How Not to Ancestry

It does. But that still leaves the wrong calculated links on the page itself. :thumbsdown:

I don't understand I guess. If you go to the memorial that actually has the link (e.g. to a child's memorial for the parental link) and correct it then the previously incorrect links will disappear and the correct one's appear.

Are you saying that an incorrect "calculated" link still appears even after it has been edited on the host memorial ? If that's so it's a new one on me and I don't see how that could happen as the calculated relationship is just a database link created by what is on the host memorial (i.e. the children listed on a parent's memorial are calculated from what is on the childrens' memorials; that data is not part of the parent memorial - what shows is just a link i.e. "calculated").
 
I can relate to the topic of this thread. When I was doing research on Ancestry back in 2007, I found a public member tree that had information about who I thought at the time was my 4 x Great Grandfather DeWitt C. Greenman. After doing further research, I discovered that the person listed on the public member tree was a distant cousin with the first name and birth location and was put in the wrong spot in the family tree. I contacted the tree owner about their error. My 4 x Great Grandfather DeWitt C. Greenman was born in New York in 1821, relocated to Iowa, enlisted in the 23rd Iowa Infantry in July, 1862, and was given a disability discharge in February, 1863. The other DeWitt C. Greenman was born in New York in 1826, relocated to Michigan, enlisted in the 19th Michigan Infantry in August, 1862, and was killed in action at the Battle of Thompson's Station, Tennessee on March 5, 1863. At the time I first found the information on Ancestry, I mistakenly told my Grandfather about being directly related to the DeWitt C. Greenman from Michigan. Luckily, I was able to provide the correct information before he passed away about five years ago. Because of this experience, I am definitely weary of information on public member trees unless they have proper sources.
 
I can relate to the topic of this thread. When I was doing research on Ancestry back in 2007, I found a public member tree that had information about who I thought at the time was my 4 x Great Grandfather DeWitt C. Greenman. After doing further research, I discovered that the person listed on the public member tree was a distant cousin with the first name and birth location and was put in the wrong spot in the family tree. I contacted the tree owner about their error. My 4 x Great Grandfather DeWitt C. Greenman was born in New York in 1821, relocated to Iowa, enlisted in the 23rd Iowa Infantry in July, 1862, and was given a disability discharge in February, 1863. The other DeWitt C. Greenman was born in New York in 1826, relocated to Michigan, enlisted in the 19th Michigan Infantry in August, 1862, and was killed in action at the Battle of Thompson's Station, Tennessee on March 5, 1863. At the time I first found the information on Ancestry, I mistakenly told my Grandfather about being directly related to the DeWitt C. Greenman from Michigan. Luckily, I was able to provide the correct information before he passed away about five years ago. Because of this experience, I am definitely weary of information on public member trees unless they have proper sources.
The tricky part is when they have sources that look fine, but are attached to the wrong person.
 
Well, two things. First, I spent quite some time in a local genealogical library arguing with a woman that my great-grandfather's "given" birthdate is incorrect (I have the paper trail to prove it, but oh well.....)

Second, got the DNA back. I'm a hot Viking chick. Well, actually, I discovered there is a reason I love Cajun food, and it ain't because I'm a Cherokee princess. LOL. Yeppers--not a drop of Native American on either side. It makes total sense. Great-granddaddy Moore wasn't 1/4 Native American--he was of Cajun descent on one side. Makes sense. Until late in my lifetimes the Arcadians were minorities like others, and that wouldn't have been something to brag about. Well. In my book, it is....even more so because I'm related to Thibodeauxs. Yea, Andy, I've heard all the Boudreaux and Thibodeaux jokes. Love 'em.

And it bears out what I've otherwise believed--so Scots Irish I should be eating haggis and black sausage for breakfast. :smile:
 
Well, two things. First, I spent quite some time in a local genealogical library arguing with a woman that my great-grandfather's "given" birthdate is incorrect (I have the paper trail to prove it, but oh well.....)

Second, got the DNA back. I'm a hot Viking chick. Well, actually, I discovered there is a reason I love Cajun food, and it ain't because I'm a Cherokee princess. LOL. Yeppers--not a drop of Native American on either side. It makes total sense. Great-granddaddy Moore wasn't 1/4 Native American--he was of Cajun descent on one side. Makes sense. Until late in my lifetimes the Arcadians were minorities like others, and that wouldn't have been something to brag about. Well. In my book, it is....even more so because I'm related to Thibodeauxs. Yea, Andy, I've heard all the Boudreaux and Thibodeaux jokes. Love 'em.

