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On Ancestry.com, I use the "leaf" to get leads on my brick walls.... and someone who has been solid as a rock just pulled a bonehead mistake.
They sourced my g-g-grandmother being somewhere 30 some years after she's been married for the second time with her maiden name. And apparently married to her BROTHER.
In those days, when Judy Smith married Bill Miller, she became Judy Miller and she stayed that way till she died or remarried. She doesn't go back to being Judy Smith just because you find a Judy Smith near where you want your Judy Miller to be.
ROUND PEG, SQUARE HOLE -- DOESN'T FIT. KEEP LOOKING.
Oh I join your vent and rant lolol! Just yesterday I was researching a missing "leaf" in my family tree and found an ancestry file that at first gave me that eureka! kind of feel until I started looking at it and realized how wrong wrong wrong the file was. Do people not even check their data before uploading???? Geesh, how many 3-year-olds got married in the olden days or had children years after they were in the ground?
I have to laugh because some think they're so authoritative when they state their data is sourced - yet, when one looks at the source, it's just a copy/paste from someone else's erroneous data!
Just yesterday I found someone who is evidently related to my grandmother's brother. But they have this guy being the son of his grandfather and grandmother, and they have given him about sixteen or seventeen children. But are so many duplicate names amongst the children, with no deaths for the earlier name holder, that this alone should have been a clue that something was very wrong.
Of course they had combined two families into one, without stopping to ask themselves if any couple would be so stupid as to duplicate five names among living children!
I think that its like head-hunting for some people.
On Ancestry.com, I use the "leaf" to get leads on my brick walls.... and someone who has been solid as a rock just pulled a bonehead mistake.
They sourced my g-g-grandmother being somewhere 30 some years after she's been married for the second time with her maiden name. And apparently married to her BROTHER.
In those days, when Judy Smith married Bill Miller, she became Judy Miller and she stayed that way till she died or remarried. She doesn't go back to being Judy Smith just because you find a Judy Smith near where you want your Judy Miller to be.
ROUND PEG, SQUARE HOLE -- DOESN'T FIT. KEEP LOOKING.
I feel better now.... thank you.
That happened to me too! A researcher had my gr grandfather married to his sister! This was in a book published a LONG time ago. I actually wrote to her to tell her the correction but never heard anything back. So, unfortunately, that info is out there into infinity!
I think that its like head-hunting for some people.
"Name Collecting". I've remarked that it's like a game to some people: "he who dies with the most names, wins".
IMO, a family's genealogy is made better if it ties into an interest in history. I found that a several greats step-grandmother worked the Underground Railroad in Ohio. That lead to reading up on the subject and being able to illustrate my site with several of the historical markers and links to sites that discuss her adventures. At the same time, a branch of my family in Virginia who would eventually marry into the Ohio branch when they migrated to Illinois, owned slaves. I found several PDF documents of their recorded history and also uploaded it. (All this stuff is verified via birth/death/census records). Looking at those two branches running parallel, and eventually merging, was kind of neat, but I couldn't help but think that those two families would have thrown their hands up in horror if a soothsayer had informed them that they would eventually join
"Name Collecting". I've remarked that it's like a game to some people: "he who dies with the most names, wins".
IMO, a family's genealogy is made better if it ties into an interest in history. I found that a several greats step-grandmother worked the Underground Railroad in Ohio. That lead to reading up on the subject and being able to illustrate my site with several of the historical markers and links to sites that discuss her adventures. At the same time, a branch of my family in Virginia who would eventually marry into the Ohio branch when they migrated to Illinois, owned slaves. I found several PDF documents of their recorded history and also uploaded it. (All this stuff is verified via birth/death/census records). Looking at those two branches running parallel, and eventually merging, was kind of neat, but I couldn't help but think that those two families would have thrown their hands up in horror if a soothsayer had informed them that they would eventually join
Good article. One of my first brick walls was my great grandparents. I think great grandma died soon after giving birth to her second child (I still don't know this to be a fact) and Great grandpa gave one child to each grandparent to raise (Fact) and soon after remarried a woman with her own child and didn't take them back (Fact). And then my great grandpa died when my grandmother was 16....
