Is this cheating?

[grandma]

I see your point and that,s all fine and dandy, but just how far shall we streatch ourselves. I have mar. cert. of several of my ggggrandparents. Have the names of their children, some with spouses but no cert. to verify them. Found them on Family search and Ancestry. Should I not put them on my tree?
Mary

[meles]

A difficult one, grandma. We all do our trees in different ways.

I personally make a  note on my FTM the source of my info. In some cases I note that it's e.g. from someone else's tree, so I am on the alert that it might not be right. In time, I try to verify it - not always easy, but if someone has managed to come up with the info, it must exist somewhere!

meles

[grandma]

That,s a good idea, making notes about where the info came from. If everyone who has put in info on their tree without having it verified, should delete it there would be rather slim trees  kicking around.
Mary.

[Barbara F]

Hello Mary

Like meles I keep a record in FTM of sources for my family tree information.
Generally I rely on free information for people other than direct ancestors although, in many cases, I have extracts from parish registers.  For direct ancestors I try to have  BMD certificates (if possible) wills, PR extracts and census info.
When sharing my tree information, I always tell the other researchers my sources and how reliable I think the information is.
When I obtain information from other researchers I note the source in FTM but  try to verify the information to my satisfaction.
This works for me - but everyone has their own views on this subject 

Barbara

[Just Kia]

That,s a good idea, making notes about where the info came from. If everyone who has put in info on their tree without having it verified, should delete it there would be rather slim trees kicking around.
Mary.

Only last week I removed over 800 people from my tree because I had acquired them via ancestry or gr and had no way to verify them all myself.

I went through each person in my tree who was of no direct relationship to me or hubby and unless they were married to a direct relation (including nth cousin x times removed) then the got removed (well to another tree - I didn't just delete them totally).

With this smaller tree of actual relations I am concentrating on finding birth/bapt, marriage, death, census, addresses, occupations for each and every one.
I use submitted IGI's as a guide only but I do accept the extracted records.
Where I don't have a cert for BMD I note the index ref, so that I can go back to it anytime.
I save a copy of each relevant census image (using it's ref as file name) and draw an yellow outline around the relevant family. Then I attach that image to each person that is appropriate.
Until I have all (or as close to all as possible) for my actual relations, I see little point in obtaining the names of parents of spouses of siblings and their lineages.
I got caught up and went too far "sideways" and my tree ended up more of a hedgerow instead, but a little pruning and it's all back under control =)

[mike175]

Hi,

I recently did something similar, splitting my database into two; one for genuine ancestors with verified sources, the other for 'possibles'. This was prompted by stupidly downloading someone else's GEDCOM directly into my tree . . . and subsequently spending many weeks carefully correcting all their mistakes! 

In RootsMagic it is possible to open several different trees at once and 'drag and drop' individuals or families from one to another, so it is easy to transfer people to the main tree once they are checked.

Actually, I am currently doing almost everything that JustKia is doing . . . I've even done a bit of 'hedgerow pruning' of my own, and I now try to limit myself to the spouse and children of siblings.

Mike.

[Lass]

Ditto here!

I got loads of information that had already been researched/obtained by others around the world researching the tree.  I threw it all on genes and thought yay, look at that!  As I've become more experienced and more thoroughly hooked, I've seen this as an error on my part, so I've now started from scratch with my direct line in a seperate tree.  Every member of the new tree now gets thoroughly researched, bmd's, census, IGI extracts etc. before I move on to the next one.  I already had a lot of information, but I didn't cover everything I could so I'm backtracking. I've found a few issues with the 'accepted' family tree research, which may in fact be correct, but until I can verify them for myself, I'm not happy to move up the tree.  It might be hard work, but it's very satisfying and you get a real feel for the people, rather than just a bunch of names.  I mark all the family tree members as OK after their surname once I've exhausted every avenue and have detailed as much verified information as I can obtain, leaving the odd one or two that I will need to go back to.  This way I can see at a glance who I still have to work on.  Does mean that I now have a family whose surname is OK, but still, it's working for me! 

Lass x

[daz 2008]

must admit i feel the same as many others  have already said, i found a line of mine going back to the 1300's its geniune with very good source info and very well documented - in fact its too well documented , i cant get my head round it all !
also only last week i was searching through other peoples trees on ancestry and found lots of trees that had my ancestors wrongly added to them . some of them with ridiculous mistakes - one had a child born 100 years before his alleged parents, another had the parents of one family born in america then apparently got married in finland and had a child in kent !- the child was my great grandfather from a long line of kent families , i politely wrote to the person whos tree it was and explained to him that it was all wrong and he was wasting his time he told me he had copied it from other trees found on the web .
the golden rule has got to be never trust anyone elses research unless you have double checked every fact yourself

[grandma]

In Jan. and Mar. of this year I finally came in touch with my Aussie rellies, thanks to Roots Chat. Had been searching for 4 years. They didn,t even know of one another. I was able to provide them with the names of their ggrandparents who had emigrated in the 1880,s They have since met and are gathering info about the huge family there. They have sent copies of some of the BMD they have gathered. Also a lot of names and dates of their still living families. Will this mean that in 100 years someone studying my tree will be in doubt of the authenticity of my info. Should I exoect them to send copies of all living and dead??? Think this is just going a bit too far!!!
Mary