And it bears out what I've otherwise believed--so Scots Irish I should be eating haggis and black sausage for breakfast. :smile:
Several people of known Native American ancestry have said that other DNA testing services picked up on it. But not Ancestry's. So take their results with a grain of salt. They are dependent on having a large enough sampling for all the markers to compare to.
 
Several people of known Native American ancestry have said that other DNA testing services picked up on it. But not Ancestry's. So take their results with a grain of salt. They are dependent on having a large enough sampling for all the markers to compare to.

Well, that's heartening. Glad to hear it.
 
Nathanb1, there is a site where you can take your ancestry DNA match and run it through their system and it'll give you greater detail about your ethnic background than you can get through ancestry. If I can remember where to find the site I'll come back and post it. I did it for my husband's DNA sample and it gave different details than the ancestry.com one.
 
Nathanb1, there is a site where you can take your ancestry DNA match and run it through their system and it'll give you greater detail about your ethnic background than you can get through ancestry. If I can remember where to find the site I'll come back and post it. I did it for my husband's DNA sample and it gave different details than the ancestry.com one.

Thanks. I didn't think to mention that the test actually backs up everything I've found on paper. One of the reasons I did it was because I just couldn't find that elusive Native American link on my mom's side. Since Granddaddy claimed he was 1/4 Cherokee, I figured I should show up with at least a dib or dab. :smile: But if I can double-check, that would be cool.
 
We use FamilyTreeDNA, rather than Ancestry; we selected that one after I attended a seminar at the Ohio Historical Society on genetic genealogy, where the presenter compared and contrasted the major providers, and FTDNA was the best balance between cost and thoroughness. The presenter said that Ancestry had suffered somewhat by getting out there first but not keeping up as the science and technology advanced (though they may have improved in the last year or so).
 
We use FamilyTreeDNA, rather than Ancestry; we selected that one after I attended a seminar at the Ohio Historical Society on genetic genealogy, where the presenter compared and contrasted the major providers, and FTDNA was the best balance between cost and thoroughness. The presenter said that Ancestry had suffered somewhat by getting out there first but not keeping up as the science and technology advanced (though they may have improved in the last year or so).
What sort of information have you gotten from FamilyTreeDNA? I'm not all that interested in learning where my family hails from in general, I mostly know that already, but I am interested in matches which might reveal who my Woodson ancestors were.
 
What sort of information have you gotten from FamilyTreeDNA? I'm not all that interested in learning where my family hails from in general, I mostly know that already, but I am interested in matches which might reveal who my Woodson ancestors were.

Well, like any other DNA service, partly it's dependent on how many other people use the service, and comparison matches are made to find how closely related you are to the other contributors. FTDNA has a pretty big database. But what I really like are their "Family Projects," where, for instance, I signed up via the Jenkins Family project, got a group discount on my testing, and can correspond with other people who are much more likely to be related to me. (I'm not sure if all family projects have a discount, but it's worth checking up on).

Genetic genealogy isn't a replacement for traditional methods, of course; it won't tell you names, dates, etc. What it's great at is getting you in touch with relatives you didn't know of before who are also working on their genealogies.
 
At this point even a clue about what direction I should be searching for traditional evidence would help - this guy seems to have fallen into a hole! There are other Woodsons in Shelby county, but I don't know if any if them are related, and a huge 1880's genealogy book of the Woodson family in America doesn't contain anything that looks like his family.

I got the Ancestry DNA when it went on sale for Father's Day because it was cheap and hooked up with what I was doing already, but additional information from other sources can't hurt.
 
Through DNA I found some people who 'might' be descended from my GG Grandfather's brother. Their ancestor also hailed from the same part of SC where my ancestor was born and their ancestor shared the same name as GGGrandpa's father. There is a bit of an age discrepancy with my ancestor being quite a bit younger than theirs but it is still within the realm of possibility. My dad, the youngest of 11, was 25 years younger than the oldest. My guy might be from a second marriage. It is also possible that their guy might be a cousin. We are all friends on facebook now and we share whatever new information we can find.
 
My brother took up the duties as family researcher. My mother's family were far more interesting, but we knew their history well. It was my father's side that was a bit mystery and we had discovered that what little our fraternal grandparents told us was a load of Kentucky moonshine.

Because of Grandpa Webb's misinformation, which in all fairness came from his father, my brother followed the wrong lead and the months of hard research took our family's arrival to America all the way back to 1699! It was a very exciting, colorful and interesting history... Of someone else and their ancestors!

Finally he found the correct lead and that took us down a less exciting past (historically speaking, at least), but no less interesting to us. We weren't Welsh, but English and Cornish. We were not directly related to Daniel Boone, as was the family tradition, but one of my grand sires did indeed marry either his aunt or cousin, he still doesn't have that straightened out.

