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The Common Room / Re: Ancestry family trees full of lazy errors
« on: Tuesday 24 February 26 23:29 GMT (UK) »
Anyone who searches for a certain man on Ancestry will find him in many trees, most of which have the same surname for his wife. My tree appears to be an outlier, with a different (documented) name for her, and I suspect that because of that many people will dismiss my information assuming the majority must be correct.
Not one of the other researchers/tree-copiers has spotted that if the easily-found marriage they have settled on were correct, the groom would have been 14yrs old and his bride only 2!
That marriage is of a man with the same name to a woman with the same forename. His nationality fits, the wife’s does not. I researched them too out of interest, and our chap was still alive long after both of them were dead and buried.
It seems to me that Ancestry’s advertising is misleading, in that it suggests that all you have to do is type in a name and your entire family history will be revealed, no effort required. Could that be at least partly why so many people fail to research properly and produce “family trees” that are mostly fiction?
Not one of the other researchers/tree-copiers has spotted that if the easily-found marriage they have settled on were correct, the groom would have been 14yrs old and his bride only 2!
That marriage is of a man with the same name to a woman with the same forename. His nationality fits, the wife’s does not. I researched them too out of interest, and our chap was still alive long after both of them were dead and buried.
It seems to me that Ancestry’s advertising is misleading, in that it suggests that all you have to do is type in a name and your entire family history will be revealed, no effort required. Could that be at least partly why so many people fail to research properly and produce “family trees” that are mostly fiction?