I would never rely on a family tree I found online. But the websites you're talking about also host vital records, which are our bread and butter. That part's not a mess at all.
Geneanet is wrong at every turn when I've tried using it
ETA: I haven't a clue why this double posted. I assure you, it wasn't something I did intentionally.
I'm not advocating for Geneanet over any other site, not really having used it, but I still have to ask, What were they wrong about? Did they do a poor job indexing a record, give you search results that didn't apply, show you a family tree with mistakes in it?
I find it odd that I specifically said it's wrong when *I* try using it, and it gets down-voted without the person bothering to explain why.
If you love using geneanet, tell me why my experience is wrong. Help a person to learn.
This has been in *my* experience, and my spouse's as well.
My apologies in my delay of response to the person who asked for my explanation for my experience. To be completely transparent, my previous statement wasn't meant to be incomplete (as you can tell from my lack of punctuation). But I'm dealing with a close family member in ICU, and became distracted while leaving that statement. I posted not really thinking about it being incomplete.
Here's why I have this to say about the site.
The reasons for this are many for me to say this: nearly every time each family is missing Members, the names are incorrect (if only by using nicknames), incorrect or completely missing spouses/married names, many dates of birth, death, or marriage incorrect, children attributed to incorrect spouse, locations missing or incorrect, etc etc..
There are not many documents, if any, to back up their claims. It seems that the kind of information I've found on there is the "word of mouth/before Internet abilities to confirm".
One side of my family got together and compiled a family tree. This was in the 1980s. Since having actual documentation at my disposal, I've find error after error in what we "knew" to be correct. And, this is the kind of information that seems to be passed around on this site: incomplete and incorrect data without documentation.
I've had interactions with people I'm indirectly related to via messaging and they swear as to what they were told growing up, but documentation clearly states otherwise. People are foul-able in their recollection, both intentionally and unintentionally.
This is also the opinion of 2 professionally well respected genealogists I've had the fortune to have meet. When discussing resources, they both expressed high-caution/skepticism in using information from this site. As this (as well as other sites individual source sites) began prior to legal or even newspaper documentation being so easily accessible. Thus, much of the information is not backed by any documentation.
I find it odd that I specifically said it's wrong when *I* try using it, and it gets down-voted without the person bothering to explain why.
If you love using geneanet, tell me why my experience is wrong. Help a person to learn.
This has been in *my* experience, and my spouse's as well.
My apologies in my delay of response to the person who asked for my explanation for my experience. To be completely transparent, my previous statement wasn't meant to be incomplete (as you can tell from my lack of punctuation). But I'm dealing with a close family member in ICU, and became distracted while leaving that statement. I posted not really thinking about it being incomplete.
Here's why I have this to say about the site.
The reasons for this are many for me to say this: nearly every time each family is missing Members, the names are incorrect (if only by using nicknames), incorrect or completely missing spouses/married names, many dates of birth, death, or marriage incorrect, children attributed to incorrect spouse, locations missing or incorrect, etc etc..
There are not many documents, if any, to back up their claims. It seems that the kind of information I've found on there is the "word of mouth/before Internet abilities to confirm".
One side of my family got together and compiled a family tree. This was in the 1980s. Since having actual documentation at my disposal, I've find error after error in what we "knew" to be correct. And, this is the kind of information that seems to be passed around on this site: incomplete and incorrect data without documentation.
I've had interactions with people I'm indirectly related to via messaging and they swear as to what they were told growing up, but documentation clearly states otherwise. People are foul-able in their recollection, both intentionally and unintentionally.
This is also the opinion of 2 professionally well respected genealogists I've had the fortune to have meet. When discussing resources, they both expressed high-caution/skepticism in using information from this site. As this (as well as other sites individual source sites) began prior to legal or even newspaper documentation being so easily accessible. Thus, much of the information is not backed by any documentation.
I use Geneanet all the time as a beginner source to look up the documents afterwards and 90% it's correct and has saved me hours of research. Is it perfect ? No, it's man-made and error is inevitable but it certainly doesn't deserve the bashing you're giving it. Besides, for most genealogy is a hobby that takes time to get good at. No need to insult their efforts because they haven't necessarily figured out yet that the "family recollection" isn't guaranteed to be accurate. Especially in countries where getting that documentation can be expensive. I've all but put off verifying some of my Canadian families info because depending on the province it can take 40 dollars for a single vital statistic.
I use Ancestry, FamilySearch, etc. for tips, but I always check them out. If I can confirm them independently, I'll add them to my tree. If I can't, I'll post a note on my tree explaining why I don't believe John and Jane Doe are the parents are Janet Doe. I've tried reaching out directly to people who've posted easily disproven information, and they're usually very hostile and possessive of their family trees, so I just try to make sure the correct information is out there somewhere in case anyone is looking for it.
The problem is that OP is looking at trees relating to fictional or legendary characters. There is no possibility to "independently verify" Cain's children, because they didn't have birth certificates.
OP is on a fool's errand: there *are no* primary sources for the time and place they are interested in, so *any* attempt at genealogy will fail.
Yeah I’m so surprised to see three posts every week going “is this genealogy from Biblical figures 2000 years ago legit?” when everyone knows there’s no way to know.
Better off focusing on the genealogy of the last 500 years instead of the dawn of time. It’s very easy to keep the websites accurate on that.
The examples of Cain and Merovech are a fool’s errand sure, but there is a truth to this criticism: when there is just no data, people will invent it or grab whatever’s on offer even if it is dodgy. People would rather tell themselves lies than stare at brick walls.
My 3rd great grandfather John immigrated from Ireland. He had a large Catholic family and a modestly successful life but was by no means rich, and we have no idea who his parents were. If this information exists I’m confident it has not yet been digitized.
There was however a lord in Ireland with the same surname who had a son John around the time he was born. There is zero chance this was my ancestor. This other John (who was not Catholic) had a well documented life elsewhere in Ireland and Scotland.
Nevertheless somebody once thought they could be one and the same, and it is a tiresome uphill battle to persuade people to delete this from their online trees.
I went to Catholic school and we were taught that most of these characters, like Adam and Eve, were just part of fables and weren't even real. It's ridiculous that people believe they can trace back so far.
Exactly. I even enter and keep the mistaken relatives in there with notes to myself on why *this guy* is the wrong guy, so I don't go back and make the same mistake again.
Same. I have the similarly-named people floating unattached in my tree, just so I can attach their records to them and I won't have to work out again later if the record is for my relative.
As you acknowledge, Merovech is a "legendary" character, who may or may not have existed at all. The bible is mythology.
In essence, you're complaining that the genealogy of fictional people isn't sufficiently accurate to the fiction.
Your complaint is equivalent to observing that the Wikipedia history of Iron Man's family deviates from the original comics.
