Examples of BAD charts on Ancestry (American, search, accuracy, family tree)

[Vectoris]

This is something I've seen twice this week while looking at others' family trees on Ancestry. A large family in 1740 living in a small farming community in, for example, Sussex, England. They have 12 children, born 9 or 10 months apart... 11 of whom are born in this same small village. Then you start reading through all the children's names and you see that the fifth child is amazingly born in New York, USA.


And worse, people have copied this tree.


Would love to hear what others have seen.

[chadgates]

The worst part to me is when people use as a source "so and so tree @ Ancestry"

SO MANY of the trees on there are undocumented, and using an undocumented tree as a "source" just leads to further perpetuation of the many mistakes that are invariably going to be there.

[brownbagg]

all the family died in cape horn in 1600, they have never been to cape horn, but its been copied a 1000 times,

my favorite on anchestry is when i get all these hints, 20, 30 of them, but there all from my tree

[in_newengland]

Ancestry has perpetuated the myth that genealogy is easy and simple. Their ads tell people to just flip that little green leaf over and-----Oh! I found my entire family!

They're just after the money so what do they care about accuracy.

[Kobber]

Originally Posted by Vectoris

This is something I've seen twice this week while looking at others' family trees on Ancestry. A large family in 1740 living in a small farming community in, for example, Sussex, England. They have 12 children, born 9 or 10 months apart... 11 of whom are born in this same small village. Then you start reading through all the children's names and you see that the fifth child is amazingly born in New York, USA.


And worse, people have copied this tree.


Would love to hear what others have seen.

Yup, I found something similar. An ancestor of mine who had allegedly sailed from England to America in 165X with his wife and small child, then had a dozen or so more children, one born every 12-18 months. Each alternate child was born in England!

Maybe they were collecting the 17th century version of frequent-flyer points.

[goodmockingbird]

Somebody must have clicked a wrong button, and I now have a g-g-g---- uncle who died in Essex, Somalia.

No. He died like his parents, siblings, and offspring in Essex, England.

Fat fingers on the drop-down transported him via pirate ship to the Horn of Africa.

And dozens of family trees show the same mistake.

[goodmockingbird]

Originally Posted by Kobber

Yup, I found something similar. An ancestor of mine who had allegedly sailed from England to America in 165X with his wife and small child, then had a dozen or so more children, one born every 12-18 months. Each alternate child was born in England!

Maybe they were collecting the 17th century version of frequent-flyer points.

I've got some of those too.

One in particular, all siblings but one were born in Ulster, Northern Ireland, the middle sibling in Kentucky in 1635.

Kentucky didn't even exist in 1635.

[in_newengland]

First time I went on Ancestry I found my American grandfather died in Canada. Funny, that was the first I heard of it. My aunt had described how her mother had been quieting the baby and went into the bedroom and my grandfather had passed away in his sleep, early morning. Right in the city where they lived, in his own home, in his own bed--which was in the good old USA.

I was mad. I messaged the person who had that tree and practically demanded that she take that totally wrong information off. That was a few years ago and I guess if it happened today when I am so used to Ancestry mistakes, I would let it roll like water off a duck's back. But it gets sort of personal when it is someone relatively recent like your own grandfather. (I hope I never do that to anyone.)

[Sarahsez]

I don't have Ancestry, but my favorite has been searches on my name and family. I started researching pretty young and collected Info and shared it with my aunts. They shared it with their first cousin. Now I'm married to my father, my name is misspelled and the birth dates are wrong. I'm alive. Why is my info posted anyway? My info was for internal use.

[Leaving Arizona]

Ugh, the lack of sourcing drives me batty. I see errors and carelessness all over the place.

I took both of my trees private because I'm not interested in correcting bad info for lazy people.