Finding out that you've made a mistake

[clayton bradley]

I made a mistake with my husband's Lawtons in Cheshire. I was quite upset to discover it as I'd gone a good way back. I think it's made me check things more thoroughly. I have a Smith born 1800 in the Accrington area in Lancashire and looked at every Smith in the wider area to be certain of mine. I now have lots of trees for Smiths  who aren't mine, cb

[coombs]

Isn't it also frustrating when you think you have found a possible ancestor baptism but then find a burial within a year of that person which says "infant son of..." or an inconvenient marriage in the same parish or a nearby one 20 years later to a totally different spouse and they had children for years after.

One of my genealogy books said the IGI has very few burials unlike baptisms and marriages so the person you think is an ancestor may have died as a child.

[pharmaT]

I've not been challenged that often once I'd just made a stupid typo, in the form of 1780 rather than 1870.  Once I was told that I had the wrong birth for myself because I don't exist and my parents didn't have me and another time it turned out we both had the correct James for our tree but were researching different James.

The biggest mistake I have discovered in my tree so far (barring the umpteen typos I've had to fix) was the father of my grt grt grandfather Campbell.  On his death and marriage certificates his parents were John Campbell and Jessie Macpherson. His age on death and in the census suggested he was born about 1856 yet I could not find his actual birth record.  I also found a record of a marriage for john Campbell and Jessie MAcpherson which fitted what I knew in my grt grt grandfather's older siblings.  Years of research later I still couldn't find my grt grt grandfather's birth and had all sorts of theories ie he's been born earlier than I thought and before civil reg or he hadn't been registered because it was early days and they lived rurally.  I then found John's death in September 1855 and on a whim searched for a birth under Macpherson and found my grt grt grandfather registered that way over a year after his "father's" death.  Fifteen years on compeletly the wrong track.

[coombs]

Also I once discarded an entry of a marriage in 1866 that took place far away from the usual place of residence due to the distance but I found the mothers maiden name on a children's birth cert matched the marriage. It shows that while it may be a long way away, dont immediately discard such an entry, at the same time dont blatantly accept it if it is the only one you can find. Investigate further.

My ancestor vanished after 1891 in England and I found him in 1900, in America.

[Stanwix England]

Once I was told that I had the wrong birth for myself because I don't exist and my parents didn't have me

 

This boggles the mind! Who on earth did this person think they were talking to if they were convinced you didn't exist? A figment of their imagination with an Ancestry account?

I've made lots of mistakes, partly from making wrong assumptions and partly from a lack of understanding and knowledge about the past.

For example, just recently I re-added a relative I had previously discounted because I was confused about his profession. I knew he was a weaver, but I had other records that suggested he was in the army for years. I thought these two seemed mutually exclusive but then I found his Chelsea pensioner records and found that he was both a soldier and a weaver.

We are all on a learning curve!

[bullet]

I've done it only once and learned from my mistake.     A great grandmother, turned out she had the same name, born in the same year, in the same town, and having the same father's name as another!  -  Common name being Elizabeth Brown, with a father - William and the mother Elizabeth!.   Followed the line all the way back, links to a 'big house'.    It was only at a family renunion when someone mentioned something that made me think twice.    I hadn't bothered to buy the birth certificate as I thought I had the correct one and I'd spent so much money at the time on certificates.   Now I always buy certificates.

[clairec666]

Thanks to Ancestry's free weekend, I've unearthed a mistake on my tree, so a whole branch of relatives have been moved back onto the "maybe" pile.

I'd reached a brick wall with my ancestor, Elizabeth Pardoe - all I had was a rough date of birth and a county, and a possibly baptism. I was chasing up her possible siblings, and one of them (Hannah) turned up a few doors down from Elizabeth's family in 1851. Only it turns out it might have been a completely different Hannah. So I'm back to square one with Elizabeth again.

[ThrelfallYorky]

The good bit with an unusual surname like Threlfall, is that if you trace any line far enough back they usually end up related, and all in the same small area in modern lancashire! So the "dead end" lines I've followed back and forward to eliminate them from my line, have sometimes been useful to other searchers after people with the same surname.

[Misselaineus]

Regretfully I was actually responsible for chopping off a whole branch of some one trees. We had entered into correspondence about an ancestor when I realised that some thing didn't quite add up. We infact didn't have a common link. He had identified the wrong Edward Nicholson on his tree. I debated long and hard about revealing his mistake to him but in the end knew that if it were me I'd rather know. He did seem grateful but I still feel quite guilty about my drastic pruning of his tree.  Elaine