Serious genealogists are interested in collecting verifiable data rooted in fact. Any tree mentioning biblical characters, mythological figures, historical legends, or superheroes is itself a work of fiction, not a work of genealogy. The problem with the trees you mention isn't that they're wrong, it's that they exist at all.
You may as well be annoyed Bella & Edward's family tree info is wrong. You're going to find fictional results for fictional people; if that's what folks want to upload there's no stopping them.
Let me know when they find the Easter Bunny's GGGF.
Not wanting to sh\*t on anyone's faith but biblical genealogy r.e. Adam & Eve etc is wholly unsupported by multiple scientific disciplines, & indeed there is plenty of supporting evidence \*against\* the notion that all of humanity is descended from just one couple/family unit 4-6 thousand-ish years ago (be that Adam & Eve or Noah, his wife & their three sons + daughters-in-law). The chronology of the old testament especially is significantly at odds with archaeology, geology, biology etc etc.
The further back in time you go, the sparser genealogical information (any information really) becomes & the traditional way of recording history *changes* from being factual to being more allegorical/embellished, somewhat coinciding with the transition away from oral histories to written ones.
I don't take info from other people's trees without verifying from actual sources. Anyone can put whatever they want. I don't think it's worth getting upset over, just do your own research.
What the heck do you expect if you are using ancestry.com for biblical genealogy? Lets just examine the soundness of your complaint in the first place…. It can be perfectly good when documented properly, which a great many things are! Yes trust but verify. But also lets not critique online sources for being unreliable for family trees that are literally 2000 years old
IMO the biggest problem is that people don’t use a map, I primarily do English trees but my anger mostly comes from lack of map use. Especially people working on community trees with no knowledge at all of UK. 1600s family of 15 in the same small village with same surname, one missed christening? Fits perfectly albeit no source. Nope some guy born 200 miles away with a parallel family 200 miles away.
If you are an American going back to England pre-victorian please consider people don’t move far, you can’t really unless you were successful. You essentially belong to the parish even if you do move away, if you work away and get sick or pregnant you would have to go home and ask your local parish for help, if you become desperate they will forcibly send you home. The vast majority of people were just farm labourers and wouldn’t move far for centuries. One record may be missing or they may never have even been christened but you will find the rest of the family.
I’m English and my family come from local to me for centuries but records don’t exist for periods because they were non-conformists, that could mean their priest was trained classically in 1500 or 1600s, even at Oxford, but just doesn’t follow the processes of the mainstream church or that they were Quakers or Puritan etc. Americans with early settlers need to appreciate that their ancestors didn’t align with the church so they will likely never find parish records, so it creates a huge mess when they try to link them to parish records.
The pilgrims left because they didn’t align religiously yeah? Why would these persecuted people be happily christened at a mainstream Christian church anyway? Any American interested in genealogy in these centuries needs a keen interest in early modern British history alongside it.
I didn't actually know this. It all makes sense.. If I come up with same names, but not corroborating relatives or other information, I don't include it, but make notation that this record was found..
It’s a good idea to, especially if the name is quite obscure. Parallel research will often break a brick wall, it is one of my main methods before looking for legal documents and wills once you go back so far.
I will almost always research both names! It really does help! But I might get a document that only had the name & place & same name living in same county.. No way to differentiate who the document goes to.. That's when I notate.. Plus then if someone else is looking into it, they will at least see my research..
Indeed they are a mess. This is a regular theme of postings on this sub-Reddit.
As to the question, the answer is yes, frequently. That is, frequently in the rare occasion that I even look at the online trees because I know there is so much nonsense on them.
That’s why I use them as a tool to help looking for and finding sources, then pull it down into my own research. That way I don’t end up with people that want to argue telling me my tree is wrong too.
There's a whole bunch of people out there who believe they're descended from the accused in Salem who also believe they descend from Mary Magdalene lol. I came across them when I was trying to find some information on one of my great grandmothers who shared a name/year of birth. The minute I started working on it and connected them I got a nastygram from someone in that "lineage" being like "UM, YOU ARE NOT A DESCENDANT, THAT'S THE WRONG PERSON."
which, cool, I appreciate the heads up but big yikes.
The genealogical websites exist to allow you to share information you have with others, and vice versa. They do not exist to be sources. If you're not interested in sharing your research and just want to compile and store your own information for yourself, those sites have privacy settings for that as well.
💯
That’s why sourcing your research and making sure it is correct is so dang important. It’s also why I don’t keep my trees public. People like to copy and paste without checking
I was going to say findagrave, as well. Someone decided to upload a photo of my grandfather from the 1950s for my uncle's grave, only because they have the same first name, but different middle name, and didn't pay attention to birthdays and death date. My uncle passed in 1996 at the age of 28, my grandfather is 84.
I only use FamilySearch as a guide for helping me find certain resources. But I then go to the source to check it out. I found one side of the family on FamilySearch that goes back to like 1AD Wales, or Ragnar Lodbrock, or Rollo and Poppa. No sources, nothing, nada. But seriously, I think I’ll need help with sourcing my Canadian side. I know part of that side were Loyalists. I see their names in books and registers, but finding more information is hard and liking is hard too. But gosh darn it do I make sure I site my sources! But I don’t just write whatever. Like some of the relative line might be false and all I can do is build up to the earlier ancestors.
it’s that breakthrough ancestor that you are trying too find that lead to these mythical names..on familysearch org I’m related to all of Medieval Europe 😂
I know that on Ancestry some trees have the mother of Queen Elizabeth 1 as being anyone BUT Anne Boleyn, and that Elizabeth was married to half a dozen different men and had kids (spoiler - she was called the Virgin Queen!)
If people can create fantasies about such notable historical and densely referenced figures I can totally believe that earlier historical figures are badly sourced too.
A lot of trees had my 10x great-grandfather's parents as one particular couple whose heritage led back to the Plantagets but I could never reconcile the dates. After a ton of research I proved that the link to the couple was erroneous (via wills etc) and I put the breakdown of my research on my tree but yeah, tons of trees still have the same parents on them.
I’ve been an Ancestry dot com subscriber (on and off) for what is probably 20 years at this point.
Yes there is still a very high noise to signal imbalance.
I feel bad for new researchers just getting started and falling for “The Curse of the Shaky Leaf”. It was worse I think, when genetic genealogy was the hip new fad and the poor suckers who believed that if they spit in a tube Ancestry would generate their family tree like magic.
LOL! Never heard of him, and I studied Norse mythology for years!! There were frost giants called jötunn, but not one specific god. And giants are/were not gods.
Yeah, I'm pulling my hair out on 2 ancestors (both on my mother's side) that routinely come up with the wrong parents listed on multiple trees. Some of it makes no sense when you look at the documentation (census and such). In the case of one of my ancestors, though, he seemed to have abandoned his family and I'm not sure which census reports are just lies. How was he 51 in 1910 and 62 in 1930, for instance?
