What is your favourite tree 'howler'?

[LizzieW]

Brie

It would have been a NT house somewhere.

Lizzie

[Velveteen]

Someone who is also researching(although perhaps it should be "researching") the same line of Nevis based Choppin's as I am, has, in order to make them fit with the slightly later St Vincent and the grenadines-based Choppins, taken all the people who actually do fit into the nevis line, and placed them very randomly about the family tree. He has mother marrying son, sisters giving birth to their own siblings, and in one case, grandfather marrying grandaughter

To make it worse, theres no excuse. This particular lineage(the real verson) is printed in documents that were contempory to these people's lifetimes...

[Maggie1895]

Velveteen, welcome to Rootschat, I'm glad this thread rings bells for you.   It is so frustrating, isn't it?

One of my line, the one I was working on when I originally started this thread, has my gr.gr.gr.grandmother, Ann Massey, b 1752 in Shrewsbury in Shropshire, according to several trees on a very popular site (starts with an 'A')  part of a very strong line right back to the 1500s with even a sniff of a gateway ancestor (which my lowly lot don't have at all). 

Only problem is that would make her the daughter of one Bartholomew Massey, and have  lots of well recorded brothers and sisters - all born in Staffordshire.    I was really pleased when I found all this.   There are several public trees with that information, all with the same detail.   I've no idea which one linked her to Bartholomew Massey and his wife in the first place, but all the others must have copied them.   Nobody seems to have noticed that whilst Ann was born in Shropshire all her supposed 'brothers and sisters' were born and baptised in Staffordshire.   I suppost both counties started with an 'S' so that would do!

It would have been so easy to ignore the fact that my own research showed it was  a mistake and couldn't have been my Ann, and adopt the trees that were all telling the same story, after all there are a lot of them to support the claim - problem is, there is absolutely no evidence to justify them: quite the contrary.   Ironically, Margery Colclough, which is where this thread came in, has now had to be deleted from my tree, because she certainly existed, but sadly not in relation to my family.

That's what I like about Rootschat - nothing but accuracy will do.   Stick to your principles, it's the only way to go!

[Elvina]

I'm always amused by the fact that so many of my ancestors were born in Essex, Massachussetts, rather than that other Essex in England. Colchester, Massachussetts, no less!

(now I've said that there probably *is* a Colchester in Massachussetts, but you know what I mean!).

I've found similar entries on Ancestry trees. I think it's something to do with Family Tree Maker which gives suggestions for places when you make an entry and you don't notice. I've done it myself a couple of times until I learnt to check my entries carefully.

[Maggie1895]

Elvina, welcome to posting on Rootschat.    I think you're right - Genes Reunited tries to do that as well.  I always find it intensley irritating as it tries to turn the village or town into block capitals, plus suggests the modern day counties - for example, Southport or Liverpool it always wants to list as Merseyside, which is where the towns are now.
My husband's family were all born and bred Lancashire for generations and the idea of my putting 'Merseyside' on their tree would not contribute to marital harmony..

[youngtug]

That may be the case sometimes, but not always. One of my gtgtgrandmothers was Ann Pitts of gloucestershire [born and died there] I found a picture purporting to be her on a tree on ancestry, when I traced it back through three trees to the original upload it was to an Elizabeth Ann Pitt , born, married [ to someone else than my gtgtgrandfather] and died in America. I am no longer a paid subscriber to ancestry, but the last time I looked several more trees had adopted the photo and I noticed the information attached had started to "infect" these trees.