Another rant about (some) Ancestry users

[Jomot]

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'   

Thanks all for your comments - another lively debate as always 

[groom]

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.

[rosie17]

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

[Yasmina4]

Perhaps the owner of the tree is a member of roots chat and saw this thread.

[groom]

Perhaps the owner of the tree is a member of roots chat and saw this thread.

That thought crossed my mind. 

[IgorStrav]

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.

[cocksie]

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

[Norrette]

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.

[sunflower]

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