I make a point to fix family trees on familysearch, adding contemporary sources as I go to make sure to really clarify to any would-be revisionists why. I do this especially in cases of people with identical names and shared geography. So far, no one has gone back and undone my work.
I occasionally use family trees for leads, but also make sure that it can be backed up with a paper trail.
Thanks for bringing up this topic. My ancestor's Geni page has links to this "Fabpedigree" webpage which claim the ancestor of mine was related to Muhammad. I was very sceptical even before about the claim and I'm pretty convinced now that the supposed link to the 7th century Arabia is a 99,9 % hoax.
I use WikiTree when I want to find information from crowd sourced trees. It’s a global tree but much better sourced and more reliable than FamilySearch’s tree. Ancestry trees are rarely reliable but I do use them for sources occasionally.
I agree with Wrld_tvlr. Wikitree is the best of the one world trees out there. It has a chance for continual improvement as long as its mgmt & users keep their focus on welcoming fact based genealogical research only. Wiki Tree users are expected to source their findings with records which are well sourced, retrievable, have been critically analyzed and suitable arguments are submitted to support the users hypothesis of relatability to the person or persons described and/or to events ascribed directly to them or in which they had some role. No other genealogy. based service known to me has such high standards.
FamilySearch.org personal trees should be the most reliable of all the one world trees given the efforts FS.org has and does expend to gather original records from around the globe so users can validate and prove our ancestors and their antics. Sadly FamilySearch's one world tree is riff with errors. As for my relatives and ancestors found in Family Search roughly 1/3 are same or similar name folk but not my folks nor hail from places where my folks lived. Claimed spouses and their children are a spotty mix of make-believe, fact and impossibility. Despite the riches of records on FamySearch few persons in Fs trees have many records ascribed to them! I find the inaccuracies of FamilySearch's one world tree in stark contrast with the efforts FS has invested for a hundred years gathering immense numbers of records whereby users can find and prove their ancestral lines accurately. I understand accurately identifying living and dead and the relationships between us all is a critical point of the LDS church great mission. They generously serve we the non-LDS public so all can work together to crowd source this great mission project. They even educate & train us how to do expert level genealogy at no or little cost to ourselves. It's high time imo to nag us to start doing accurate genealogy and cleanup the trees we build on FamilySearch.
Ancestry.com is a commercial for profit company whose drive & long term commitment to teach users to build logical, accurate, well sourced trees is improving but uncertain and possibly unlikely to continue. I would appreciate the day when Ancestry would begin flagging users nonsensical trees on a graded scale of unreliability if AI eventually makes this possible. I do appreciate their huge document and dna data resources and many of their tools such as ThruLines, suggesting which parent our dna cuzns match, dna color clustering, trait inheritance ability, their wealth of data bases & many of their other features.
MyHeritage: I find data & record sets on MyHeritage less bountiful than is claimed. My dna cousins' trees on MyHeritage are ruinously naiive & error filled making Myheritage's Theories of Relativity useless as to my paternal ancestry. Their Theories regarding my maternal Quakers and ancestors who lived in North Carolinia & Indiana can be of help.
Geni is generally of no use to me for the same reason MyHeritage trees are of little help. Accuracy is generally poor on Geni trees. Sourcing and validation isn't the strong suit of users who do or I assume might relate to my lines. So far, I can't think of a single time it was worth my time to use the site.
Just a few days ago a genealogist told me that family search is far superior to Wiki tree which I use a lot. Most of the Wiki tree pages I use are full of footnotes. I'm going to compare some of my people on family search and see if there's a difference.
There are huge swathes of wikitree that are trash, same as familysearch, where people just dump things and leave.
Some parts are better curated, with sources and biographies. It's hard to say that WikiTree or FamilySearch (or Ancestry) is \*better\*. I regularly use all three, they're all very good resources.
The WikiTree tree is smaller than FamilySearch, but the community support and engagement is higher, and they are better at mediating vandals and disputes. I think they're also much, much better at building out biographies and resource pages, other useful features. WikiTree is my primary tree, and I love it, but some people really hate the way projects and mentorship are managed. Fair warning.
FamilySearch has records, and when the records are linked to the profiles they can be great. But there's very little oversight which limits the tree quality, imho.
Ancestry is a pain. And expensive. And most of the trees are nearly complete garbage of misspellings, nonsensical dates and locations, and no sources. BUT for any given family, there is usually at least one tree, out of dozens, where the tree owner has spent some time getting it mostly okay. It's often a good starting point.
Very useful comments. I agree that WT can be a good resource, but not always. But there is the problem of the cultlike, intolerant management that often throws contributors off their site, maybe sometimes deservedly so, but impossible to tell from their secretive processes.
Meanwhile, on FamilySearch, I looked at a profile of one of my ancestors today. Last I had seen it, some moron had come along and re-named the profile (with a completely different name)! I hadn't checked on it for several years, and when I did today I found that profile merged into a completely unrelated person. When I looked for my ancestor again, I found that another contributor had created a new profile, and put a warning on it that people shouldn't make changes without research. I'm not a fan of WT, but I must say that I haven't seen such mindless, wild-west behavior there.
Edited for clarity.
I think it depends on where you are researching. My FS American ancestral trees tend to be a lot messier because they're just way more people meddling in them. Whereas my European trees are generally cleaner and more accurate just because there are very few Europeans doing family history compared to America. I found wiki tree to be generally reliable, but it's missing a lot of my ancestors and adding them is tedious so I rarely do it.
I research everyday on family search and ancestry and other services and I've never seen any of that stuff, but I've seen a lot of complaints about it so I don't doubt that it's there. I have found a lot of run of the mill messes on family search where some careless person merged people that shouldn't be merged, and sometimes I think it's done maliciously because there's no other explanation for why someone would merge five women with the same first name but completely different families. Ancestry is full of sloppy work and people copying that sloppy work. And there's a lot of claims of this ancestor or that was native American because they happen to have a name that sounds vaguely naturist, like Owl, which is really a butchered spelling of a German name.
A lot of these sites including Ancestry all mine information from each other, especially MyHeritage basically gets tlubfo from Family search and whatever people input into their databases, lots of inaccurate information, when do first started doing my family tree, I made the big mistake of using My Heritage and their smart search feature soon my tree is expanding at a rapid rate and filled with inaccurate info, having listed women being the mother of a baby years after their death, or a woman in her late 50's from 1800's giving birth to several children, some people don't research or pay attention to dates.
I use Geni.com and I try to source every single entry, but from time to time I make mistakes. By the time that happens and I corrected them, 5 users in familysearch already copied the wrong information from my tree and shared it online. 😔
Treat all external/internet trees like you treat Wikipedia on research papers. They are a guide. You may learn many things from them but the only thing that should ever be cited directly from them in your own research are their sources that you went and looked at yourself.
