How Not to Ancestry

If you google Ancestry DNA coupon, there are several available today that will discount the DNA price by $20 and give you free shipping. But I think the $20 off ends today.
 
...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.

I did a lot of work on findagrave and participated in two of their forums for a short while (what a mess those were; gone now). Yes, it's full of junk so one has to be very careful. Participating in their "Help" forum revealed what a host of bizarre persons and practices bedevil the site. That said, it's also a gold mine. You just have to correlate and make sure. If you're lucky the stones speak volumes and provide definite proof. Like everything in genealogy you've got to have multiple sources.

I've recently found three of what I'm calling 'ghost' people: ones who only show up in maybe one or at best two records and that's it. Nothing before and nothing after can be found for them no matter how clever the searches even though there's a definite connection to people with detailed trails. And I'm talking about people in the twentieth century.

I've found two cases of women whose death records show that there was a husband named Joe X (and whose birth families are documented) but nothing can be found for Joe before or after or for them together. In one case there is a city directory listing for Joe and wife in the city where Mrs. X died but nothing else for Joe anywhere. I also found a case where a girl shows up on one census only with her mother, both of them living with the girl's grandmother. The girl also shows up in high school in the right town (not a big city) in the same year as the census (and she is high school age in the census record). Neither she or her mother show up anywhere before or after. Grandma, however, has a very detailed paper trail although the one son who would seem to be the husband/father is single in the census preceding the girl's birth year and married to someone else in the census after the girl's birth year. I've not encountered such dead ends before. Very strange indeed.
 
Holy Cow. Those Hortons.....Horton Foote.........OMG. I'm admittedly slow and sometimes it takes me a while. Guess we'll be looking at Horton Foote plays again. :smile:

Yeah, there's a teeny-tiny link, but it was plain as day once it hit me in the face. And I didn't find it on Ancestry, either.
 
I did a lot of work on findagrave and participated in two of their forums for a short while (what a mess those were; gone now). Yes, it's full of junk so one has to be very careful. Participating in their "Help" forum revealed what a host of bizarre persons and practices bedevil the site. That said, it's also a gold mine. You just have to correlate and make sure. If you're lucky the stones speak volumes and provide definite proof. Like everything in genealogy you've got to have multiple sources.

I've recently found three of what I'm calling 'ghost' people: ones who only show up in maybe one or at best two records and that's it. Nothing before and nothing after can be found for them no matter how clever the searches even though there's a definite connection to people with detailed trails. And I'm talking about people in the twentieth century.

I've found two cases of women whose death records show that there was a husband named Joe X (and whose birth families are documented) but nothing can be found for Joe before or after or for them together. In one case there is a city directory listing for Joe and wife in the city where Mrs. X died but nothing else for Joe anywhere. I also found a case where a girl shows up on one census only with her mother, both of them living with the girl's grandmother. The girl also shows up in high school in the right town (not a big city) in the same year as the census (and she is high school age in the census record). Neither she or her mother show up anywhere before or after. Grandma, however, has a very detailed paper trail although the one son who would seem to be the husband/father is single in the census preceding the girl's birth year and married to someone else in the census after the girl's birth year. I've not encountered such dead ends before. Very strange indeed.
I have one of those "ghost people." Benjamin R Walker was a member of CSO Rice's company, has a military record, and is mentioned by name in his memoir, yet he only exists in one census, the 1850. He was a lawyer in Lauderdale county and apparently lived for some time after the war as his name appears in multiple court cases - still, no census records.
 
Holy Cow. Those Hortons.....Horton Foote.........OMG. I'm admittedly slow and sometimes it takes me a while. Guess we'll be looking at Horton Foote plays again. :smile:

Yeah, there's a teeny-tiny link, but it was plain as day once it hit me in the face. And I didn't find it on Ancestry, either.
I feel like I missed something; are you related to the Footes? Horton Foote was a cousin of Shelby, so anyone related to one is related to both.
 
I feel like I missed something; are you related to the Footes? Horton Foote was a cousin of Shelby, so anyone related to one is related to both.

