How Not to Ancestry

I have posted some pics with tentative IDs with the caveat that I'm only guessing, not certain. Some people take these and run with them without asking permission. I can remember a couple of times when I became very certain that I had incorrectly IDed one or two and contacted people who had them on their websites, lifted from mine. Some of them got downright huffy, seeming offended, as if I had accused them of the incorrect ID. I get emails re findagrave all the time wanting me to add or change something. I'm always glad to oblige if the sender seems to know what they are talking about.

Once I noticed someone had lifted a lot of data from my old genealogy site about the Jesse W Wynne family. Since I had clearly stated that I was not an authority and was to some degree speculating, the lifter should have put that caveat up front. Well, I posted such a caveat again on the old website, and, miracle of miracles, the lifter posted the caveat, too. One thing I had absolutely proved beyond all doubt was that Capt. Jesse W Wynne (3rd Texas Cav) had married his first cousin. I got an enormous amount of resistance about that, but it's in her father's will. I also got some resistance when I made a very strong case that her father had previously married a Maragret Ross, which is why so many people were wrong. Jesse's cousin was named Margaret Ross Wynne before she married him, not Maragret Ross. Margaret Ross was her mother, and I made a very strong case that she was a daughter of Hugh Ross II whose father had moved to NC from Scotland, then to the area in Tennessee where the Wynnes lived at the time. I got a lot of flak for that one.
 
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You can utilize their 2 week freeby as well, and then cancel on your last day. Sometimes they do free weekends throughout the year.

Here's how I did it: I did a lot of research on my own, reading newspaper accounts, writing down family info from online family trees that used tons of documentation, etc. Then I did the two-week freebie thing and piled it all on the family tree. After I canceled, I took my sweet time straightening up the tree, uploading pics (I want to try and get pics of as many of my relatives as possible), adding stories. I'm cheap but it serves me well.

I see a lot of people scrambling to make trees that prove they're descended from Plantagenets or what have you. I'd rather do a good job with the folks I know and can document -- I had a great-great-great grandmother who the genealogists said had died in 1880, but then I found newspaper accounts of her hanging out with my great-grandpa's family under a new name -- she'd remarried (as it turns out, a married man) and nobody seemed to know it. So I was glad to have resurrected her.

Census takers can be awful. I've found pages in a St. Joseph census that had nothing but initials on it!!!! I was so steamed! And then some just spell things how they're pronounced. Looking up stuff for the Rogers line, I finally found my family in a census under the name "Ragas" -- which is exactly how it's pronounced.
 
Here's how I did it: I did a lot of research on my own, reading newspaper accounts, writing down family info from online family trees that used tons of documentation, etc. Then I did the two-week freebie thing and piled it all on the family tree. After I canceled, I took my sweet time straightening up the tree, uploading pics (I want to try and get pics of as many of my relatives as possible), adding stories. I'm cheap but it serves me well.

I see a lot of people scrambling to make trees that prove they're descended from Plantagenets or what have you. I'd rather do a good job with the folks I know and can document -- I had a great-great-great grandmother who the genealogists said had died in 1880, but then I found newspaper accounts of her hanging out with my great-grandpa's family under a new name -- she'd remarried (as it turns out, a married man) and nobody seemed to know it. So I was glad to have resurrected her.

Census takers can be awful. I've found pages in a St. Joseph census that had nothing but initials on it!!!! I was so steamed! And then some just spell things how they're pronounced. Looking up stuff for the Rogers line, I finally found my family in a census under the name "Ragas" -- which is exactly how it's pronounced.
Some census takers never went to the houses in question and just relied on their own memory or the word of others. I am pretty sure that I have census pages where the taker either talked to a servant or a child.
 
I'm glad this thread is still active so I have someplace to rant. :D

I just spent my morning trying to sort out my mother's relatives. Here's the thing: two Martha H's married two Thomases (same surname) in the same exact location in 1813 and 1814 respectively, then both families moved to Tennessee in the 1830's. One of the Thomases and one of the Marthas died in about 1840. In the meantime all the children had run off and gotten married and moved out.

Usually in a situation like that I look at the existing trees and then look for corroborating documents, in hopes that someone out there has personal sources I don't. But in this case nothing whatsoever made sense with the locations and who was living together. It look me a while to realize that a certain lady had gotten the Marthas switched, attached children at random, and then written an elaborate bio on find a grave documenting her errors. And then everybody had copied her tree. I mean everybody. Hundreds of people.

But, see... Her family tree shows a gravestone which says died 1834 as her portrait photo for a lady that the same page says died 1880... It actually looks like, from the comments, that this lady took a special trip to another city to photograph this stone at night on someone's private property, without even noticing it didn't match any of the rest of her data. I'm afraid to write to her!

At least she is still somewhat related to the wrong set of people, since the one Thomas was the nephew of the other ( and don't even get me started about that end of the tree, I'm pretty sure everyone involved is making stuff up in an effort to be descended from a revolutionary war officer.)
 
