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General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: LizzieL on Tuesday 21 January 25 08:50 GMT (UK)
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A few days ago, I noticed that someone with my rather uncommon maiden name had been viewing my Ancestry tree. I was curious to see if we were related, so I messaged them. She said that she had been researching for several years and had got back to the same ancestors I had in Oxfordshire. She opened up her tree so I could have a look. Her tree correctly has ancestors based in and around London back to births in the 1760s.
I have traced this line previously because of the unusual surname but found no connection to my Oxfordshire family. But she has a link via a man who as far as I can find had no children. He left a detailed will naming nephews, nieces, some of his wife's relatives and charities. Then to link him to my tree she has this childless man who was actually born at the other end of the country as the son of one of my direct ancestor's brothers (who was baptised 1680) marrying in 1769 - age 89!, and on the way was getting re-baptised in Cambridgeshire in 1722. She has collected all records she can for a man with the same name from wherever in England and attached them to one man.
How do I tell someone that their tree is so badly wrong. We may turn out to be related but certainly not through the link she has.
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I find the 'direct, albeit as understanding/empathatic as might seem appropriate' approach works for me, alongside offering to help them untangle the inevitable mess. Even if the other person chooses to ignore (and obviously they are free to do so), I at least know I have tried. I would also add relevant details to the 'comments' section of the respective entries on their tree (particularly if they choose not to correct details).
Your post might serve to remind folks of the need to 'switch off' this function if they would rather members did not know they were viewing their tree:
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LizzieL
I had a similar experience with distant ancestors of my wife who had incorrectly linked 3rd grt grandparents to the wrong birth record. I advised them that this was wrong as he had written his autobiography where he had written where he was born.. and I had his wife's DC which detailed her parents.. Needless to say they did not take it well and broke off all contact.. so obviously annoyed with either me for telling them or themselves for poor research...
Rgds Markw
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On my Wife’s tree a direct ancestor was born 10 miles away from their siblings and has the correct parents listed in the records.
Now other trees had this person born in the next County and this person’s ancestry goes back to royalty.
When this error was pointed out, zilch, nothing.
Many other trees have errors.
My attitude now is “why bother”, very rarely does one get a response.
I would just pose the question, “why did the person make allowances in their will only for nieces and nephews”. Then leave them to it.
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I think it is best to avoid, if possible, telling them they are wrong and limit your reply to why you believe what you do. It may be possible to steer them in a better direction after further communications but it can be very delicate. People can be very possesive of their ancestors.
I have had a few of these kinds of conversations over the years and they rarely turn out well. The worst being a gentleman who insisted I change my tree to match his. When I pointed out that the daughter of a Glasgow University professor was unlikely to marry an East Lothian coal miner things got rather heated.
For a while after that I was in the "why bother" camp, but now I think it's worth persevering, delicately, because now and again they are right and on further inpection I am wrong, which is great as far as I'm concerned.
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Or if I make a discovery such as a more recent ancestor had a marriage very close to the birth of the first child, should I tell them or let them find out, they may already know. Also nothing unusual about bridal pregnancies. My dad and aunty said "that was not allowed" when I found out that thier gran was pregnant at marriage.
I have a distant cousin born 8 Jan 1930, parents wed in September 1929. The odds are in favour of the man being the father but not totally guaranteed. One lived in Norwich and the other lived in a village a few miles north at the time of wedding. But they likely met through work, neighbours or so.
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My dad and aunty said "that was not allowed" when I found out that thier gran was pregnant at marriage.
Even today, people refuse to believe that their ancestors were pregnant before marriage or had illegitimate children. A DNA match of OH's has a tree where his 3 or 4 x great grandmother (OH's 2 x g-g-mother) is shown as a widow, previously married to a well to do gentleman with a coat of arms shown. He refused to believe that the common ancestress was a spinster when she married OH's 2 x g-g-father, despite it being clearly written on the marriage record and the two children born pre-marriage have no father's name on their birth records.
And a DNA match of mine has a tree which left out the death date of his maternal grandfather (1917). When I contacted him with details from CWGC of his grandfather's death, he already knew the information, I guess he was deliberately not adding the death because his mother was born in 1920. I think my match with him is through that unknown father, but he doesn't seem to want to know.
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My dad and aunty said "that was not allowed" when I found out that thier gran was pregnant at marriage.
Even today, people refuse to believe that their ancestors were pregnant before marriage or had illegitimate children. A DNA match of OH's has a tree where his 3 or 4 x great grandmother (OH's 2 x g-g-mother) is shown as a widow, previously married to a well to do gentleman with a coat of arms shown. He refused to believe that the common ancestress was a spinster when she married OH's 2 x g-g-father, despite it being clearly written on the marriage record and the two children born pre-marriage have no father's name on their birth records.
