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When I find a serious mistakes on Ancestry, I create "JPEG photo messages" that warns other people and flags the mistake. It pops up like a photo in their hints. Hopefully, they will read my objections and change their errors.
For example, someone in my tree said that a distant cousin had died in 1918. About 33 other people had copied the mistake without questioning it. After I did a little digging, I realized that this was wrong. His mother's obit in 1943 said he was alive and well. This cousin was in the Navy and living on a naval base in the Philippines. That's why he disappeared from the 1920, 1930, and 1940 US census records. He was career Navy and was living overseas.
People actually took notice of my "photo message." Most of the active members on Ancestry corrected their trees and started researching to find this cousin's real date of death.
This is a great idea! Most people ignore regular comments. Sometimes I will add comments to my own notes pointing out that "this" information has been wrongly recorded elsewhere.
I don't mind sharing old family photos, which I am fortunate to have many, but do hate it when I find it associated with someone completely unrelated.
When I find a serious mistakes on Ancestry, I create "JPEG photo messages" that warns other people and flags the mistake. It pops up like a photo in their hints. Hopefully, they will read my objections and change their errors.
For example, someone in my tree said that a distant cousin had died in 1918. About 33 other people had copied the mistake without questioning it. After I did a little digging, I realized that this was wrong. His mother's obit in 1943 said he was alive and well. This cousin was in the Navy and living on a naval base in the Philippines. That's why he disappeared from the 1920, 1930, and 1940 US census records. He was career Navy and was living overseas.
People actually took notice of my "photo message." Most of the active members on Ancestry corrected their trees and started researching to find this cousin's real date of death.
That's the best idea I've heard so far.
I would point out that the idea of transferring people every 18 months to 3 years didn't come about until 1976 when the all-volunteer military came to be.
Prior to that, it was common for Marines to spend their entire careers in the US Colony in China, until the US abandoned it in 1938 (everyone moved to the Philippine Islands).
Many Army, Marine and Navy enlisted spent their entire careers in the Philippines. I had a great uncle who enlisted in 1918 in the Philippine Scouts and spent over 20 years there until he left in 1939.
After WW II, it was common for enlisted Army and Air Force personnel to spend their entire careers in Germany. That was especially true in the 1960s, as many re-enlisted to stay in Germany, rather than go to Vietnam.
Officers always transferred more frequently, since it was necessary to have so many years in combat commands, so many years in staff positions, and to attend military schools or universities (to obtain Master's or PhD's) to advance their careers.
The Department of Defense maintains a web-site that has everyone who ever served listed in alphabetical order with dates of service and highest rank attained. I don't have a link for it, but a web-site called military.com has a link to it (which is how I found it originally).
My grandfather's twin brothers fought in WW II, one in the Army and the other in the Marines. I got hints for one, but not the other, and I had to search Ancestry to get the records, so don't think for a moment that Hints will "automatically" pop up, because that's not always going to happen.
It is one of the (sometimes annoying) realities of genealogy and the internet. Careless people will post totally wrong crap and leave it there to collect cobwebs or stupidly defend it if politely informed of records that contradict whatever crap they threw together. I gave up trying to correct years ago and suspect many others have also.
One thing to do is to get there first. I can't tell you how much of my stuff I recognize on other sites because people have lifted my work. At least when they do it is accurate because I carefully research and verify everything or show any uncertainty if there is one. Other than that, that's life in the big city.
Find-a-Grave is another site with a lot of "offenders." People there seem to become even more irate when you point out something that is wrong. One person had their female ancestor connected to my great-grandfather as his wife and became really snotty when I pointed out it was wrong. Finally sent a copy of his death certificate showing his wife who was still alive at the time.
Find-a-Grave is another site with a lot of "offenders." People there seem to become even more irate when you point out something that is wrong. One person had their female ancestor connected to my great-grandfather as his wife and became really snotty when I pointed out it was wrong. Finally sent a copy of his death certificate showing his wife who was still alive at the time.
I Have a set of several times great grandparents who disappeared after the 1870 Federal Census. Someone posted on Find A Grave that they were buried in a cemetery in the county where they were last known to be living. Records for that county are pretty much nonexistent (cursed courthouse fire!). I actually went to the cemetery and looked for the graves. I was excited because the grandfather is a brick wall in my direct paternal line. The cemetery is unusual. It is on a hillside and there is no rhyme or reason to the layout of the graves. It's almost as if someone would locate any spot big enough and plant a grave there. Most of it is overgrown and totally unmaintained. There is one section that is better taken care of, but the GPs were not there. I had come armed with some tools to cut away undergrowth (past cemetery experiences made me know to do that!) but I could not find the GPs in the scrubby area, either. Frankly, I could have been standing on them in some areas and not be able to see them. I did find one of their sons and later discovered he was a "galvanized Yankee", but that is a tale for a different thread. It does make me think his family would never have buried him in the same graveyard as his Confederate parents.
