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True, a lot of the trees on Ancestry are wrong, but they can still be used as potential hints to prove or disprove. I don't know why Ancestry allows postings that don't come with primary sources. It seems that one can post a tree that doesn't pop up with an obvious error correction such as showing a woman having children at age 6 or similar. Or I've found death dates at 110+ or something- just obvious things that era usually caught if you are using a database program.
Family Search has a long way to go too since many of their trees are speculative as well. Plenty of errors there also. They are of most use if they show actual primary documents.
Do you consider your own family members as primary sources? The people listed in my tree came from the combined effort of my mother, 2 aunts, and an uncle. They knew their parents and grandparents, and all the siblings on those levels, and all the cousins and their children. I have found some of the people on public records (census, ship manifests, etc.) but the initial information is from my mom, aunts and uncle. I don't need proof that my mother knew her parents, grandparents and cousins.
Last edited by ansible90; 11-10-2018 at 08:55 PM..
I have never found that feature for searching for others researching the same person to come up with anything other than garbage in most cases. And I agree, having them change the spelling they use to search for trees with that person in them is not necessarily going to result in better results.
I have seen plenty of trees for families I am researching that took the spelling from a census mistranscription and used that spelling as well as the bad dates in their trees.
I have had better luck bringing up the search form directly for Public Member Trees and and searching that specific collection. Then I can build in my own search parameters, being well aware of the kinds of misspellings to be found in trees.
Many trees are created by people not using databases, but simply information passed down to them from other family members, and in those cases, first and last names are often misspelled. I have gone nuts looking for specific individuals only to find out that the names were spelled quite differently in all the records.
Anyhow, if anything, if you want to get Ancestry to make that feature more useful, you should file a complaint directly with them, suggesting they take into account both the original spellings as well as the suggested alternates, in the search results. They pretty much won't bother making any changes to any features unless they get a whole lot of complaints about those specific fetures, or they think a change would benefit them in some way.
What I initially blamed Ancestry for was their faulty correction designation as stated in my original post. That could be easily fixed.
I'm not suggesting Ancestry would do all of what you say. They could give current users a time frame in which to add sources to existing trees.
I'm suggesting they would not post new trees that don't have the appropriate sources identified by the user. That they could do by changing their software- wouldn't be perfect but it would be a step in the right direction.
No source is absolute and even primary sources can be wrong, but I think Ancestry is misleading people by buoying expectations unrealistically and they are definitely promulgating bad information.
Ancestry is a family tree site. I've been there almost 4 years. I have no public trees because I have people in my tree that do not want their info shared. I do invite certain people to my tree so we collaborate that way. In my almost 4 years I've never paid so I'm working on a totally free account. I do have some records attached as well as hand entering census records that could not be attached for free. What I normally do is go to family search to work; I attach records there then bring the info to ancestry where I have my main tree. If anyone I don't know wants to see my public tree, I will give them a link to their relative's section of my tree at family search. Some people don't like doing this because they can't just click a button to add the info; oh well; then they should do their own work and is that what you're gripe is about? You want trees with sources so that you can click on it to get their work onto your tree?
If Ancestry forced me to pay to attach sources I'd leave and use software on my computer to do my tree.
Do you consider your own family members as primary sources?
Not any more.
I was told my 2nd great-grandfather came from England with his younger sister, his father Ulysses and mother Anna, and that sister got sick, so the family returned to England, leaving him here.
I spent 20 years chasing that myth, and that's what it was, a myth.
Other family members insisted Ulysses died in North Carolina in a certain year after a tree he was trying to cut down fell on top of him.
I wasted 100s of hours searching through every single page of the census record for every county in North Carolina and couldn't find squat.
But I found the truth through DNA testing.
The family did come from England, except his father's name was James, and his mother's name was Sarah Ann, and he did have a sister, except she was older. And the sister was not sick, she died at age 94.
Sarah Ann died, so James married a Chickasaw woman and had another son whose descendants are DNA matches on Ancestry. After contacting them, I got one of the male descendants to take a Y-DNA test which I paid for, and he is a Y-DNA match, so that's the end of that.
Yet, some family members refuse to believe and still cling to the myth.
So, no I don't consider family members to be primary sources.
I was told my 2nd great-grandfather came from England with his younger sister, his father Ulysses and mother Anna, and that sister got sick, so the family returned to England, leaving him here.
I spent 20 years chasing that myth, and that's what it was, a myth.
Other family members insisted Ulysses died in North Carolina in a certain year after a tree he was trying to cut down fell on top of him.
I wasted 100s of hours searching through every single page of the census record for every county in North Carolina and couldn't find squat.
But I found the truth through DNA testing.
The family did come from England, except his father's name was James, and his mother's name was Sarah Ann, and he did have a sister, except she was older. And the sister was not sick, she died at age 94.
Sarah Ann died, so James married a Chickasaw woman and had another son whose descendants are DNA matches on Ancestry. After contacting them, I got one of the male descendants to take a Y-DNA test which I paid for, and he is a Y-DNA match, so that's the end of that.
Yet, some family members refuse to believe and still cling to the myth.
So, no I don't consider family members to be primary sources.
I think ansible90 was talking about family members being primary sources for the people they personally knew, not for info about people who died before those family members were born.
Even so, I don't really consider someone a primary source unless they were present at the event the information is for. My mom is not a primary source for her parent's birth information, because she wasn't there. She obviously personally knew her parents, and she was present for their deaths, so she's a primary source for their death information - but for all she knows, her parents could have lied or been mistaken about their birth data (and yes, plenty of people have been mistaken about their own birth data - for most of his life, my husband was under the impression he was born a year later than he actually was, because this is what he was always told - we never learned why his parents lied to him). Of course, even being a secondary source of information can still be useful - which is why the first step in genealogy is normally to gather information from family members. You'll still need to verify that info, especially if it's secondary, but it IS the recommended starting point, which is why it's unfair to expect a tree building tool to reject your ability to start a tree or add individuals without sources. You can add people as a source to your tree, but most people don't bother.
My grandmother did a bunch of genealogy research before she died. She left me a wealth of information, but very few original records and no citations on where to find other records - this was before computers were even a household item (I think it was in the 80s). I'd say about 90% of her info I've been able to prove is true. Of that 10%, most of it is data I have yet to confirm or deny - there has only been one main error so far, which is that she said the father of one of our ancestors was Nathaniel Mills, but really he was James Mills. We have an oil painting that my grandmother insisted was him, and that was his name. But now that I know she had his name wrong, I'm not sure who the painting is of. But that's really the only mistake she made so far. There's been a few other names that's weren't exactly right, but not far off, like "Anna K" instead of Anneke, or Olaf instead of Olif, but nothing major.
Anyway, point being that I wouldn't dismiss family members as a source completely just because of one big mistake they made. Keep an open mind, don't assume they are correct, but it's still worth exploring and family members are still the recommended starting point for genealogy.
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