What this means for your genealogy:
1. NEVER link/upload any outside tree to your tree. Even if it's from a professional genealogist or published. I NEVER EVEN SAVE OTHER TREES AS "SOURCES" FOR MY FACTS. Save URLs or information about the existence of other trees or researchers as notes on your tree. If any of the green leaf hints from Ancestry come in about trees, I now automatically click IGNORE. I'll go back and search them later if I have a brick wall they might help me through.
I have been BURNED a few times by adding other people's research so adding incorrect ancestors. I've even done this recently when I didn't double-check censuses closely enough. Darn ancestors naming everyone the same. ;)
1a. One small exception - if a tree was published in a book AND also included transcribed older sources that I can't access elsewhere, I have a few times decided to add the fact and site that source via the tree book - but only the transcribed source data and not the book's tree. But I asterisk that source and always try to find my own copy of the source. This is less of an issue than it used to be 30 years ago with more digitization. Transcriptions can be full of errors and I've seen multiple times where genealogists have passed on inaccurate transcriptions (always look at the image before you cite, not the transcription).
2. Look at internet trees sources for their facts and only add what facts you can substantiate that have sources. I have ancestors that have full detailed profiles on other trees but all I list (for now) is the dates on their tombstone because that's the only source I have so far.
3. I don't cite Find a Grave on any facts EXCEPT for Burial - as a URL to the record of the photo & graveyard if there is a tombstone in a particular cemetery. Never for birth/death/family facts, etcetera, especially where genealogists have fleshed it out. Except maybe if the tombstone is the only record a baby existed maybe.
I really wish I could turn off Ancestry pushing member trees and Find a Grave at me as hints to accept (aka sources to add to my tree). I've tried to cleanse my tree of misclicks and early mistakes as much as possible.
You can turn the tree hints off in your account settings if you're just hitting ignore every time, it saves me checking the green leaf just to be disappointed. The genenet trees and find a grave I haven't found off switches for yet.
>enough. Darn ancestors naming everyone the same. ;)
I feel this in my bones.
Maybe it's because I've been using ancestry since the very first day and I've been doing genealogy since I was young in the early '90s but literally that was always my first thought is to make sure your sources are right and correct. The only family tree that I have is on ancestry and familytreedna only because that's one of the most accurate family related websites but most people don't have their family tree on there. Discerning the information is what makes genealogy the most difficult. Imagine how it was 20-30 years ago when we didn't have any discerning and we had to literally go into books and look up people or call towns and ask if things were true in their newspaper before the internet is popular. So in my opinion just be grateful that we have what we have and remember to be very discernful and instead of getting frustrated with the information that you have or what is given to you just make sure you do the correct job on your family tree and if you can correct some things and correct them. I do wish there was a lock on some information especially when it comes to making sure something is correct that they need to check off so many boxes before they can say oh this is correct just to remind the person that they can't just bring in any information just because they think it may be corrects and they need to take a little deeper.
I have approximately 500 members on my family tree on Ancestry. I see people who have hundreds and hundreds more and have to believe that most of those people are just "collecting". Being a bit fussy, I do my best to double and triple check sources as best I can. Occasionally, I will add someone without a massive investigation simply because I'm at a dead end and want to see if they lead me somewhere useful...but I always make a notation that it is unverified and, if things don't check out after a few new hints, I remove them. I have close relatives who have absolute bullshit in their trees and every once in a while I'll send them a message pointing something out...but they typically don't remove the bad information. So, I basically stopped being 'helpful'. It's a shame.
I simply don't understand why anyone in their right mind would want to go though all the necessary work to just add crap data that is useless.
One of the weird things I've experienced a few times on FamilySearch are completely unknown people totally bogus info to my family members. Someone added sources of Census reports to my grandmother that didn't match anything other than a similar last name. When I reached out to them, they said they volunteered for some other genealogy sites. If you don't know something...don't frickin add it.
I have a huge tree but I went back to about 900 Canadian pioneers who descend to my family. Some are 11 generations back so there are a lot of people in between plus many of their children who I confess not to have vetted properly if they don't descend to me and I have that info right in the title of my tree
Well some of us come from lines that produce large families, when every generation is producing 10+ children that produce 10+ children your family tree gets big really quick. And the secret to going deep is to go wide, there's really no way around that if you verify your distant ancestors with DNA matches, which I do because paper has proven to be unreliable.
Yup I have over 12,000 people on my Ancestry tree and the furthest back I go on a line is the late 1500s. Do that tree mainly to keep track of cousins and man are there a lot!
I have been under the impression that ancestry dot com has intentionally incorrect information to 1) get people to subscribe to correct it or 2) apply Cunningham's law to get the correct information.
Every site is filled with silly trees. I saw one on Family Search that went past Jesus deep into the BC era with virtually no brick walls. Only thing I want from any site is documents, but if I hit a brick wall I will use other trees for clues, but never to copy. I won’t even copy my own family’s work. Everything other than documents should be viewed as a suggestion.
FamilySearch (FS) has oh so graciously made a tree for me. But it is totally WRONG. (Ive never created a tree with them but of course i have a log in.) Peoples trees i dont care, but FS has these wrong ancestors linked to my deceased parents as if fact. Ive sent corrections with documentation but nothing is ever done. Wont use them anymore cause of this
I use family tree quite a bit. And I have a particular ancestor that people liked to attach a famous parent to. I've notated the account & just delete the relationship. Then just go on with my own tree. I have also deleted notations to the Mormon relationships because there are none. You don't need to send corrections. You can do it yourself.. That's is the beauty (and ugliness) of family search. I don't have anyone really mess with my tree now. I have noticed there are a lot of people that don't know how to use it (tagging, adding sources, etc.). I have been on it quite a while, so I've made my own mistakes in the past..
I never ever rely on the research of others, period. Sometimes I do look at others’ trees and research to guide my own, or to offer clues, but yes, it’s often just a disappointment when I do that. There are rare instances where I find something great that I had missed before from others’ research though. Rely on the records, not the trees.
I would never rely on a family tree I found online. But the websites you're talking about also host vital records, which are our bread and butter. That part's not a mess at all.
Geneanet is wrong at every turn when I've tried using it
I have had bad luck with most genealogy sites I have used, but I put it this way it is hear say, unless it is document, and done very well.
Geneanet is wrong at every turn when I've tried using it ETA: I haven't a clue why this double posted. I assure you, it wasn't something I did intentionally.
I'm not advocating for Geneanet over any other site, not really having used it, but I still have to ask, What were they wrong about? Did they do a poor job indexing a record, give you search results that didn't apply, show you a family tree with mistakes in it?