And they were never mentioned again.
I just got lucky finding someone else who was looking into great grandpa's family.... and they knew....
Ahhh yes I remember it will. The kind person who dumped my entire line into her db based on thin air. It was so thin it was rarified. 1] A gramdmother half-sister who was the 4th wife of a grandfather; they had no children. 2] The gramd,ptjers cousin that married my aunt and had not children. 3] A sister-in-law to my grandmother brother. 4] Grandmother's other half=sister whose son married my Grandmother's aunt. This person claimed to be a "cousin but wasn't sure how."
What the person actually did was unethical. She milked my mother for family infomation that had never been posted on the Internet and put it in her db. It took me 40 hours to figureit al out.
Then we have the case of the missing grandmother. She was found with the wrong name. I looked for her for 5 years. The 20th century author cited a 19th century author who stated very clearly he did not know how the families were related.
Then there was the family legend. My father spent 40 years trying to price his beloved great-grandfather for which he was named was related to the famed silversmith of the RW. Well, after 10 years I leaerned gramps was not related to Paul Revere, and my father wasn't related to gramps! He had no children and he was grams 4th husband.
I finally concluded IF it is not in a bible, obituary, marriage/death certifate, deed or church record I do NOT believe "it" until I find the source. Census records are not always accurate either. Be your own detective and you will never be sorry.
"Name Collecting". I've remarked that it's like a game to some people: "he who dies with the most names, wins".
IMO, a family's genealogy is made better if it ties into an interest in history. .....
Totally agree, that's the way it is for me. When I did up our family tree for some cousins I did it in a three-folder narrative weaving their lives and travels into the history of their times with vintage illustrations or photos of the various periods, small villages they lived in, etc.
Totally agree, that's the way it is for me. When I did up our family tree for some cousins I did it in a three-folder narrative weaving their lives and travels into the history of their times with vintage illustrations or photos of the various periods, small villages they lived in, etc.
And I learned so much doing it that way.
That's what I'm doing right now! It's far more interesting to "know" my ancestors from the historical perspective, what was going on around them while they were begatting their offspring. Just yesterday I was thumbing through an old book, Scribner's Magazine, that belonged to my great grandmother, and discovered it was loaded with newspaper clippings. Ack! Undated clippings! But they must have been from WWI. And what was obviously quite important to her was how American soldiers were faring. Most of the clippings were about treatment of American soldiers captured by the Germans, notices of soldiers killed or wounded, and things like that. Another interesting clipping was one that told Canadian men that if they didn't volunteer they would be drafted. A clipped photo was an American soldier in a gas-filled trench in France somewhere testing a gas mask with other soldiers looking on.
How this ties into the original post is this: a family tree maker (a name collector) could read an obituary clipped by my great grandmother, see a wife's name that was the same as my great grandmother's sister and presume it was the obituary of her brother-in-law. Not true! For whatever reason my great grandmother clipped obituaries of absolute strangers (and I'll never know why, but obviously she found them important).
On Ancestry.com, I use the "leaf" to get leads on my brick walls.... and someone who has been solid as a rock just pulled a bonehead mistake.
They sourced my g-g-grandmother being somewhere 30 some years after she's been married for the second time with her maiden name. And apparently married to her BROTHER.
In those days, when Judy Smith married Bill Miller, she became Judy Miller and she stayed that way till she died or remarried. She doesn't go back to being Judy Smith just because you find a Judy Smith near where you want your Judy Miller to be.
ROUND PEG, SQUARE HOLE -- DOESN'T FIT. KEEP LOOKING.
I feel better now.... thank you.
Been there. Check out the people search forum. Over the course of 3 days they managed to clear up 30 years of tears and frustration. If I could reach thru and hug them, I would. I hope you find the right info.
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