I think the Find A Grave poster, with whom I had had cordial contact about our shared lines in the past, assumed the GPs were there just because the son was. She got testy when I contacted her to ask if she could tell me where the graves were located, how she determined they were there, and how she found out death dates. She cut off communication after that.
I later learned she was banned from Find A Grave and all of her posts taken down. That's a shame because she does have a lot of good information that can be confirmed with sources.
I am a bit peeved at her because she has posted a transcription of some court documents that I gave her without acknowledging me as the one who did the transcription. I do not mind her giving it to other people, because it has a lot of info in it, but being named as the source would have been nice.
Did I mention it was hot when I was poking through that cemetery?
I would point out that the idea of transferring people every 18 months to 3 years didn't come about until 1976 when the all-volunteer military came to be.
Prior to that, it was common for Marines to spend their entire careers in the US Colony in China, until the US abandoned it in 1938 (everyone moved to the Philippine Islands).
Many Army, Marine and Navy enlisted spent their entire careers in the Philippines. I had a great uncle who enlisted in 1918 in the Philippine Scouts and spent over 20 years there until he left in 1939.
After WW II, it was common for enlisted Army and Air Force personnel to spend their entire careers in Germany. That was especially true in the 1960s, as many re-enlisted to stay in Germany, rather than go to Vietnam.
Officers always transferred more frequently, since it was necessary to have so many years in combat commands, so many years in staff positions, and to attend military schools or universities (to obtain Master's or PhD's) to advance their careers.
The Department of Defense maintains a web-site that has everyone who ever served listed in alphabetical order with dates of service and highest rank attained. I don't have a link for it, but a web-site called military.com has a link to it (which is how I found it originally).
My grandfather's twin brothers fought in WW II, one in the Army and the other in the Marines. I got hints for one, but not the other, and I had to search Ancestry to get the records, so don't think for a moment that Hints will "automatically" pop up, because that's not always going to happen.
You must understand that the overwhelming vast majority of people on Ancestry and all other sites -- better than 90% -- have no real interest in genealogy.
Their real true interest is only their DNA make-up, which is not the same as genealogy.
Genealogy is the study of a family-group, including all ancestors living or dead, and their descendants, living or dead. I mention that only because I've come into contact with several people who hold the bizarre idea that genealogy is only about dead ancestors.
Even in my trees, and I manage two, one for paternal family members and the other for maternal, since one giant tree becomes two unwieldy to make any sense of, I get a lot of nasty-grams from people, because I don't include the parents of spouses who married into my family.
I simply cannot include them.
My paternal tree has more than 3,700 people and it starts with my great-great-grandfather and his wife, and doesn't even include my grandfather's wife and her siblings or ancestors and their descendants, or my great-grandfather's wife and her siblings, ancestors and descendants, or my great-great grandfather's wife and her siblings, ancestors and descendants, to whom I'm genetically related.
On top of that, I'm missing an estimated 300-500 people from the 5th, 6th and 7th Generations for whom no records have yet been made available (for example, Kentucky has only released birth certificates up through 1999). I'm heavily reliant on obituaries to provide information on the 5th, 6th and 7th Generations.
If, and when, I get to working on them, and that will probably be a month or two, I'll add another 3,000 to 5,000 people to my paternal tree.
The information on the spouses that married into my family is there for them if they want it. All they have to do is look at the profile. The parents are listed on whatever Census, birth, marriage or death records are available for that person.
If you get an Ancestry Tree Hint, it's best to just hit the "Ignore" button, rather than getting wrong information and having to waste hours of time trying to correct it. Most of the other Ancestry Trees have even less information about a person than I have, so it's not even worth my time to review it.
You may try to advise other people their trees are wrong, but in the end, you should just focus on your tree and take satisfaction in knowing it's correct to the best of your knowledge.
You lost me. Who does your paternal tree include if you do not list wives?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cyanna
Find-a-Grave is another site with a lot of "offenders." People there seem to become even more irate when you point out something that is wrong. One person had their female ancestor connected to my great-grandfather as his wife and became really snotty when I pointed out it was wrong. Finally sent a copy of his death certificate showing his wife who was still alive at the time.
