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Census Lookups General Lookups => Census and Resource Discussion => Topic started by: Jomot on Saturday 07 November 15 23:08 GMT (UK)
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Furious isn't the word.......
A tree owned by someone who describes her experience level as "Advanced" has wrongly included my husbands family in her tree. Usual story of someone with the right name and 'close enough' birth details being shoe-horned in and made to fit. Lets call him 'John'.
This 'advanced' researcher thinks John was her GGG Grandmother's brother. He wasn't. It took me all of 30-seconds to prove that 'her' John died in 1859 - the burial image is on familysearch and contains enough detail to leave no doubt - but despite this she found someone of the same name marrying 40 miles away the following year & shoved him into her tree. This was my husbands GG Grandfather.
So far so normal, but.....
This person then continued researching John's family for another 3 generations and amongst other things has made public the death certificate of one of his grandsons who died in a county lunatic asylum of general paralysis of the insane, aka late stage syphilis.
I already knew this but had deliberately kept it to myself - he was married with young children when he died (early 1920's) and so rightly or wrongly the family were always told that he had died as a consequence of wounds sustained in the war. His grandchildren & great grandchildren still believe this. So does his niece - my very much still alive MiL - whose details this 'advanced' researcher has also published.
So this stupid woman couldn't be bothered to purchase a marriage certificate or check for a burial, but thinks its OK to publish a death certificate of someone she wrongly thinks she is distantly related to (cousin 3 times removed?). Why? Presumably because she seems to find some kind of thrill in how & where he died and so wants the world to know. How pathetic can you get? And no doubt it will be copied by numerous other people - all equally unrelated to the man in question but equally 'thrilled' by the scandal of his doubtless slow and pitiful death.
I have contacted her and politely given her the correct information, as a result of which she has now stopped accepting messages.
Like I said, furious isn't the word...
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I'm not surprised that you are furious. Did she actually buy the certificate or has she copied that from someone else?
If she wont accept your messages, I'd make a point of commenting on all the parts of her tree that are wrong, stating that this is the wrong family and that the common ancestor died in 1859. At least that way you are alerting others, and who knows you might force her to make her tree private, so at least others won't see it.
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Can you get in touch with Ancestry and explain what has happened and get them to remove this man from her tree?
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I'm not surprised that you are furious. Did she actually buy the certificate or has she copied that from someone else?
If she wont accept your messages, I'd make a point of commenting on all the parts of her tree that are wrong, stating that this is the wrong family and that the common ancestor died in 1859. At least that way you are alerting others, and who knows you might force her to make her tree private, so at least others won't see it.
I'm assuming she bought the certificate as it certainly doesn't appear on any other online tree.
It appears she has now made the tree private again - or maybe just blocked me from seeing it if that's possible (??) - but before she did I managed to add some notes with links to the familysearch burial image and my Postem to the marriage record on FreeBMD.
Can you get in touch with Ancestry and explain what has happened and get them to remove this man from her tree?
I'm certainly going to try, but as he's clearly deceased I doubt I'll get very far unfortunately.
Still quietly seething >:(
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I have contacted her and politely given her the correct information, as a result of which she has now stopped accepting messages.
Hi Jomot,
I think her actions says it all.
You need to take a step back really & let them "get on with it".
At the end of the day, you know the truth/facts.
These people are "name collectors" & "scandal hunters" ;D
I have seen many trees with a lot of my family detailed including my own father who now seems to descend from someone unknown to me yet I have all details such as BMD's, baptisms & census records from my father's birth right back to late 1700's.
I thought about "putting them in the picture" as they had obviously all copied other trees but the info. is so distorted on each tree (none of which is correct).........I decided "what's the point".
I have spent a fortune finding all the info. myself & decided to leave as is.
I haven't looked at what's on the branches of them as I now couldn't care.
However, the small amount I have online will stay that way........I'm adding no more to it.
I would be so happy if someone contacted me to point out a mistake I'd made but some people don't want to know.......they think they're right & nothing will budge them.
Take pride in your own work, knowing it's properly researched & ignore the faults you have found.
At the end of the day it's not affecting your tree but theirs.
Annie
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Somebody made a mistake on their tree, a not uncommon occurrence. You pointed it out. If they don't wish to accept your input, then that's that. You haven't lost anything except a bit of time. As for the syphilis, nearly four generations have passed. Surely it doesn't still qualify as a scandal that must be hidden.
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Surely it doesn't still qualify as a scandal that must be hidden.
His niece (my MiL) is still living and has a treasured photograph of him wearing his uniform (he looked a lot like Richard Gere). She is immensely proud of his sacrifice, fighting for the entire duration of the war and then dying of his wounds, so yes, to her it probably would still qualify as deeply shocking & upsetting, especially today of all days.