And a DNA match of mine has a tree which left out the death date of his maternal grandfather (1917). When I contacted him with details from CWGC of his grandfather's death, he already knew the information, I guess he was deliberately not adding the death because his mother was born in 1920. I think my match with him is through that unknown father, but he doesn't seem to want to know.
I guess some know the obvious truth but refuse to say that on their trees on Ancestry.
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Actually, some folks fully recognize that what is on their tree is incorrect or impossible. It can be a deliberate policy to simply collect any possible relevant material on one person. For convenience.
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I was contacted by someone viewing my sons tree and pointing out he thought there was a connection along the way
I did some '' quick '' research and wasnt happy with their conclusions and wrote back saying I couldnt see a connection and named the reasons
Their response was '' but no this is where the connection is '' - I did some more looking and still feel there is a missing piece
But I am also quite happy to investigate further using their information - but at my own pace
So yes it may seem I am ignoring them but in reality I am taking a slow approach and working on it in my own time
That may well be the case with some people as well
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Several years ago I had a DNA match with someone on My Heritage. It was one of my higher matches and he had a small tree and we had some names in common, so I contacted him though some of his tree didn’t agree with mine, I wanted to confirm. He didn’t seem too concerned about the anomaly and insisted he was right. I left it.
A couple of years later (long story) I made contact with a fourth cousin from the same line who had an extensive thoroughly researched tree. His research aligned with mine.
About a year after that I had a DNA match with someone on Ancestry. He had the same incorrect tree as my previous My Heritage match. I contacted him, and he seemed willing to concede that his information may not be correct - he had been “helped” by his cousin, the My Heritage match. The sad part about this is that this new Ancestry match had written and recently published a book about his parent’s war time romance and he had included a family tree which was wrong !
If only his cousin had taken notice of me years before. The My Heritage match didn’t seem interested in what I had to say which puzzled me at the time. I wasn’t sure why, but perhaps he didn’t want to accept that he was wrong.
The mistakes were really obvious, and my fourth cousin even knew some of the people involved and had photos of some of them so knew the correct relationships first hand.
It’s always worth confirming any differences, even published works.
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Same for those who have 2 people of the same name and similar age mixed up, and the Ancestry hints throw up suggestions for both people. I just click ignore on the ones I know are untrue. My ancestor was William Thomas Coombs born 1860, St Pancras, and there was another William Thomas Coombs born 1861 in Chelsea, and Ancestry hints throw up suggestions for both men who are not related. I just ignore the ones for the Chelsea guy. I think another tree has some results for my WT Coombs in their WT Coombs tree.
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I have just had a batch of siblings all come up as new DNA matches, all in the 20+cM range so very distant.
They all have trees on 98,000 people.
The time is took to write this is probably 20x more time than I spent looking at them.
Not worth any effort at all.
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I once delicately pointed out some very obvious issues in someone's tree (think of the "married at the age of 7" variety) and was told that she knew, she'd done it on purpose to see who was a legit researcher and who just copied unthinkingly. I guess I passed?
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In my Ancestry tree I often add notes under life events, or add custom events or Residences, or probate, explaining my findings so as to help others researching. A concise way to explain the sources of my findings, especially for pre census and BMD era.
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Same for those who have 2 people of the same name and similar age mixed up, and the Ancestry hints throw up suggestions for both people. I just click ignore on the ones I know are untrue. My ancestor was William Thomas Coombs born 1860, St Pancras, and there was another William Thomas Coombs born 1861 in Chelsea, and Ancestry hints throw up suggestions for both men who are not related. I just ignore the ones for the Chelsea guy. I think another tree has some results for my WT Coombs in their WT Coombs tree.
This is why I always say that ruling someone out is just as important as ruling someone in. It takes some extra time and effort, but it's essential, IMO.
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Same for those who have 2 people of the same name and similar age mixed up, and the Ancestry hints throw up suggestions for both people. I just click ignore on the ones I know are untrue. My ancestor was William Thomas Coombs born 1860, St Pancras, and there was another William Thomas Coombs born 1861 in Chelsea, and Ancestry hints throw up suggestions for both men who are not related. I just ignore the ones for the Chelsea guy. I think another tree has some results for my WT Coombs in their WT Coombs tree.
This is why I always say that ruling someone out is just as important as ruling someone in. It takes some extra time and effort, but it's essential, IMO.
If I do rule out a potential ancestor as being someone totally different, I am not too peeved as it can create new leads and at least I know. I can soemtimes find out it was a namesake cousin or 2nd cousin, as well as just purely coincidence. If a cousin, then a "half coincidence" if there was 2 cousins who both married women called Mary, Anne or Elizabeth, and the one you think is yours was the other.
