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Sometimes it does get a little personal and irksome. There are a lot of people on Ancestry who have my grandfather dying in Vermont. I know that he died in his own bed here in MA so where do they get Vermont? Mostly, it's because they all copy each other rather than looking it up (my pet peeve with Ancestry. They are too lazy to check for themselves.)
I just ignore all the databases that don't have sources listed ... or just have one. Which is usually another database. Ancestry is so good about "helping" you find sources ... that the people who've uploaded trees aren't even interested in using that feature to improve and expand their databases, tells me I'm not going to find their research of any help to me. They're not really researchers, IMO.
My favorite "irk" are all the people who, say, don't have information on the wife. So they give her the same birth year and birthplace as the husband. Drives me nuts. It's so misleading.
The Sears catalog huh? Now there is an idea.
I don't expect it to be very hard to find pictures of living relatives or ones that may have passed on in the past few decades. But finding photos of relatives from the 19th century, now that is tough.. real tough. I have been fortunate to find a few but not more than a couple..
I just ignore all the databases that don't have sources listed ... or just have one. Which is usually another database. Ancestry is so good about "helping" you find sources ... that the people who've uploaded trees aren't even interested in using that feature to improve and expand their databases, tells me I'm not going to find their research of any help to me. They're not really researchers, IMO.
My favorite "irk" are all the people who, say, don't have information on the wife. So they give her the same birth year and birthplace as the husband. Drives me nuts. It's so misleading.
Hum.. i don't see that as much as the wife's surname. I see the married name used a lot when the maiden name is unknown. I simply leave the surname blank if I don't know the maiden name... I probably have noted an unknown birthdate of abt 1850 when I know the spouse was born in 1855.. but I do that mostly to help with my searches to weed out folks born in 1950..
I just recently ran across the Library of Congress that has a nice collection of old newspapers and can search the surname. I am on page 15 of the reported 837 pages of my surname. So far none are my branch family but who knows when a treasure will pop up? They have other documents I haven't explored as yet.
And, how do you know whether the other person researched, or just added to an existing family tree? I personally think this is a pretty sad situation. If you are researching your family tree, aren't you then supposed to add to what research is already there? I don't see how that happens if it isn't shared. And, doesn't the symbol "tree" signify connections...w/ each other. I am not into making another family tree....but I fully expect to add facts and/or dates to those that apply to my relatives if I were to check a family tree website. If you aren't getting paid for your work, why begrudge other family member's benefiting....Why duplicate services. I'd franky be excited if someone that I was related to, but didn't know benefited....heck...We give free advice on CD all the time. I think people should take themselves a lots less seriously most of the time. My 2 Cents
And, how do you know whether the other person researched, or just added to an existing family tree? I personally think this is a pretty sad situation. If you are researching your family tree, aren't you then supposed to add to what research is already there? I don't see how that happens if it isn't shared. And, doesn't the symbol "tree" signify connections...w/ each other. I am not into making another family tree....but I fully expect to add facts and/or dates to those that apply to my relatives if I were to check a family tree website. If you aren't getting paid for your work, why begrudge other family member's benefiting....Why duplicate services. I'd franky be excited if someone that I was related to, but didn't know benefited....heck...We give free advice on CD all the time. I think people should take themselves a lots less seriously most of the time. My 2 Cents
Sad situation? I guess you're welcome to your opinion, but mine is that you're wrong.
But no, I don't think my job as a genealogist is "to add to what is there." My job as a genealogist is to research my family tree. Maybe using someone else's research as clues of where to search, but certainly not to accept it as listed. The "tree" doesn't signify connections ... it signifies hints. That's a very good word, hints. That doesn't mean facts, it doesn't mean it's for certain. It's a hint to a record that might apply to that person.
But my trees are private. And will forever remain so. They are also very well researched, with my sources noted. And I try to be very thorough (no trees with only the one child I'm descended through listed, no trees with just birth/marriage/death dates). Does that mean I don't share them? Of course not. But if someone is unable (or uninterested enough) to send me a message, asking about a name that appears in my tree, then they don't deserve to benefit from my research. I'm more than willing to share with people, but that means I get something back. They have to tell me that they're related, and maybe a bit of what they know, before I'll invite them to my tree. That doesn't seem too much to ask.
I don't take myself too seriously (well, maybe a little) but I DO take my research seriously. I'm sorry that more genealogists don't. And I'm sorry you think that's sad.
My favorite "irk" are all the people who, say, don't have information on the wife. So they give her the same birth year and birthplace as the husband. Drives me nuts. It's so misleading.
I will often enter info like this as a potential lead, not as fact, just so my searches are easier and I don't have to keep manually typing an approximate birth year into the search fields. Sorry if it drives people nuts but it's my tree and I can manage it however I want. In these cases, I do always put "abt." in for the birth year AND in the "description" part I usually put something like "probably born between X and Y" to remind myself it's only an approximate guess that needs further investigation. But I guess this is why I finally decided to make my tree private - because even though I know about all my little personal methods and try to make them clear, the last thing I want is someone misunderstanding it or giving me a hard time for having different methods than they do.