Some census takers never went to the houses in question and just relied on their own memory or the word of others. I am pretty sure that I have census pages where the taker either talked to a servant or a child.
Sometimes the person interviewed wasn't completely honest -- in 1901 Irish census my great grandmother gave her age as 31. She gave her husband's age as 65, said he was illiterate and feeble-minded -- neither of which was true (relatives remember the couple didn't talk to each other for many years ... I think there were some issues in that marriage!)
 
My ancestor came to America in 1740. His name was William. After him, everyone in my direct line thought it would be a good idea to name one or two of their kids William, no middle name, just William and their last name. Makes you tear out your hair and drink to excess to try and sort em out.
 
for me I just have to go back to 1800 in Cabarrus County, NC to find my Mary White married Thomas White
(not related, thank you very much) and because there were several men named Thomas White he was listed as
River Tommy.
My 6th great grandmother is buried in Cabarrus Co. NC. Place called Rocky River, her name was Mary McIlhenny.
 
Census information is interesting, especially when the people the census taker is interviewing don't speak English. My grandmother on Mom's side learned English late and when the government men came down river to compile yet another roll, they didn't speak Yurok. She had married up river and wasn't on the coast where the Yuroks live. The roll takers asked if she lived on the Klamath River and she thought they were fixing to take her to the Klamath agency... Somehow she ended up being listed as a Horse Creek Kamawatu. She's the only one, too - there never was such a tribe!
 
It's days like today that make you enjoy this type of "work". So working through extended family tree and I find that I have a first cousin, 3x removed, that served in WW1, was KIA in France July 26, 1918, and has a headstone in Arlington.

Never knew.
 
What you say regarding some computer researching is true. The information is only as accurate as the source. But it does provide clues to further investigate, and look for documentation to support or deny the claimed facts in question. There are many sites on the web with the main intention of financial gain, rather than accuracy of information. I keep a shaker next to my keyboard and often regard (or reward) findings with a grain of salt.
 
Sometimes the person interviewed wasn't completely honest -- in 1901 Irish census my great grandmother gave her age as 31. She gave her husband's age as 65, said he was illiterate and feeble-minded -- neither of which was true (relatives remember the couple didn't talk to each other for many years ... I think there were some issues in that marriage!)

The other thing to keep in mind, as @TerryB says, is that the information recorded by the enumerator was taken from whomever was around at the residence to give it -- maybe a spouse, or a child, or a cousin who happened to be living there at the time. So there's not necessarily an intent to deceive, but often simply people giving information that's incorrect.

I see a lot of people scrambling to make trees that prove they're descended from Plantagenets or what have you.

Yep. I saw a tree where someone found that they were related to some English royal muckity-muck back in the middle ages, and then used the Royal Arms as an avatar for everyone else in the tree, right down to the present, thirty-something generations later. Sheesh.
 
Yep. I saw a tree where someone found that they were related to some English royal muckity-muck back in the middle ages, and then used the Royal Arms as an avatar for everyone else in the tree, right down to the present, thirty-something generations later. Sheesh.

I actually have a tree with a coat of arms. It's the Salmen line from Bilten, Bern, Switzerland, and their coat of arms features a fish, front and center. It's pretty awesome.
 
I take a different approach. I am not special because my ancestors were, they are special because I am.

:D
 
I actually have a tree with a coat of arms. It's the Salmen line from Bilten, Bern, Switzerland, and their coat of arms features a fish, front and center. It's pretty awesome.
That's fine if the folks so labeled are entitled to carry those arms under whatever rules apply under Swiss heraldry.

I have some armorial types in my tree, as well, but I think I'll hold off on having them emblazoned on my car door.

:frantic:
 
That's fine if the folks so labeled are entitled to carry those arms under whatever rules apply under Swiss heraldry.

I have some armorial types in my tree, as well, but I think I'll hold off on having them emblazoned on my car door.

:frantic:

Gaah! That's just nuts!

I actually had a cousin ask me this weekend if the Smith line had a coat of arms because he wanted to get it tattooed on his arm. Family pride, you know. I said that I had no idea because my brick wall g'g'g-grandpa was named William Smith and EVERYBODY in Massachusetts was named William Freaking Smith in 1818. Though if his name had actually been William Freaking Smith it might be easier to get some solid information on him.

My life: It is very tragic.
 
I actually had a cousin ask me this weekend if the Smith line had a coat of arms because he wanted to get it tattooed on his arm.

A lot of people have made a lot of money selling Americans keychains and other geegaws with "their" coats of arms on them, based solely on their surname. The rule should be, if you have to go to the kiosk in the mall to discover what your family arms are, you're not actually part of that family.
 
I tend to subscribe to the practical/reality based view of being descended from nobility.

That being that once to trace your line to your first "noble" ancestor you have a guy who became noble because he had a sword and homicidal tendencies.

:D
 
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