't fix the world, and having the correct information needed to be good enough.
There are days I can't decide whether Find A Grave is the genealogist's best friend or worst enemy. I live near a small historic cemetery, and for some foolish reason, decided to take on a project to "clean up" the multitude of incorrect memorials. What a joke. I quickly learned that far too many volunteers are interested in nothing more than increasing their memorial count, with accuracy simply a minor annoyance.
I hear you. I honestly don't think my cousin is concerned about number of memorial counts as he is more focused on our family line than racking up memorial counts for strangers. And, I never even brought up taking over the memorials for my grandparents.
If anything, its ego... southern male ego to be more exact which I thought I was being careful to stroke lol. Obviously, I wasn't careful enough. I may try to email him once more. I was careful to give him props for the work he's done, esp in cleaning up a couple of family cemeteries and ordering veterans stones for our mutual grandfathers' graves.
Perhaps he was freaked out that I connected the dots between ancestry, Find A grave, and his website to figure out who he was. But, why put all that info out there and be freaked out?
At this point, thinking the best I can do is typing up notes explaining the sitch and putting them on my family tree on ancestry.
There is another cousin on Find A grave who is possibly from multiple family lines(lots of cousin marriages in my tree lol) and enlisting her help. Otherwise, just joining Find a grave and posting comments in my ancestors memorials.
What is the best way if any to counter/correct bad research that is repeated across the internet at places like Ancestry and Find A Grave as well as other similar sites?
You'll drive yourself nuts trying police everyone else's trees or data. It's would be an endless and fruitless task; a waste of time if you ask me. You can't make people care about accuracy. Your time and effort would be better spent focusing on your own tree.
Location: New Albany, Indiana (Greater Louisville)
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I am a contributor on Find A Grave, though I only add memorials for family members that are not on the site rather than add in entire cemeteries. Linking family members probably has no verification, if you submit an edit to link family members no one questions it, same with bios. It's kind of like Wikipedia, something obvious (like saying the father is Osama Bin Laden) might get caught but honest mistakes probably stay.
And for darn sure, I'll be the one who enters my parents and in-laws when they pass...
Good luck with that. My mother died several months ago. Her obituary rolled out in the wee hours in the local newspaper's online edition. By 7am that morning, two memorials (duplicates) had been created for her. Neither volunteer knew her; one lived about 300 miles away and the other one lived somewhere around 700 miles away. I simply don't get the motivation. After several requests, I was finally able to get management rights to both memorials, requested admin to delete one and cleaned up the errors in the other one.
I am also a contributor to F.A.G. I particularly enjoy being a photo volunteer. I think F.A.G. has wonderful potential, it just feels to me to be terribly out of control. I will use it for hints regarding possible family members, but to even think it carries some iota of credibility is a mistake.
i had a man contact me a while back because he was writing a book on my grandmother's step dad...this step dad was a developer and from what i remember had developed one of the first subdivisions in northern va...we he contacted me since i work on my genealogy and have a blog and he asked me about this man that i really don't know anything about but i told him the family story of my grandmother's bio father, who apparently was a bookie for al capone. well, when my great grandmother became pregnant with my grandmother, he supposedly threw her out of a window because she had a girl, not a boy...she left him, took her baby with her and eventually married this other man...well the book writer would not believe my story that this man was not my grandmother's bio father because he just could not believe that her "step father" who was so well to do, and they were a pretty family picture...he just couldn't believe that she had this in her background and kept arguing with me...these stories were told to me by my mother...her mom was the daughter raised by this developer....anyways...i wish i could find out more on my bio great grandfather...the story goes that he was killed by capone's guys...i do have a death cert for him in lousiville, in a hotel room...gunshot to the head...ruled as a suicide. genealogy is so interesting...
anyways...all that to tell you yes, there is so much fake info out there! i do copy a lot of it and then mean to go back and see what proof i can find on the stuff that has been added to me tree! good luck!!
What is the best way if any to counter/correct bad research that is repeated across the internet at places like Ancestry and Find A Grave as well as other similar sites?
Researchers before me have turned one set of my 2nd great grandparents into entirely different people while attaching some real documentation that at first glance supports what they have done.