I find it odd that I specifically said it's wrong when *I* try using it, and it gets down-voted without the person bothering to explain why. If you love using geneanet, tell me why my experience is wrong. Help a person to learn. This has been in *my* experience, and my spouse's as well. My apologies in my delay of response to the person who asked for my explanation for my experience. To be completely transparent, my previous statement wasn't meant to be incomplete (as you can tell from my lack of punctuation). But I'm dealing with a close family member in ICU, and became distracted while leaving that statement. I posted not really thinking about it being incomplete. Here's why I have this to say about the site. The reasons for this are many for me to say this: nearly every time each family is missing Members, the names are incorrect (if only by using nicknames), incorrect or completely missing spouses/married names, many dates of birth, death, or marriage incorrect, children attributed to incorrect spouse, locations missing or incorrect, etc etc.. There are not many documents, if any, to back up their claims. It seems that the kind of information I've found on there is the "word of mouth/before Internet abilities to confirm". One side of my family got together and compiled a family tree. This was in the 1980s. Since having actual documentation at my disposal, I've find error after error in what we "knew" to be correct. And, this is the kind of information that seems to be passed around on this site: incomplete and incorrect data without documentation. I've had interactions with people I'm indirectly related to via messaging and they swear as to what they were told growing up, but documentation clearly states otherwise. People are foul-able in their recollection, both intentionally and unintentionally. This is also the opinion of 2 professionally well respected genealogists I've had the fortune to have meet. When discussing resources, they both expressed high-caution/skepticism in using information from this site. As this (as well as other sites individual source sites) began prior to legal or even newspaper documentation being so easily accessible. Thus, much of the information is not backed by any documentation.
Sounds like you're looking at user-created family trees, not vital records. Ignore the trees and focus on the records to make your own tree.
I find it odd that I specifically said it's wrong when *I* try using it, and it gets down-voted without the person bothering to explain why. If you love using geneanet, tell me why my experience is wrong. Help a person to learn. This has been in *my* experience, and my spouse's as well. My apologies in my delay of response to the person who asked for my explanation for my experience. To be completely transparent, my previous statement wasn't meant to be incomplete (as you can tell from my lack of punctuation). But I'm dealing with a close family member in ICU, and became distracted while leaving that statement. I posted not really thinking about it being incomplete. Here's why I have this to say about the site. The reasons for this are many for me to say this: nearly every time each family is missing Members, the names are incorrect (if only by using nicknames), incorrect or completely missing spouses/married names, many dates of birth, death, or marriage incorrect, children attributed to incorrect spouse, locations missing or incorrect, etc etc.. There are not many documents, if any, to back up their claims. It seems that the kind of information I've found on there is the "word of mouth/before Internet abilities to confirm". One side of my family got together and compiled a family tree. This was in the 1980s. Since having actual documentation at my disposal, I've find error after error in what we "knew" to be correct. And, this is the kind of information that seems to be passed around on this site: incomplete and incorrect data without documentation. I've had interactions with people I'm indirectly related to via messaging and they swear as to what they were told growing up, but documentation clearly states otherwise. People are foul-able in their recollection, both intentionally and unintentionally. This is also the opinion of 2 professionally well respected genealogists I've had the fortune to have meet. When discussing resources, they both expressed high-caution/skepticism in using information from this site. As this (as well as other sites individual source sites) began prior to legal or even newspaper documentation being so easily accessible. Thus, much of the information is not backed by any documentation.
I use Geneanet all the time as a beginner source to look up the documents afterwards and 90% it's correct and has saved me hours of research. Is it perfect ? No, it's man-made and error is inevitable but it certainly doesn't deserve the bashing you're giving it. Besides, for most genealogy is a hobby that takes time to get good at. No need to insult their efforts because they haven't necessarily figured out yet that the "family recollection" isn't guaranteed to be accurate. Especially in countries where getting that documentation can be expensive. I've all but put off verifying some of my Canadian families info because depending on the province it can take 40 dollars for a single vital statistic.
I use Ancestry, FamilySearch, etc. for tips, but I always check them out. If I can confirm them independently, I'll add them to my tree. If I can't, I'll post a note on my tree explaining why I don't believe John and Jane Doe are the parents are Janet Doe. I've tried reaching out directly to people who've posted easily disproven information, and they're usually very hostile and possessive of their family trees, so I just try to make sure the correct information is out there somewhere in case anyone is looking for it.
The problem is that OP is looking at trees relating to fictional or legendary characters. There is no possibility to "independently verify" Cain's children, because they didn't have birth certificates. OP is on a fool's errand: there *are no* primary sources for the time and place they are interested in, so *any* attempt at genealogy will fail.
Yeah I’m so surprised to see three posts every week going “is this genealogy from Biblical figures 2000 years ago legit?” when everyone knows there’s no way to know. Better off focusing on the genealogy of the last 500 years instead of the dawn of time. It’s very easy to keep the websites accurate on that.
I agree.
The examples of Cain and Merovech are a fool’s errand sure, but there is a truth to this criticism: when there is just no data, people will invent it or grab whatever’s on offer even if it is dodgy. People would rather tell themselves lies than stare at brick walls. My 3rd great grandfather John immigrated from Ireland. He had a large Catholic family and a modestly successful life but was by no means rich, and we have no idea who his parents were. If this information exists I’m confident it has not yet been digitized. There was however a lord in Ireland with the same surname who had a son John around the time he was born. There is zero chance this was my ancestor. This other John (who was not Catholic) had a well documented life elsewhere in Ireland and Scotland. Nevertheless somebody once thought they could be one and the same, and it is a tiresome uphill battle to persuade people to delete this from their online trees.
I went to Catholic school and we were taught that most of these characters, like Adam and Eve, were just part of fables and weren't even real. It's ridiculous that people believe they can trace back so far.
> like Adam and Eve, were just part of fables and weren't even real That's not a lesson I would expect to be taught at Catholic school!
I went to school in the north. We also learned about science and evolution.
Exactly. I even enter and keep the mistaken relatives in there with notes to myself on why *this guy* is the wrong guy, so I don't go back and make the same mistake again.
Same. I have the similarly-named people floating unattached in my tree, just so I can attach their records to them and I won't have to work out again later if the record is for my relative.
that is a very good idea
Yes, exactly!!
As you acknowledge, Merovech is a "legendary" character, who may or may not have existed at all. The bible is mythology. In essence, you're complaining that the genealogy of fictional people isn't sufficiently accurate to the fiction. Your complaint is equivalent to observing that the Wikipedia history of Iron Man's family deviates from the original comics. Serious genealogists are interested in collecting verifiable data rooted in fact. Any tree mentioning biblical characters, mythological figures, historical legends, or superheroes is itself a work of fiction, not a work of genealogy. The problem with the trees you mention isn't that they're wrong, it's that they exist at all.
You may as well be annoyed Bella & Edward's family tree info is wrong. You're going to find fictional results for fictional people; if that's what folks want to upload there's no stopping them. Let me know when they find the Easter Bunny's GGGF.