I have a Susan Riches who wed in 1725 in Norwich to Henry Helsdon and had my beady eye on a 1694 baptism in Norwich to Isaac and Eliz and was tempted to add her but then found she married another man in 1744 thanks to many Norfolk marriage licenses coming online. And her late father Isaac Riches was mentioned in her husbands will in 1756, showing it was a totally different Susan/Susannah Riches. I have worked on all the Susan Riches born 1685-1715 in Norfolk and eliminated virtually all of them except a 1689 one but that would have made her 48 in 1739 when she had her final child. Also when you get back that far, not all baptisms have survived for every parish, and some were baptised at a NC chapel or not at all.
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I think it is best to avoid, if possible, telling them they are wrong and limit your reply to why you believe what you do. It may be possible to steer them in a better direction after further communications but it can be very delicate. People can be very possesive of their ancestors.
I think this is very good advice, and I have practical experience of being on the other end of this approach from around 20 years ago.
Someone contacted me to say that she thought we were cousins and shared the marriage register entry for her great grandparents with me - the groom was the same name, age, occupation and had the same father as one of my great grandfathers.
After a very quick flash across my mind of "how dare they", I realised this marriage record was kosher, and concluded that the research info I had inherited wasn't; my great grandparents hadn't married and I had already uncovered a mistake in the research on my great grandmother.
I therefore set off looking for a "rival" person with similar name, age, birth location. I found one but also found he married someone who wasn't my great grandmother and he died in the wrong place in the wrong year (we were confident about where and when my GGF died).
When the 1911 census came out my GGF was shown with my GGM (and the woman in the marriage register entry was shown as married on her census return, but with no husband, just children). I could compare his writing and signature on the first of those census returns and on the marriage register. Extremely similar.
So we were now in a position where we were probably sharing a GGF, and that became a sure thing when a number of us second cousins and half second cousins took their DNA tests, and we were all matches, and we'd proved that our common GGF was a very naughty boy! Fuller explanation and conjecture about practicalities should you be inquisitive https://baker-carterfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/2024/10/you-mean-you-might-not-be-who-you-say.html (https://baker-carterfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/2024/10/you-mean-you-might-not-be-who-you-say.html)
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Great research and an interesting write-up, julianb -- I enjoyed reading it!
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For my own amusement I followed a number of trees posted on the internet back in time. They appeared to be linked to some of my Welsh family members. They inevitably went back to Welsh nobility, princes and even royalty as far back as the second century AD. A similar phenomenon occurred with an American in law's tree. The family emigrated to the USA from the London and south east England region but purported to have their origins as Welsh and indeed Scottish royalty in early Medieval times.
One can only conclude that the population must have been extremely small and virile or there has been some very imaginative research.
Comments please
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I have even come across a few cousins who earnestly believe other trees or "best fit" such as a marriage in London in 1710 for a couple who lived in Suffolk, and while it is possible, if the original London marriage record does not give any Suffolk parish of residence or even mention Suffolk, then you would need some compelling evidence to convince me it is the right marriage. Especially if I myself found a marrige in, for example 1713, locally in Suffolk.
Same for someone who according to an Ancestry tree was said to be born in Cumberland in 1655 who had married in rural Suffolk in 1680. Unless you have a will, poor law record or other piece of compelling evidence to prove it is the same person, I'd check local Suffolk records for a baptism.
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For my own amusement I followed a number of trees posted on the internet back in time. They appeared to be linked to some of my Welsh family members. They inevitably went back to Welsh nobility, princes and even royalty as far back as the second century AD. A similar phenomenon occurred with an American in law's tree. The family emigrated to the USA from the London and south east England region but purported to have their origins as Welsh and indeed Scottish royalty in early Medieval times.
One can only conclude that the population must have been extremely small and virile or there has been some very imaginative research.
Comments please
I think the problem with welsh genealogy is when you get back to pre-parish records, at least in my experience, is the surnames. People just take a David ap David as being the same as the other David ap David in the same town not understanding that they both could be and probably are the sons of two entirely different David's and entirely separate families.
From there they go down the rabbit hole taking their research on an entirely different tangent.
That said, the Welsh, like the Irish kept very detailed genealogical records pre-parish registers and naming conventions (son/daughter of) helped immensely not to mention the Bards. Other cultures are the same like Asian cultures with their records such as jokbo's. There certainly are many manuscripts, wills, pedigrees, odes, Elegies, etc., that if you have the correct names (and are from prominent families similar to English nobility) do take you back to a reasonable pre Norman date and in general can be backed up by land records, wills and other documentation.
That said, just like English genealogy, you have to have the link to the nobility to have such breakthroughs and most people just try to tack on a person to link into such persons despite there being no evidence.