Heck. I didn't even think of that. But yes, Horton Foote's ancestors were from the same line of Hortons as we are. I did that research almost 20 years ago, back in the days of hand-slogging it through libraries and cemetery books. :smile: I just didn't put his first name together with our family line till tonight, when I found a Horton who'd been with Fannin in Texas (wouldn't you know--we didn't die at the Alamo--just Coleto Creek!). And I knew the factoid about Shelby Foote........but as an English teacher (and mother of one), I was too excited about Horton! I guess there was a reason I loved his plays!

Honestly, if your ancestors have been around a while, you'll end up finding links to all sorts of folks. This is one of those "stick to it" moments, I guess. Just keep pounding, and there will be a break.
 
I discovered that being part Native American is almost as much in demand as being related to royalty. There is a large number of my cousins who live on the reservation and we share the same last name. I don't know how many times I have been approached by people who share that name who somehow want to fit a Cherokee into it. Not long ago I had a woman who was descended shared a common ancestor with me, Deacon John Doane of Plymouth Colony. This guy was important. He is has own wiki page...he was friends with famous people. Look him up. You would think that would fill the bill when it comes people are throwing out their famous relatives but no..she saw that I had Native American in my DNA and it was something she wanted to be. I had to break the news that my mother was descended from the Doanes and it was my dad who was the Cherokee.
 
I think it's still $100 my wife's friend just had it done and posted the results on Facebook. I think they named every nationality of Europe in hers.
 
I've been away from the computer and sorry I can't read through all the posts in this thread but heres my two cents:

This goes back before ancestry, to pedigrees and group sheets in libraries, to county histories, etc. The problem is that many folks don't know what "evidence" means. My favorite is the one where the family ancestor stole away from the family castle in the early 1700s, crossed the Channel to France, served in the French Army, was kidnapped by pirates, and dropped off in Florida. He then makes his way to the mountains of Kentucky. When I asked what evidence there was for this story the guy said "It says so in the county history."

Many folks on ancestry are hobbyists with full lives outside family history and they don't have any reason to take a class or read a book on evidence or on what proof and what is not. They mean well. But to them if they get a "leaf" going back to the Middle Ages that is as good in the way of evidence as a primary document.

One of the best books I have read on evidence and its meaning is David Hackett Fisher's "Historians Fallacies." Get ready for a dull, thick, plodding analysis of how historians make mistakes. But informative. On outright genealogical fraud look up Gustav Anjou. There is an article "Gustav, We Hardly Knew You" that should be available on line.

Al
 
I've been away from the computer and sorry I can't read through all the posts in this thread but heres my two cents:

This goes back before ancestry, to pedigrees and group sheets in libraries, to county histories, etc. The problem is that many folks don't know what "evidence" means. My favorite is the one where the family ancestor stole away from the family castle in the early 1700s, crossed the Channel to France, served in the French Army, was kidnapped by pirates, and dropped off in Florida. He then makes his way to the mountains of Kentucky. When I asked what evidence there was for this story the guy said "It says so in the county history."

Many folks on ancestry are hobbyists with full lives outside family history and they don't have any reason to take a class or read a book on evidence or on what proof and what is not. They mean well. But to them if they get a "leaf" going back to the Middle Ages that is as good in the way of evidence as a primary document.

One of the best books I have read on evidence and its meaning is David Hackett Fisher's "Historians Fallacies." Get ready for a dull, thick, plodding analysis of how historians make mistakes. But informative. On outright genealogical fraud look up Gustav Anjou. There is an article "Gustav, We Hardly Knew You" that should be available on line.

Al
Well, the county history is at least a secondary source. Someone presumably told that information to whoever wrote the county history. It's not good evidence but it is evidence. Evidence is not proof.
 
I use familysearch.org as well as Ancestory.com. Familysearch is free, and run by the Mormans. It is decent, but man people run wild. I was excited to see one of my distant cousins had traced us back to the Harrison Family of Virginia. There are 2 US Presidents in that line. Then I started following it back and got to the 1600s, then the 1400s, then Robert the Bruce...., the Attila the Hun, then BC.... Greek names showed up... then some names like Methusala and Bathsheba. Finally it ended at Adam & Eve. I swear...
I facetiously pretended to believe every word of it, while my wife was totally beside herself in disbelief. I bragged about my "Pedigree" for months. I'll try to find it and post it. It's great.
 