And though my grandparents swore blind that none of our family fought in the Civil War, he discovered that our great-great Grandfather road with the 10th Kentucky cavalry for the Rebs. We can only guess that our Kentucky born and breed grandparents, who moved to Ohio shortly after The Great War were for some reason ashamed of our family's rebellious past! But as a reenactor, I wear Federal Blue as opposed to Butternut, so I guess their influence followed me into adulthood.
 
I was researching a GGGrandfather yesterday and comparing other trees, and someone had him listed as getting married 20 yrs after he had passed away... Ugh...


I had one relative that according to a tree I saw was married and having children before he was even born.
 
I ran into a pitfall yesterday. This was my fault for not checking sources - I have a cousin who is a long time, very conservative researcher who is usually thorough about her sources, and when she added a picture to a close relative of mine I saw it on ancestry connect and added it as well. Then went to the tree of the person she copied it from and was like Eeeeeee oh goodie another cousin who is a direct descendant with a tree full of pictures, they must be The Person Who Ended Up with The Pictures! So I started copying their tree as well. About ten minutes in to this process, I notice, Hey, none of this makes any sense! And it turns out my newfound cousin is indeed a direct descendant, but that doesn't prevent them from also being a very bad researcher. They got the picture from someone else, who plainly states on their tree that it is not a picture of my relative but of a different unrelated person with a plainly different though similar name, different wife, and different family. They have tried to reconcile the contradictions between wives by combining the names of the two wives to make a Frankenname, and adding all children of both men to the tree. To top it off the findagrave has yet a third, completely erroneous person on it, with both the wives' children combined into a single list, plus a third wife and all her children. And the findagrave can't be corrected because the person who created it has her account suspended and can't receive suggestions.

Took me about ten minutes to add all the wrong stuff and almost an hour to disentangle it. So, how not to ancestry:

1. Just because a picture says it's of your ancestor doesn't mean it really is. Ancestry likes to suggest pictures which have no connection to anything and all it takes is for one person to add it to their tree. Always go to the original submitter of the photo and look at their tree. If you have doubts write the submitter and ask. Read the caption of the photo. And also think. If someone died before 1840 there is no photo of them, unless they were pioneers in the art of photography. A photo of two old people together is not likely to be of a man and his first wife who died at the age of thirty. A photo of people dressed in 1890's clothing is not of your ggg uncle who died at Gettysburg. A soldier in Union uniform is probably not your Confederate ancestor.
2. Watch out for Frankennames. If a man is married to Cynthia in 1860, Anne in 1870, and Cynthia in 1880, it may well be that he was married to Cynthia Anne all along. If the rest of his family is the same, their location is the same, her birthplace and age are the same (or at least similar) and especially if there's a marriage record or something which says "Cynthia A," you are probably safe in believing in Cynthia Anne. But if all the details are different, maybe you just have the wrong family for 1870 and there are two different men with two different wives. It isn't likely your man sold all of his children who were still young enough to be on this census and bought new children old enough to have been on the last census. Or maybe, if the different wife's name comes last, the same man had a second wife.
3. Findagrave is a community created source. It's not evidence of anything. In this case I know that the information on findagrave is incorrect because I have the correct man's pension with his full date of birth and date of death matching the information on the headstone. He has a completely different full name, wife and children from the ones attributed to the man buried in his grave according to findagrave. The man listed on findagrave has the same initials and was born nearby in the same year; everything else is different.
4. Just because your cousin has been reliable in the past doesn't mean she didn't screw up this time. Always check sources yourself.
 
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Well, like any other DNA service, partly it's dependent on how many other people use the service, and comparison matches are made to find how closely related you are to the other contributors. FTDNA has a pretty big database. But what I really like are their "Family Projects," where, for instance, I signed up via the Jenkins Family project, got a group discount on my testing, and can correspond with other people who are much more likely to be related to me. (I'm not sure if all family projects have a discount, but it's worth checking up on).

Genetic genealogy isn't a replacement for traditional methods, of course; it won't tell you names, dates, etc. What it's great at is getting you in touch with relatives you didn't know of before who are also working on their genealogies.

DNA testing must have become a really big deal since the time that we did it through Ancestry a year ago, because they now have something called DNA Circles where they link you with all kinds of relatives whom you don't have a direct DNA match with, but someone else in your circle does. Two of my family trees are really well documented in books and in one I have 18 people in the circle. It's kind of interesting to see all the matches, some with DNA and some not.

Just recently, I received some notification from Ancestry about two ancestors that they say are potential DNA matches that are not reflected anywhere in my current tree.

Which basically tells me that they've recognized how interested people are in getting DNA testing done and are trying to offer ways for people who pay for it to find more matches.
 
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