On a logical level I know you're right, and Annie's reply is also kind & sensible, but I'm in defensive mode for my MiL at the moment - calm & logic will kick in later no doubt ;)
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I will be honest here..........
No matter how close or distant a relative on my tree was, I wouldn't be advertising a fate like that either Jomot in your defence. ADDED (My own personal decision).
I can understand your anguish as his niece is still living & that would be somewhat a shock to say the least & she wouldn't believe it but it would affect her as she would run over it in her head & grieve her.
Annie
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Perhaps, just keep it hidden from your MIL. I have one hidden on my tree that died of the same thing. There was no treatment back then. I've told one family member and we are still amazed he didn't pass it on to his decendants. Took me ages to work out what paralysis of the insane was, just tell her it was paralysis of the insides (if it is hard to read) then she will think it was something else.
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Has anything really changed, apart from the fact that you now know that someone else knows how your MIL's uncle died? You said that you knew the truth ages ago, but chose to keep it from her, so is there any reason to think that she or his other relatives will now find out? Presumably you haven't put his death certificate on your tree , so unless any of his relatives are members of Ancestry there is no way they could see it, especially if her tree is now private.
It is very annoying, but you've done your best to correct things.
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The trouble is that so many just copy a tree down ....there were nearly ten wrong trees of one family and I started writing comments to stop others going down the wrong path....no comments.it was gratifying to see about three trees which were the same as mine ....I was beginning to think I was wrong but knew with all the B M Ds I had bought that I wasn't.
I wonder if they know how to research properly and be willing to spend money on Certs etc.
I get annoyed and frustrated
Ringrose
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Jomot. I am with you on this.
And i do think his nieces peace of mind matters.
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Don't want to offend anyone but I am really on the fence here.
You seem to think that should anyone reveal the truth to your mother in law she might be upset at the cause of death, however, she might also be upset to think that the truth has been kept from her all this time - I have had this happen.
Also though, that death certificate is out there in the public domain - after all that's what we as genealogists are always fighting for - and any number of people could already know the situation but just not have put the info on a public family tree.
After all your mother in law does not bear one jot of responsibility for his cause of death.
Pheno
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I'm with you Pheno.
I think there are too many problems within families caused by people trying to keep secrets :o
Especially when those secrets involve facts that are in the public domain.
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I'm with you Pheno.
I think there are too many problems within families caused by people trying to keep secrets :o
Especially when those secrets involve facts that are in the public domain.
I can relate to that. During my early forays into genealogy I discovered a cousin that I did not know I had, and my being in regular contact with her has caused the rest of my aunts siblings to close ranks against me and this "imposter". She has been in contact with her half siblings so I see no reason to deny her existance. I can't ask mum and dad as they have long since passed on, but what dear old granny told her kids their sister had disappeared to would be interesting. ;D
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I would not say I rant about it but I see quite a lot of careless errors in Trees. Durham, North Carolina for instance in a tree when the people have lived and died in County Durham, England.
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"that death certificate is out there in the public domain"
Yes, and furthermore, no one owns their ancestors. Those ancestors are historical figures, albeit in most cases very minor ones. Anyone is free to investigate them for whatever reason using information that is publicly available. No one would think to say otherwise if the ancestor happened to be a famous individual.
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I would not say I rant about it but I see quite a lot of careless errors in Trees. Durham, North Carolina for instance in a tree when the people have lived and died in County Durham, England.
I used the "rant" word from your thread title! ;D
As I have said many times, on several threads, that is the fault of the tree owners who don't put a country name after the town name!
Ancestry, being a US company, defaults to the nearest equivalent American town (or county!).
Yes, I think Ancestry care wrong, and the default from a .co.uk search should be the UK name (ditto for Australia, Canada, or wherever!).
But essentially, it is user error. After all, how hard is it to select the correct town from the drop-down list, or to simply enter "England" after the town or county name?
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The tree owner has now removed the unrelated people from her tree, including the death certificate that caused me to freak / rant in the first place.
I agree with all of the comments about the problems caused by keeping secrets, but when you are dealing with people now in their 80's & 90's then it is not our place to force the truth upon them - especially if we know it would cause them unnecessary distress.
Anyway, once (my own) common sense prevailed I rationalised that the person I was 'protecting' would never see it anyway as she doesn't even own a computer, but the knowledge of the distress it would have caused her obliterated all rational thought for an hour or two. I believe its called 'panic' :-X
Thanks all for your comments - another lively debate as always :)
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That's interesting that she has now removed it. It does look, as if given time to think and check, she realised that she was wrong. What a pity she didn't save you all the worry by replying to your message thanking you and saying she was going to check it and would get back to you.