I use familysearch.org as well as Ancestory.com. Familysearch is free, and run by the Mormans. It is decent, but man people run wild. I was excited to see one of my distant cousins had traced us back to the Harrison Family of Virginia. There are 2 US Presidents in that line. Then I started following it back and got to the 1600s, then the 1400s, then Robert the Bruce...., the Attila the Hun, then BC.... Greek names showed up... then some names like Methusala and Bathsheba. Finally it ended at Adam & Eve. I swear...
I facetiously pretended to believe every word of it, while my wife was totally beside herself in disbelief. I bragged about my "Pedigree" for months. I'll try to find it and post it. It's great.
It's probably the pedigree leading back from ... I think Alfred the Great? who commissioned it for himself. It's completely fictional of course but it's very old fiction! I can hit the same pedigree myself, I added it to my tree just for fun.
 
Evidence is not proof

Interesting take - can you think of a case of proof in the absence of evidence?

It's not good evidence but it is evidence

I think this is interesting too! Am I using the word "evidence" out of context? I was defining evidence as something that is probative of some premise. The county history is evidence that someone told the author a story, but is probative of nothing regarding the European ancestor.

What word am I looking for here?
 
Interesting take - can you think of a case of proof in the absence of evidence?



I think this is interesting too! Am I using the word "evidence" out of context? I was defining evidence as something that is probative of some premise. The county history is evidence that someone told the author a story, but is probative of nothing regarding the European ancestor.

What word am I looking for here?
You can't have proof without evidence. But you can have evidence insufficient to constitute proof. That's why you get phrases like "the preponderance of the evidence," because in most cases, several pieces of evidence which corroborate each other are required to prove something. Proof is elusive, it is rarely something you find once and then you're done. It's an ongoing process. Something you thought was "proven" by many pieces of corroborating evidence today can turn out to have additional evidence against it.

The majority of historical evidence is made up of stories somebody told somebody. The census is a story somebody told the census man. The birth and date on a headstone are stories someone told the headstone carver. Both can be wrong. The problem with this family story isn't that it's a story, it's that it is an improbable story recorded only recently about something which happened long ago, which nevertheless happened recently enough that it should have other evidence to support it, which presumably isn't there. People who lived in castles were big enough deals that we usually know their names from the historical record. Early ships had passenger manifests. The French army presumably kept some sort of records. Pirate activities were often newsworthy. People who lived in Florida paid taxes and made other transactions which left records. If none of this supporting evidence is there, it's extremely unlikely that the story is true. But the story does count for something, even if it doesn't count for much. My family has an oral tradition that someone was hung for a horse thief around the time of the American Revolution which turns out to be absolutely true; there are court records. But if the court records had been lost and only the oral history remained, the story would still be true, even if not provable; and the oral history would still be evidence that something inspired such a story. Not sufficient evidence. But not something to be thrown out as unworthy of even being recorded, either. Stories go in the box with the other evidence.
 
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That's why you get phrases like "the preponderance of the evidence,"

Ah, I see what you're saying and I agree....

My problem with that tale (not my lines) was how fantastic it is. If they had said the son was a younger son of the gentry who left and gone to work in London they got shanghaied as an indentured servant it would have been more believable etc...

I use preponderance of evidence too ... especially when there is nothing else. I have a will in England that says "to thomas, son of my brother William if thomas ever returns into England..." From looking at the family, they fit the profile of the one my guy should have came from. And I can find no other Thomas over here that could account for the one in the will. Yet within a 15 mile radius there are seven baptizms of that surname with fathers Williams and sons Thomas. Ugh!!!

There is a formal name for it, I can't remember what it is, but the essence of it describes what so many historians (family and otherwise) were doing in the Victorian era - they had a burning desire to find nobility, military heroes, pilgrims, etc in their trees and when they didn't they made them up.