As far as I can tell, I am the only direct descendant working on this particular line of the family backwards from documented and personally known info. The rest are working down or sideways based on documented previous ancestors and guesses.
I can see how it happened. But, I am also 100% certain mine is the info that's correct and there is scads of documentation such as land records, court cases over land/estates, newspaper articles re death notices, lots of other documentation connecting my grandmother to both of her husbands/children and real descendants. Also, I'm pretty sure there is more documentation I haven't found yet.
I contacted someone who maintains a website on the family name and is also seen as a family history expert on find a grave(albeit perhaps self styled). I was very nice and laid out all the facts and back up and asked him to sanity check me. I even went so far as to research the wrong people and show how they couldn't be my ancestors.
Its further complicated by the fact she was married first to someone killed in the civil war where I have found little documentation, as well as the fact her second husband who is my 2nd great grandfather were cousins and no one else made that connection. Also, when she died he married again and that has been harder to document.
The family historian told me he was sick when I contacted him, but he would look at the info when he felt better and get back to me. I thanked him, but never heard from him again. He never changed anything and then he restricted access to his website lol!
I could just say, I know the truth and let it go, but I would like to give my grandparents their rightful lives back and also feel some obligation to descendants other than me, living or yet to come, who may one day be researching them.
I would start my own web based tree, like Rootsweb (which is free). Just document everything very very well and make extensive notes detailing where and how you arrived at any genealogical conclusions. As time goes on more people will come along and in theory the ones that care about accuracy will be intrigued as to why yours doesn't match the others. If yours is better documented and your conclusions pretty compelling, then little by little your accurate tree will start to grow and spread.
That is the best you can do, as I can name numerous examples of trees still out there today where pretty well known fallacies are the more predominant version.
Bottom line is many many people are not serious family historians. They just want to fill in that next person, and when they find a tree that does that for them, they take it and run.
You'll drive yourself nuts trying police everyone else's trees or data. It's would be an endless and fruitless task; a waste of time if you ask me. You can't make people care about accuracy. Your time and effort would be better spent focusing on your own tree.
I know. Not trying to police everyone else. Was really just asking to see what others thought was the best way to get the correct info out there for those who do care or relatives who will come along later and care.
I would suggest making significant notes on your tree. I fill in all sorts of info as I find it. If something is either suspect or speculation on my part, I put something in the Suffix of the name that alerts people. If they just use my info blindly, they also add my "research blunder" suffix or whatever.
It is true you cannot right all the wrongs. It is easy to make an error even when you are a nit picker because something slips by you and you don't catch it immediately but I figure it keeps us from being too prideful or judgmental. All have sinned and fall short of being 100% no questions possible in their research/it happens.
However, putting anecdotal comments throughout your info will not stop the bad trees but i t hopefully will alert later researchers who start to look more carefully what they add. Actually, I also use the comments section. When one person had my dad married to his brother's wife and I had written the person 3 times begging them to correct it as they had just erased my mom and myself (didn't care about my sibling lol) off the map. She didn't correct it and I finally went on her tree and where it had comments, I put comments everywhere there was an error as to what was real. It took a while but I finally got a response, the corrections and a kind apology, which made me feel bad but my objection was reasonable and I tried every method I could to get her attention.
That's my thought. Use humor in your tree/make interesting comments and people will start to question that which shuold be questioned and keep info that should. I make comments where five year olds give birth to their children and even more so when women not yet born give birth. I add stories about the moral character of relatives that likely prevented them from maintaining families in both Virginia and Ohio due to the commute time so if nothing else, I liven up trees. By all means, I would do all I could to correct any misrepresentation of my ancestor/not because mine were so great but everyone deserves to be in the right coffin, without unrelated people on top of them.
I am a contributor on Find A Grave, though I only add memorials for family members that are not on the site rather than add in entire cemeteries. Linking family members probably has no verification, if you submit an edit to link family members no one questions it, same with bios. It's kind of like Wikipedia, something obvious (like saying the father is Osama Bin Laden) might get caught but honest mistakes probably stay.
Yes I see wrong links to family a lot. Usually it is glaringly obvious when comparing it to other documentation.
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