The Confession And Self Flaggelation Thread .....

[Steve G]

Today, while happily slotting some new snippets of documentation onto my tree, I ~ for some reason or other ~ popped open a guys MC.

Glanced over it: Wife was as should be. Fathers occupation was his usual. Frederick Charles ..... Something clicked!

I looked at his fathers entry. All fully documented, of course. Cert's filed away in my cabinet and scanned onto my tree. Frederick Thomas ... 

The rest of my afternoon was something akin to witnessing a train wreck, in slow motion. As, little by little, I teased out the details of this massive monstrosity! How the Hell had I got it so Wrong?!? 

I don't know, yet, just how far down this tissue of complete fantasy goes. I'll be looking at it again, tomorrow. Once I've stopped, alternately, crying and laughing uproariously! I just can't believe I made such a complete and utter pigs ear of it! 

In my own (Pathetic attempt at!) defense, I would point out that I was dealing with a " Brown / Browne " situation. It Does vary, time to time. But, all the same ....!

Come on then; Who else, among ye, is actually so Human as to be fallible? Never mind the " I have been doing this for SO Long, I started My tree on stone tablets! I've never made a single mistake. And you're a silly little boy for having done so! "  There's enough of that, round here.

What's Your biggest gaff? How did ye spot it? How much petrol did the chain saw take? 

I know I'll be firing up the Husker, tomorrow! 

[macwil]

Hi Steve G,
Yep, been there, done that, got the t-shirt!
In the early days I had a g'uncle of my g'dad as his g'dad & married to his brother's wife.
Early last year I was reviewing a tree for the other half of the family and downloaded a missing image when I realised it was for a different family, on checking the other census images I discovered half were for one family and the rest for another. The problem is I have seven families with the same father's name spread over the two sides of that family tree. I still haven't located any links, so I have about 2doz. people floating about and I can't decide whether to just kill them off or keep trying to discover a link.
Regards,
Malcolm.

[Steve G]

In the early days I had a g'uncle of my g'dad as his g'dad & married to his brother's wife.

Yes. This! 

Now that I've got my head together, Malcolm; I remember there was another family. Very military. One, I believe I recall correctly, is buried in a cemetery I remember well. Along with his VC. Fair play to the guy.

Had murders, back in the day, keeping them apart. Looks like one slipped through. Be fascinating, actually, to see how far I took myself. Hey ho.

Over a Hundred perfect beings have read this, look. You and I are the only two to have made a cock up 

[pinefamily]

Rest assured Steve G, you're not alone. I've made many similar mistakes along the journey. Even recently, a friend and I thought we had a breakthrough and went metaphorically galloping off after a family only to discover we had the wrong marriage. To make matters worse, the correct marriage involves a Smith. 
As you say, we are the only ones brave enough to admit it.

[mckha489]

And me!

[Jang]

Me too!

I always knew my great grandfather was Scottish, until I found him in the 1881 census, born Co Monaghan Ireland. This is back in the day when censuses were on CD and you needed to go overseas to get certificates. Fast forward quite a few years and a Scottish relative sent me his death certificate - different parents' names, which led me to finding him in the 1901 census - born London! And his parents were born in Durham!

The one positive thing was that I was able to pass on all my Irish research to a real descendant 

[majm]

Everyone is capable of mis-interpreting an historic document and they dont need to belt themselves over that.  They should simply note the error,  amend their tree chart and remember how it came about,  so they can strive to avoid making similar errors next time... 

I remember being quite upset when I realised the NSW death cert I had ordered had the wrong names for the children of the marriage ... then it dawned ... it was not my ancestor's d.c.  the first of my wallpaper certs ... and errrrr a number of decades ago.   


JM

[Andrew Tarr]

(smugly) I don't think I have created any tangles yet.  I attribute that to (a) being a suspicious scientist by nature, questioning almost anything, (b) keeping my tree within bounds of under 200 individuals, with notes of their peripheral spouses without adding them to the tree, (c) being fortunate in having mostly unusual surnames, and (d) having wife's tree and mine separate.

Occasionally I avoid insoluble pitfalls.  One of my ancestral lines is Tydeman from Stonham in Suffolk.  For centuries their eldest sons have been Edmund or Brice (My grandfather was an Edmund). You will understand what happens when that evolves in one village - it becomes impossible to tell what is going on. I visited the churchyard there some years ago - Edmunds wherever one looked, but none of them identifiably in my line.  Ho-hum.

[Claire64]

Oh yes, a stranger pointed out to me that my grandad's grandad (Brook Donkersley) was not a Donkersley at all, but a Boothroyd.  This was back in the dim and distant past when PRs were at register offices and non conformist ones somewhere else, and certificates had to be looked up in the GRO indexes at the register offices and I had no money and...
well, didn't I have lots of info about this man?  I knew who he was.  Except I didn't have his birth certificate or baptism.  Over the years I happily traced the Donkersley family back from his birth in 1851.

Then one day a lady contacted me who had been researching her WRONG ancestor, Anna Maria Boothroyd.  So she wanted to pass all her information onto a proper relative.  Me.  Only this was all news to me!  Brook was the illegitimate son of Anna Maria Boothroyd, who later married Law Donkersley. This lady had been researching her by mistake.  She should have been researching Hannah Maria Boothroyd!

Two numpties.

Lesson learnt!