There is one gal that has a lot of my son's NJ ancestors. There is a family member who holds duplicates of memorials run by this gal; I think I know why they made duplicates and did not send updates. I let her know about the duplicates; also told her how I was related and that I'm working on my son's tree so will be sending a lot of updates. On one of my updates, I noticed she added the DOB I gave her then made a remark that it's not verified. Find A Grave ended up upgrading the site which is not as user friendly when I'm on my tablet. In one update box I wrote that I did the tree, had found records for the DOB, I was connecting more relatives and something else; she left me a nasty comment on my messages saying I added the info in the wrong place and if I don't know how to use the new find a grave to go back to the old. Of course she doesn't accept messages on her profile so I couldn't leave her one; I had to go back top the ancestor to send a message using suggest other info.
all the incorrect information on Ancestry??? My lord, I've found a LOT of it! Other than contacting the person who posted it there, and a lot of them haven't even checked in for a long time, so....? It just irritates me that people will see all that and believe it and pass it on as truth.
I read that my grandmother was born in Mississippi...actually, Nebraska...married at 16 and had a child...actually married at 27 in CO....had three kids...actually had four. The ONLY things right on there were when and where she died. Otherwise I wouldn't have thought it was even her. This is not the only one I've found that is just dead wrong, but what can you do??
Yep, lots of bad info out there. I am amazed that people have children of parents who weren't even born yet or born 100 years before. I found a tree from someone in Australia that had a great aunt coming from Ireland, going to the US and then going to Australia having a family and dying there. Never happened. She came to the US and married, had kids, lived and died here. I forgive the number of kids as long as they don't show too many and the one's they show are correct.
Personally, I use other trees to give me hints that may be correct then research myself whether or not it is. I found my husband's tree to the Mayflower that way. Knowing his great grandparents I found several trees with them on it which helped furthering the tree. Searching on their parents names turned up valid information from genealogical websites proving the validity of the tree. I then further verified by sending it into the Mayflower society and they approved his line.
It does irritate me, though, when you point out an error the offending party just gets mad. This happened with my grandfather. I thought, perhaps, I might have found information on his ancestors but it turned out that this woman just grouped everyone with the same last name coming from Germany in the same tree as brothers and sisters. I knew she was wrong, because my grandfather did not have sisters. She took a hissy fit when I asked her to remove him from her tree as she was wrong. She kept insisting she was right.
ETA: Once someone pointed out a mistake in my tree I had. It was not a direct ancestor, rather it was a cousin of sorts. I had mistyped the date of death and didn't catch it. He wrote to say that as far as he knew he was still alive years after that date. I looked at my documentation and realized I had made a entry error. Fixed it right away.
Last edited by NorthofHere; 06-01-2018 at 11:31 AM..
There is one gal that has a lot of my son's NJ ancestors. There is a family member who holds duplicates of memorials run by this gal; I think I know why they made duplicates and did not send updates. I let her know about the duplicates; also told her how I was related and that I'm working on my son's tree so will be sending a lot of updates. On one of my updates, I noticed she added the DOB I gave her then made a remark that it's not verified. Find A Grave ended up upgrading the site which is not as user friendly when I'm on my tablet. In one update box I wrote that I did the tree, had found records for the DOB, I was connecting more relatives and something else; she left me a nasty comment on my messages saying I added the info in the wrong place and if I don't know how to use the new find a grave to go back to the old. Of course she doesn't accept messages on her profile so I couldn't leave her one; I had to go back top the ancestor to send a message using suggest other info.[/quote]
Some of those contributors on FindAGrave can be pretty harsh. They have pretty strict rules for you to follow and if you don't follow, you get cut off.
I will add unverified info to my memorials, but I indicate that it is unverified. I've made a few memorials where we don't know exactly where a person is buried because it isn't on the death certificate, but they are a 'connector' person between other generations. I can't connect the relatives without a memorial so I add the info I have and explain that it is a best guess or unknown. I will also add a memorial when I have an interesting story to share, but possibly not the facts. I will reference the new article or lore or whatever and explain it as such in the biography. That may be fudging in a sense, but it gets the info out there to those who are interested. It can be fun because sometimes other people chime in and you learn a lot more. FindAGrave is a free tool so I try to use it to my advantage.
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I can't tell you how much of my stuff I recognize on other sites because people have lifted my work. At least when they do it is accurate because I carefully research and verify everything or show any uncertainty if there is one. Other than that, that's life in the big city.