As far as preponderance of evidence I have made a h++l of a mess, particularly when I was younger. I wrote some articles laying out preponderance of evidence for various premises and stated in the pieces that there was no proof, that I was presenting the new evidence for farther research, and advising against people putting the stuff on their trees. Alas, now these are all over trees on ancestry and a couple later fell apart when someone took me up on my suggestion for farther study. "Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then..." :frown:
 
Speaking of evidence, I got back my mom's DNA results. So far most of the matches prove that she was indeed related to her mother, which is not exactly news. But I also have matches showing that we do seem to be descended from John Fairfax Bolling, who was descended from Pocahontas. There was a lot of discussion about how "our" Bollings weren't necessarily "those" Bollings, but I left it on my tree because frankly it's more fun being descended from Pocahontas than not. I'm honestly surprised to have pretty reasonable proof that we are.
 
I got back my mom's DNA results.

I don't understand DNA much at all but have a question - what does a negative result really prove? Of course it proves that someone is not related genetically linked to someone, but is it grounds for a change complete in identity for a formerly-supposed son? I'm thinking of an "Ancient Planter" in Virginia in the 1630s who had a child Francis or Frances. There is a male Francis nearby in the next generation. They took the male Francis off the tree because the DNA did not match, which I understand. But they didn't assign him to anyone else of that surname. Then they took the orphan's court record identifying "Francis, orphan of Thomas" and said that they "must have" meant "Frances, orphan (daughter) of Thomas." They fail to account for why a male Francis lives right there among the others (on the Delmarva Peninsula no less). I think Mrs. Thomas probably had an evening with the neighbor guy and came up with the male Francis, and that the assignment of the orphan's court record to some never-before-thought-of female is a stretch. I think the male Francis was thought to be the orphan of Thomas until our modern science exposed Mrs. Thomas' secret? "Preponderance of evidence" here. :whistling:
 
Speaking of evidence, I got back my mom's DNA results. So far most of the matches prove that she was indeed related to her mother, which is not exactly news. But I also have matches showing that we do seem to be descended from John Fairfax Bolling, who was descended from Pocahontas. There was a lot of discussion about how "our" Bollings weren't necessarily "those" Bollings, but I left it on my tree because frankly it's more fun being descended from Pocahontas than not. I'm honestly surprised to have pretty reasonable proof that we are.


You might be related to my husband. He's descended from the Randolphs who have 'Pocahontas' connections. :wink:
 
I don't understand DNA much at all but have a question - what does a negative result really prove? Of course it proves that someone is not related genetically linked to someone, but is it grounds for a change complete in identity for a formerly-supposed son? I'm thinking of an "Ancient Planter" in Virginia in the 1630s who had a child Francis or Frances. There is a male Francis nearby in the next generation. They took the male Francis off the tree because the DNA did not match, which I understand. But they didn't assign him to anyone else of that surname. Then they took the orphan's court record identifying "Francis, orphan of Thomas" and said that they "must have" meant "Frances, orphan (daughter) of Thomas." They fail to account for why a male Francis lives right there among the others (on the Delmarva Peninsula no less). I think Mrs. Thomas probably had an evening with the neighbor guy and came up with the male Francis, and that the assignment of the orphan's court record to some never-before-thought-of female is a stretch. I think the male Francis was thought to be the orphan of Thomas until our modern science exposed Mrs. Thomas' secret? "Preponderance of evidence" here. :whistling:
I agree that inventing a daughter seems like a stretch - more or less so depending on the date, because in records pre 1840, women's names can be hard to find in records. Wouldn't the DNA have hooked up with Mrs. Thomas, though? Assuming she had descendants that had been tested?

DNA doesn't necessarily prove much, once you go back several generations. It's just one more piece of additional evidence. In some of these matches I've got multiple common ancestors; so there's no way of knowing where the matching bit is coming from. Male line testing is more useful than other kinds - because a Y chromosome doesn't have a matching chromosome to swap genes with, they stay very similar for many generations. Only, if you're a woman, you can't do the male line.
 
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