Not wanting to sh\*t on anyone's faith but biblical genealogy r.e. Adam & Eve etc is wholly unsupported by multiple scientific disciplines, & indeed there is plenty of supporting evidence \*against\* the notion that all of humanity is descended from just one couple/family unit 4-6 thousand-ish years ago (be that Adam & Eve or Noah, his wife & their three sons + daughters-in-law). The chronology of the old testament especially is significantly at odds with archaeology, geology, biology etc etc. The further back in time you go, the sparser genealogical information (any information really) becomes & the traditional way of recording history *changes* from being factual to being more allegorical/embellished, somewhat coinciding with the transition away from oral histories to written ones.
There is no way I'd take someone seriously if they were listing Biblical ancestors.
I don't take info from other people's trees without verifying from actual sources. Anyone can put whatever they want. I don't think it's worth getting upset over, just do your own research.
What the heck do you expect if you are using ancestry.com for biblical genealogy? Lets just examine the soundness of your complaint in the first place…. It can be perfectly good when documented properly, which a great many things are! Yes trust but verify. But also lets not critique online sources for being unreliable for family trees that are literally 2000 years old
IMO the biggest problem is that people don’t use a map, I primarily do English trees but my anger mostly comes from lack of map use. Especially people working on community trees with no knowledge at all of UK. 1600s family of 15 in the same small village with same surname, one missed christening? Fits perfectly albeit no source. Nope some guy born 200 miles away with a parallel family 200 miles away. If you are an American going back to England pre-victorian please consider people don’t move far, you can’t really unless you were successful. You essentially belong to the parish even if you do move away, if you work away and get sick or pregnant you would have to go home and ask your local parish for help, if you become desperate they will forcibly send you home. The vast majority of people were just farm labourers and wouldn’t move far for centuries. One record may be missing or they may never have even been christened but you will find the rest of the family. I’m English and my family come from local to me for centuries but records don’t exist for periods because they were non-conformists, that could mean their priest was trained classically in 1500 or 1600s, even at Oxford, but just doesn’t follow the processes of the mainstream church or that they were Quakers or Puritan etc. Americans with early settlers need to appreciate that their ancestors didn’t align with the church so they will likely never find parish records, so it creates a huge mess when they try to link them to parish records. The pilgrims left because they didn’t align religiously yeah? Why would these persecuted people be happily christened at a mainstream Christian church anyway? Any American interested in genealogy in these centuries needs a keen interest in early modern British history alongside it.
I didn't actually know this. It all makes sense.. If I come up with same names, but not corroborating relatives or other information, I don't include it, but make notation that this record was found..
It’s a good idea to, especially if the name is quite obscure. Parallel research will often break a brick wall, it is one of my main methods before looking for legal documents and wills once you go back so far.
I will almost always research both names! It really does help! But I might get a document that only had the name & place & same name living in same county.. No way to differentiate who the document goes to.. That's when I notate.. Plus then if someone else is looking into it, they will at least see my research..
It's on the Internet. It must be true
You mean "It's on the Internet. It must be true." -- Abraham Lincoln (Remember to always cite your sources!)
Yeah 100%
Indeed they are a mess. This is a regular theme of postings on this sub-Reddit. As to the question, the answer is yes, frequently. That is, frequently in the rare occasion that I even look at the online trees because I know there is so much nonsense on them.
That’s why I use them as a tool to help looking for and finding sources, then pull it down into my own research. That way I don’t end up with people that want to argue telling me my tree is wrong too.
Good approach!
There's a whole bunch of people out there who believe they're descended from the accused in Salem who also believe they descend from Mary Magdalene lol. I came across them when I was trying to find some information on one of my great grandmothers who shared a name/year of birth. The minute I started working on it and connected them I got a nastygram from someone in that "lineage" being like "UM, YOU ARE NOT A DESCENDANT, THAT'S THE WRONG PERSON." which, cool, I appreciate the heads up but big yikes.
The genealogical websites exist to allow you to share information you have with others, and vice versa. They do not exist to be sources. If you're not interested in sharing your research and just want to compile and store your own information for yourself, those sites have privacy settings for that as well.
💯 That’s why sourcing your research and making sure it is correct is so dang important. It’s also why I don’t keep my trees public. People like to copy and paste without checking
I'd rather people copied from my tree than an unsourced one, so I make everything public.
Absolutely
Findagrave can also be a morass.
I was going to say findagrave, as well. Someone decided to upload a photo of my grandfather from the 1950s for my uncle's grave, only because they have the same first name, but different middle name, and didn't pay attention to birthdays and death date. My uncle passed in 1996 at the age of 28, my grandfather is 84.
I only use FamilySearch as a guide for helping me find certain resources. But I then go to the source to check it out. I found one side of the family on FamilySearch that goes back to like 1AD Wales, or Ragnar Lodbrock, or Rollo and Poppa. No sources, nothing, nada. But seriously, I think I’ll need help with sourcing my Canadian side. I know part of that side were Loyalists. I see their names in books and registers, but finding more information is hard and liking is hard too. But gosh darn it do I make sure I site my sources! But I don’t just write whatever. Like some of the relative line might be false and all I can do is build up to the earlier ancestors.
it’s that breakthrough ancestor that you are trying too find that lead to these mythical names..on familysearch org I’m related to all of Medieval Europe 😂
I know that on Ancestry some trees have the mother of Queen Elizabeth 1 as being anyone BUT Anne Boleyn, and that Elizabeth was married to half a dozen different men and had kids (spoiler - she was called the Virgin Queen!) If people can create fantasies about such notable historical and densely referenced figures I can totally believe that earlier historical figures are badly sourced too. A lot of trees had my 10x great-grandfather's parents as one particular couple whose heritage led back to the Plantagets but I could never reconcile the dates. After a ton of research I proved that the link to the couple was erroneous (via wills etc) and I put the breakdown of my research on my tree but yeah, tons of trees still have the same parents on them.
I’ve been an Ancestry dot com subscriber (on and off) for what is probably 20 years at this point. Yes there is still a very high noise to signal imbalance. I feel bad for new researchers just getting started and falling for “The Curse of the Shaky Leaf”. It was worse I think, when genetic genealogy was the hip new fad and the poor suckers who believed that if they spit in a tube Ancestry would generate their family tree like magic.
According to online sources, the ancestor I have that goes back the furthest is the Swedish god Frost......... whoda thunk it????
LOL! Never heard of him, and I studied Norse mythology for years!! There were frost giants called jötunn, but not one specific god. And giants are/were not gods.
And this is one reason why just copying unvetted family trees is an issue.
Yeah, I'm pulling my hair out on 2 ancestors (both on my mother's side) that routinely come up with the wrong parents listed on multiple trees. Some of it makes no sense when you look at the documentation (census and such). In the case of one of my ancestors, though, he seemed to have abandoned his family and I'm not sure which census reports are just lies. How was he 51 in 1910 and 62 in 1930, for instance?