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Originally Posted by mco65
Hum.. i don't see that as much as the wife's surname. I see the married name used a lot when the maiden name is unknown. I simply leave the surname blank if I don't know the maiden name...
I usually leave the surname blank as well when I don't know the maiden name but it can get confusing when, say, you have three Mary's in your tree with no surname - and either no birth year or similar birth years. When you're looking at a list of individuals in your tree (versus looking at the pedigree view), it's difficult to tell them apart! So sometimes, putting in the married name helps me identify the correct "Mary" I'm looking for.
Also, I usually don't want the maiden names of women who I am not only related to by marriage. Sometimes, I will enter the maiden name of the wife of a sibling of my ancestor IF I know that the families were close and active in each other's lives. But the wife of a nephew of my ancestor? Nope, not interested in her maiden name. Mostly because this winds up spitting out of bunch of hints for records of the woman before she married into my tree, which I don't have an interest in. Plus, it just adds a surname to my tree which is really of no importance to me because I am not researching that surname.
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I probably have noted an unknown birthdate of abt 1850 when I know the spouse was born in 1855.. but I do that mostly to help with my searches to weed out folks born in 1950..
Exactly! To each their own. I don't think it's fair to assume such things must be a result of carelessness or ignorance when that is not always the case.
I will often enter info like this as a potential lead, not as fact, just so my searches are easier and I don't have to keep manually typing an approximate birth year into the search fields. Sorry if it drives people nuts but it's my tree and I can manage it however I want. In these cases, I do always put "abt." in for the birth year AND in the "description" part I usually put something like "probably born between X and Y" to remind myself it's only an approximate guess that needs further investigation. But I guess this is why I finally decided to make my tree private - because even though I know about all my little personal methods and try to make them clear, the last thing I want is someone misunderstanding it or giving me a hard time for having different methods than they do.
Sure. And it's a good example of why trees (for real genealogists, whose databases are always works in progress) are better kept private. You know what it all means. But lazy genealogists pick it up, and next thing you know it's fact. I've even had people who copy something like that, but go in there and delete out all my "qualifications" and convert it into fact.
It's one of my slight deficiencies of Ancestry. My genealogical database accepts "say" as a qualifier on a year -- indicating it's pulled from the air, because there's really no good source indicating a date. A lot more vague than the "abt." But Ancestry doesn't accept that as a date.
I will often enter info like this as a potential lead, not as fact, just so my searches are easier and I don't have to keep manually typing an approximate birth year into the search fields. Sorry if it drives people nuts but it's my tree and I can manage it however I want. In these cases, I do always put "abt." in for the birth year AND in the "description" part I usually put something like "probably born between X and Y" to remind myself it's only an approximate guess that needs further investigation.
If I have no date information at all for an individual but know when their first child was born I will often count back 13 years and use that calculated date in the birth date field with "bef" in front of it e.g. "bef 1912". I've found that having that date handy makes it easy to quickly eliminate a lot of Ancestry hints that might show up for that person.
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Sometimes, I will enter the maiden name of the wife of a sibling of my ancestor IF I know that the families were close and active in each other's lives. But the wife of a nephew of my ancestor? Nope, not interested in her maiden name.
I will always add the maiden names of spouses of siblings (and their parents if the parents were born before 1950) and will often add the names of spouses of their children if such children were born pre 1950. That information has been very useful for three reasons:
- the names have helped me on numerous occasions to confirm that I have the right obituary for a relative, particularly for relatives with fairly common surnames.
- The obituaties of "in-laws" will often mention my relative along with their spouse, sometimes mention where they were living at the time of the death or offer clues that my relative is dead.
- I have found a number of trees on Ancestry created by relatives who have little information about my side of their family tree. They may have sketchy information about the relative we share in common. It's only when I see that details of a spouse in my tree match the spouse of the individual in their tree that I realize we are related.
Also, I usually don't want the maiden names of women who I am not only related to by marriage. Sometimes, I will enter the maiden name of the wife of a sibling of my ancestor IF I know that the families were close and active in each other's lives. But the wife of a nephew of my ancestor? Nope, not interested in her maiden name. Mostly because this winds up spitting out of bunch of hints for records of the woman before she married into my tree, which I don't have an interest in. Plus, it just adds a surname to my tree which is really of no importance to me because I am not researching that surname.
I have a direct ancestor in my tree for whom I was only able to figure out her maiden name because her sister married her husband's brother. The two options I had been searching for her surname were both wrong. The light bulb went off when I noticed how similar her "sister-in-law's" surname was to the ones I had been looking at. Fortunately, her maiden name was on her gravestone. That sealed it!
In another instance, there were female cousins with the same given and surnames. Determining which cousin married my ancestor was difficult. One died young, without children, and her death date was being used in trees for the cousin that was my ancestor. The mortality schedule for the census for the year the young cousin died allowed me to link her to her parents and show that she was not the one in my direct line.
Every little bit of info is potentially useful, so I no longer completely ignore siblings of my ancestors. This does not mean that you add every name you find to your tree, of course. Just be aware that collateral lines can sometimes get you to your direct lines - indirectly!
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