I gave up mentioning to people on Ancestry that they have a wrong link as, like others in here have mentioned, it either falls on deaf ears or they get offended.
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I have an ancestor who I 100% know died in 1849, and had previously said "not born in county" (Oxfordshire) in the 1841 census so I have no clue as to his birthplace, yet an Ancestry tree user says he was born in Cheddleston Staffordshire in 1794, and married the right spouse in Oxford and the right children, however they have him on the 1851 census, 2 years after he died. I guess on the tree users part, ignorance is bliss. So I shall probably not tell them.
I have tried for years to find the origin of the aforementioned ancestor to no avail, not helped by the fact he was a Smith. I think I have come to a point where I may never know where he was born, or his parents.
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You reminded me, Coombs, one of mine also died in the 1840s in Northumberland (Newcastle area). Common surname (of course, of course...). 1841 census does say "Born in county- S" and one singular christening of one of his children notes "father native of Dumfarling, Scotland" (Dunfermline). Without that tidbit, I'm sure there would have been any number of christenings for a man of that name in the area he lived.
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You reminded me, Coombs, one of mine also died in the 1840s in Northumberland (Newcastle area). Common surname (of course, of course...). 1841 census does say "Born in county- S" and one singular christening of one of his children notes "father native of Dumfarling, Scotland" (Dunfermline). Without that tidbit, I'm sure there would have been any number of christenings for a man of that name in the area he lived.
Such extra info can pay dividends. I have an ancestor who had a son in 1800 in County Durham and it says the father was of Selkirk, Scotland.
I am sure with my James Smith, died 1849 in Oxford, he may have been from a surrounding county such as Berks, Bucks of Gloucestershire but while the vast majority of Oxford city residents were from those counties, several were from further afield, from London to Cornwall and Norfolk. He was a tin plate worker. Never say never but I have practically admitted defeat on him, if his surname was Bracegirdle or Marmaduke it would be easier. ;D
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I have JONES in Wales :-X I attribute most of my success to the family line of Walter son of Theophilus son of Walter son of Theophilus but then his father had the poor form to be called William, so there it ended ;D
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I have JONES in Wales :-X I attribute most of my success to the family line of Walter son of Theophilus son of Walter son of Theophilus but then his father had the poor form to be called William, so there it ended ;D
Advances in DNA science may give us hope in the future.
I have some relatives who have found an ancestors sibling or cousin on the US census, when my research shows it is a different person who immigrated from England, with the same name and age range. US Censuses never given where about in the immigrant country they were born. And as we know the US censuses have just the problems the UK ones have, missing people, mistranscribed etc.
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My grandfather, Richard Jones, married Elizabeth Jones. The witnesses were Joneses and no prizes for guessing the surnames of the officiating minister and registrar. Fortunately I was able to trace my grandfather’s family back a few generations. No such luck with my grandmother’s family, despite her mother’s maiden name being Clayton.
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On FindMyPast I typed, in general, the 1851 census year, and over 20'000 people lived in Oxford city in 1851, so I typed in a keyword such as "Devon" to see how many were in Oxford in 1851 and it was about 200, and about 1000 or so residents of Oxford in 1851 were born London/Middlesex, and around 1500 from Berkshire, about 400 from Bucks, 300 from Gloucestershire and inbetween 80 to 200 people from places like Devon, Norfolk, Essex, Kent, Suffolk etc, and only about 30 from Dorset and 30 from Sussex. A clever search engine way of finding out how many from another county were living in a certain English city in 1851. FindMyPast does have good keyword search features. In regards to James Smith, it is likely he was from perhaps Berks, Bucks, Gloucs or London but could have been in the smaller bracket of strays in Oxford who came from further afield.
I have an Inkpen surname in Oxford in the 1760s and the surname is a Dorset and Sussex name.
If I find another secret illegitimate child thanks to the 1921 census I think "Shall i tell them" to cousins in contact, or just let them see my updated tree over time, and they find out.
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I've found, in general, people don't want to know they've made a mistake - especially if their tree is on Ancestry - all they want to do is collect names. There are trees with one of my g.grans dying in USA, she never left the UK, another one has a great aunt dying at the address I was living at, on the same day as my gran died. Obviously, it was my gran who died, not the great aunt (her sister) who had died 20 years previously, but when I contacted the person with the wrong information, they wouldn't believe me even though in this case my gran lived with us and died at the address too. I have her death certificate and also a newspaper cutting about her funeral listing all the people who went to the funeral and the floral tributes given (like they used to put in the local papers years ago).
I've decided life is too short to bother about these name collectors and others with the wrong information, so I ignore them knowing I have the correct information with the all the proof.