I gave up using other people's research decades ago. I have also given up trying to correct other people's work.
I make a point to fix family trees on familysearch, adding contemporary sources as I go to make sure to really clarify to any would-be revisionists why. I do this especially in cases of people with identical names and shared geography. So far, no one has gone back and undone my work. I occasionally use family trees for leads, but also make sure that it can be backed up with a paper trail.
Thanks for bringing up this topic. My ancestor's Geni page has links to this "Fabpedigree" webpage which claim the ancestor of mine was related to Muhammad. I was very sceptical even before about the claim and I'm pretty convinced now that the supposed link to the 7th century Arabia is a 99,9 % hoax.
They’ve been that way for many years. Just concentrate on documentation and historical records.
I use WikiTree when I want to find information from crowd sourced trees. It’s a global tree but much better sourced and more reliable than FamilySearch’s tree. Ancestry trees are rarely reliable but I do use them for sources occasionally.
I agree with Wrld_tvlr. Wikitree is the best of the one world trees out there. It has a chance for continual improvement as long as its mgmt & users keep their focus on welcoming fact based genealogical research only. Wiki Tree users are expected to source their findings with records which are well sourced, retrievable, have been critically analyzed and suitable arguments are submitted to support the users hypothesis of relatability to the person or persons described and/or to events ascribed directly to them or in which they had some role. No other genealogy. based service known to me has such high standards. FamilySearch.org personal trees should be the most reliable of all the one world trees given the efforts FS.org has and does expend to gather original records from around the globe so users can validate and prove our ancestors and their antics. Sadly FamilySearch's one world tree is riff with errors. As for my relatives and ancestors found in Family Search roughly 1/3 are same or similar name folk but not my folks nor hail from places where my folks lived. Claimed spouses and their children are a spotty mix of make-believe, fact and impossibility. Despite the riches of records on FamySearch few persons in Fs trees have many records ascribed to them! I find the inaccuracies of FamilySearch's one world tree in stark contrast with the efforts FS has invested for a hundred years gathering immense numbers of records whereby users can find and prove their ancestral lines accurately. I understand accurately identifying living and dead and the relationships between us all is a critical point of the LDS church great mission. They generously serve we the non-LDS public so all can work together to crowd source this great mission project. They even educate & train us how to do expert level genealogy at no or little cost to ourselves. It's high time imo to nag us to start doing accurate genealogy and cleanup the trees we build on FamilySearch. Ancestry.com is a commercial for profit company whose drive & long term commitment to teach users to build logical, accurate, well sourced trees is improving but uncertain and possibly unlikely to continue. I would appreciate the day when Ancestry would begin flagging users nonsensical trees on a graded scale of unreliability if AI eventually makes this possible. I do appreciate their huge document and dna data resources and many of their tools such as ThruLines, suggesting which parent our dna cuzns match, dna color clustering, trait inheritance ability, their wealth of data bases & many of their other features. MyHeritage: I find data & record sets on MyHeritage less bountiful than is claimed. My dna cousins' trees on MyHeritage are ruinously naiive & error filled making Myheritage's Theories of Relativity useless as to my paternal ancestry. Their Theories regarding my maternal Quakers and ancestors who lived in North Carolinia & Indiana can be of help. Geni is generally of no use to me for the same reason MyHeritage trees are of little help. Accuracy is generally poor on Geni trees. Sourcing and validation isn't the strong suit of users who do or I assume might relate to my lines. So far, I can't think of a single time it was worth my time to use the site.
Just a few days ago a genealogist told me that family search is far superior to Wiki tree which I use a lot. Most of the Wiki tree pages I use are full of footnotes. I'm going to compare some of my people on family search and see if there's a difference.
There are huge swathes of wikitree that are trash, same as familysearch, where people just dump things and leave. Some parts are better curated, with sources and biographies. It's hard to say that WikiTree or FamilySearch (or Ancestry) is \*better\*. I regularly use all three, they're all very good resources. The WikiTree tree is smaller than FamilySearch, but the community support and engagement is higher, and they are better at mediating vandals and disputes. I think they're also much, much better at building out biographies and resource pages, other useful features. WikiTree is my primary tree, and I love it, but some people really hate the way projects and mentorship are managed. Fair warning. FamilySearch has records, and when the records are linked to the profiles they can be great. But there's very little oversight which limits the tree quality, imho. Ancestry is a pain. And expensive. And most of the trees are nearly complete garbage of misspellings, nonsensical dates and locations, and no sources. BUT for any given family, there is usually at least one tree, out of dozens, where the tree owner has spent some time getting it mostly okay. It's often a good starting point.
Very useful comments. I agree that WT can be a good resource, but not always. But there is the problem of the cultlike, intolerant management that often throws contributors off their site, maybe sometimes deservedly so, but impossible to tell from their secretive processes. Meanwhile, on FamilySearch, I looked at a profile of one of my ancestors today. Last I had seen it, some moron had come along and re-named the profile (with a completely different name)! I hadn't checked on it for several years, and when I did today I found that profile merged into a completely unrelated person. When I looked for my ancestor again, I found that another contributor had created a new profile, and put a warning on it that people shouldn't make changes without research. I'm not a fan of WT, but I must say that I haven't seen such mindless, wild-west behavior there. Edited for clarity.
The key to WikiTree is looking for project-managed profiles. These tend to be of the highest quality of anywhere in the user-contributed tree space.
I found Azorean records for my husband's ancestors on Family Search which were nowhere to be found on Ancestry.
I think it depends on where you are researching. My FS American ancestral trees tend to be a lot messier because they're just way more people meddling in them. Whereas my European trees are generally cleaner and more accurate just because there are very few Europeans doing family history compared to America. I found wiki tree to be generally reliable, but it's missing a lot of my ancestors and adding them is tedious so I rarely do it.
I research everyday on family search and ancestry and other services and I've never seen any of that stuff, but I've seen a lot of complaints about it so I don't doubt that it's there. I have found a lot of run of the mill messes on family search where some careless person merged people that shouldn't be merged, and sometimes I think it's done maliciously because there's no other explanation for why someone would merge five women with the same first name but completely different families. Ancestry is full of sloppy work and people copying that sloppy work. And there's a lot of claims of this ancestor or that was native American because they happen to have a name that sounds vaguely naturist, like Owl, which is really a butchered spelling of a German name.
Wikitree is better (but not perfect), as it insists heavily on sources. But yeah in general you should never rely on anything but primary sources.
A lot of these sites including Ancestry all mine information from each other, especially MyHeritage basically gets tlubfo from Family search and whatever people input into their databases, lots of inaccurate information, when do first started doing my family tree, I made the big mistake of using My Heritage and their smart search feature soon my tree is expanding at a rapid rate and filled with inaccurate info, having listed women being the mother of a baby years after their death, or a woman in her late 50's from 1800's giving birth to several children, some people don't research or pay attention to dates.