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I'm not surprised that you are furious. Did she actually buy the certificate or has she copied that from someone else?
If she wont accept your messages, I'd make a point of commenting on all the parts of her tree that are wrong, stating that this is the wrong family and that the common ancestor died in 1859. At least that way you are alerting others, and who knows you might force her to make her tree private, so at least others won't see it.
That is exactly what I done when a certain person took photo's from my tree and other information I kept leaving comments and she eventually removed my photos ..I made mine private after that
Rosie
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Perhaps the owner of the tree is a member of roots chat and saw this thread.
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Perhaps the owner of the tree is a member of roots chat and saw this thread.
That thought crossed my mind. ;D ;D ;D
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The only other thing to consider is that there is not necessarily any fault to be allocated to someone who has the misfortune to die from the effects of syphilis.
We all know from our researches that our ancestors weren't quite so rigid in terms of who they had relations with, in and out of marriage, as some people would have us think. Your ancestor might have been in contact with a woman who had been given the disease by another man.
And in those circumstances, you might think your ancestor was quite blameless.
One can never tell - there are many stories one could imagine, rendering your ancestor simply terribly unlucky.
Thank goodness for antibiotics, is what I say.
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Now that the initial anger, panic and distress has passed its probably time to be a little kinder to the a-tree owner.
Many (if not all) our ancestors have uncomfortable truths that are interesting to some family researchers and positively upsetting to others, regardless of the length of time passed. I suspect one only digs up the uncomfortable when one is searching for it. Hence if one is not researching then one won't find......
I'm sure we have all headed down the wrong path at one time or another (or lots of times) in during our research. The tree owner appears to have originally been very convinced of the connection - to the point where he/she went to the trouble to purchase or get hold of the DC. In the end the tree owner appears to have accepted that the ancestor connection is wrong and taken steps to correct it. So a pat on the back to the tree owner.
Perhaps the tree owner found the tone of the contact somewhat aggressive - emails and posts can sometimes be misread/mis interpreted by the receiver - hence the "blocking".
Seems today is my "be kinder" day .....that's new!
Cocksie
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I think the fault behind this is the Ancestry 'hints'. Some users go on a click-fest.
I think she's fixed it now but a Canadian researcher attached my G-Grandfather who was born, worked and died in the UK, to her 36,000 strong Americas tree. He was in good company for a while, amongst relatives such as Henrietta Maria of France, Charles V, Mary 1 and Abraham Lincoln to mention but a few of the luminaries.
And of course once the trees get this large and incoherent - the more useless hints we have to wade through.
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I think you are right about the hints Norrette. I recently wrote to a tree owner to tell her one of her ancestors was wrong because the person concerned had died young so could not have married and had children. Her reply was that Ancestry had given her the hint, so must be right.
Carol
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I dare say that there are many, many people who genuinely consider their tree to be correct in every way! Of course, with the ability and the rights to copy from other available Ancestry Trees, then it all becomes a bit of a land mine, and everything taken as gospel by some who are just starting out.
The important part for me, and I'm sure that as with all of us on here, is that my material is well researched, well sourced, and as accurate as I can possibly make it! And my tree is private!
Having said that, I believe that we need to accept there will always be mistakes, sometimes in our own, sometimes those of others, but the thing is, they're other people's ancestors too, and if the info from the hints makes them happy, it's no skin off my nose now.
If and As they carry on researching and developing their trees, their knowledge and skills should surely develop, just as ours did, and with any luck, they will want to delve a little deeper that just picking a leaf off here and there when they're waving around in the wind!
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I think the fault behind this is the Ancestry 'hints'. Some users go on a click-fest.
I think she's fixed it now but a Canadian researcher attached my G-Grandfather who was born, worked and died in the UK, to her 36,000 strong Americas tree. He was in good company for a while, amongst relatives such as Henrietta Maria of France, Charles V, Mary 1 and Abraham Lincoln to mention but a few of the luminaries.
And of course once the trees get this large and incoherent - the more useless hints we have to wade through.
;D ;D ;D
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My tree is also private, and I always try to check those little leaves that wave at me when I log on as some seem to be really tenuous and a lot of times are.
That's why I do so love their free weekends ;D ;D ;D
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I NEVER click a bloomin Leaf.... did once and realised the info was ............. beyond a joke..
So Now NOWAY I haven't got time for a bloomin machine to tell me what is a load of old bull....
I GET FACTS where I can from RECORDS AND CERTS no way would I copy - unless PROVEN FACT.
And guess what I still make bloomin errors.... but then go and try to sort it out..
bloomin heck... that's 3 times now I used that word, maybe its cos its nearly spring.
back in my dark corner now... the spark is still out
xin