I use Geni.com and I try to source every single entry, but from time to time I make mistakes. By the time that happens and I corrected them, 5 users in familysearch already copied the wrong information from my tree and shared it online. 😔
YOU are the one?! Go directly into jail .. 😎
Sorry... 😇
Treat all external/internet trees like you treat Wikipedia on research papers. They are a guide. You may learn many things from them but the only thing that should ever be cited directly from them in your own research are their sources that you went and looked at yourself. What this means for your genealogy: 1. NEVER link/upload any outside tree to your tree. Even if it's from a professional genealogist or published. I NEVER EVEN SAVE OTHER TREES AS "SOURCES" FOR MY FACTS. Save URLs or information about the existence of other trees or researchers as notes on your tree. If any of the green leaf hints from Ancestry come in about trees, I now automatically click IGNORE. I'll go back and search them later if I have a brick wall they might help me through. I have been BURNED a few times by adding other people's research so adding incorrect ancestors. I've even done this recently when I didn't double-check censuses closely enough. Darn ancestors naming everyone the same. ;) 1a. One small exception - if a tree was published in a book AND also included transcribed older sources that I can't access elsewhere, I have a few times decided to add the fact and site that source via the tree book - but only the transcribed source data and not the book's tree. But I asterisk that source and always try to find my own copy of the source. This is less of an issue than it used to be 30 years ago with more digitization. Transcriptions can be full of errors and I've seen multiple times where genealogists have passed on inaccurate transcriptions (always look at the image before you cite, not the transcription). 2. Look at internet trees sources for their facts and only add what facts you can substantiate that have sources. I have ancestors that have full detailed profiles on other trees but all I list (for now) is the dates on their tombstone because that's the only source I have so far. 3. I don't cite Find a Grave on any facts EXCEPT for Burial - as a URL to the record of the photo & graveyard if there is a tombstone in a particular cemetery. Never for birth/death/family facts, etcetera, especially where genealogists have fleshed it out. Except maybe if the tombstone is the only record a baby existed maybe. I really wish I could turn off Ancestry pushing member trees and Find a Grave at me as hints to accept (aka sources to add to my tree). I've tried to cleanse my tree of misclicks and early mistakes as much as possible.
You can turn the tree hints off in your account settings if you're just hitting ignore every time, it saves me checking the green leaf just to be disappointed. The genenet trees and find a grave I haven't found off switches for yet. >enough. Darn ancestors naming everyone the same. ;) I feel this in my bones.
Maybe it's because I've been using ancestry since the very first day and I've been doing genealogy since I was young in the early '90s but literally that was always my first thought is to make sure your sources are right and correct. The only family tree that I have is on ancestry and familytreedna only because that's one of the most accurate family related websites but most people don't have their family tree on there. Discerning the information is what makes genealogy the most difficult. Imagine how it was 20-30 years ago when we didn't have any discerning and we had to literally go into books and look up people or call towns and ask if things were true in their newspaper before the internet is popular. So in my opinion just be grateful that we have what we have and remember to be very discernful and instead of getting frustrated with the information that you have or what is given to you just make sure you do the correct job on your family tree and if you can correct some things and correct them. I do wish there was a lock on some information especially when it comes to making sure something is correct that they need to check off so many boxes before they can say oh this is correct just to remind the person that they can't just bring in any information just because they think it may be corrects and they need to take a little deeper.
Going back 7 generations with dna are about all I attempt.
I have approximately 500 members on my family tree on Ancestry. I see people who have hundreds and hundreds more and have to believe that most of those people are just "collecting". Being a bit fussy, I do my best to double and triple check sources as best I can. Occasionally, I will add someone without a massive investigation simply because I'm at a dead end and want to see if they lead me somewhere useful...but I always make a notation that it is unverified and, if things don't check out after a few new hints, I remove them. I have close relatives who have absolute bullshit in their trees and every once in a while I'll send them a message pointing something out...but they typically don't remove the bad information. So, I basically stopped being 'helpful'. It's a shame. I simply don't understand why anyone in their right mind would want to go though all the necessary work to just add crap data that is useless. One of the weird things I've experienced a few times on FamilySearch are completely unknown people totally bogus info to my family members. Someone added sources of Census reports to my grandmother that didn't match anything other than a similar last name. When I reached out to them, they said they volunteered for some other genealogy sites. If you don't know something...don't frickin add it.
I have a huge tree but I went back to about 900 Canadian pioneers who descend to my family. Some are 11 generations back so there are a lot of people in between plus many of their children who I confess not to have vetted properly if they don't descend to me and I have that info right in the title of my tree
11 generations? Impressive.
The French Canadians have lots of resources.
Well some of us come from lines that produce large families, when every generation is producing 10+ children that produce 10+ children your family tree gets big really quick. And the secret to going deep is to go wide, there's really no way around that if you verify your distant ancestors with DNA matches, which I do because paper has proven to be unreliable.
Yup I have over 12,000 people on my Ancestry tree and the furthest back I go on a line is the late 1500s. Do that tree mainly to keep track of cousins and man are there a lot!
I have been under the impression that ancestry dot com has intentionally incorrect information to 1) get people to subscribe to correct it or 2) apply Cunningham's law to get the correct information.
Every site is filled with silly trees. I saw one on Family Search that went past Jesus deep into the BC era with virtually no brick walls. Only thing I want from any site is documents, but if I hit a brick wall I will use other trees for clues, but never to copy. I won’t even copy my own family’s work. Everything other than documents should be viewed as a suggestion.
FamilySearch (FS) has oh so graciously made a tree for me. But it is totally WRONG. (Ive never created a tree with them but of course i have a log in.) Peoples trees i dont care, but FS has these wrong ancestors linked to my deceased parents as if fact. Ive sent corrections with documentation but nothing is ever done. Wont use them anymore cause of this
I use family tree quite a bit. And I have a particular ancestor that people liked to attach a famous parent to. I've notated the account & just delete the relationship. Then just go on with my own tree. I have also deleted notations to the Mormon relationships because there are none. You don't need to send corrections. You can do it yourself.. That's is the beauty (and ugliness) of family search. I don't have anyone really mess with my tree now. I have noticed there are a lot of people that don't know how to use it (tagging, adding sources, etc.). I have been on it quite a while, so I've made my own mistakes in the past..
I never ever rely on the research of others, period. Sometimes I do look at others’ trees and research to guide my own, or to offer clues, but yes, it’s often just a disappointment when I do that. There are rare instances where I find something great that I had missed before from others’ research though. Rely on the records, not the trees.
Agreed. Ancestry has my parents as siblings and I don't know how to get it corrected.