Ancestry family trees full of lazy errors

[Stanwix England]

I do tend to research siblings now too. You can easily rack up 1000 names in that way. If your direct ancestor is one of ten and most of those siblings themselves go on to have 8 to 10 kids, you've soon got a huge tree.

[Biggles50]

"I do a lot of descendancy research"

Ditto.  I don't go deep but I go wide.  It's more interesting.

That is exactly what I explained to our Family History Group when I did a recent Presentation to them on DNA.

Having a wide tree gives a much better chance of linking to DNA matches which in turn helps to prove the validity of that branch of your tree.

[Sandrafamilytree]

I’ve found a few ‘lost’ people when they’ve turned up on Censuses as lodgers or visitors in the home of some distant relative somewhere… perhaps a transcriber had mistakenly given them the same surname as the family they were staying with, so they didn’t turn up in searches. I love those ‘found you!’ moments! 

[Stanwix England]

I’ve found a few ‘lost’ people when they’ve turned up on Censuses as lodgers or visitors in the home of some distant relative somewhere… perhaps a transcriber had mistakenly given them the same surname as the family they were staying with, so they didn’t turn up in searches. I love those ‘found you!’ moments! 

I've had that too.

I also find that's really useful for understanding probate records as well. There have been a few times I've been scratching my head about who the person it is that a relative left their money to, but when I've built my tree sideways I've realised it's a niece or grandniece, who got married and therefore has a totally different name.

[Erato]

"Having a wide tree gives a much better chance of linking to DNA matches"

Yes, although that is not my motivation.  I have not done any DNA testing.

I have taken a different approach to family history than most RootsChatters. Rather than trying to dig ever further back in time, I have tried to trace forward all of the descendants of my immigrant ancestors who came to the United States.  The result is a large tree, so I am a quite admittedly a name collector although, since I have no online tree, my collection is not a public nuisance.  I have gg-grandparents who came to the New World in 1834, in 1840 and in 1844, as well as a bunch of more distant ancestors who arrived from 1630 to 1680ish.  I am interested in what became of these different groups of people.  I think of it as sort of an evolving panoramic 'landscape' view of the people in my family as they moved west or didn't, got off the farm or stayed there, became urbanized or remained in their small towns, moved up or down the social ladder, got richer or poorer, got religion or lost it, and so on.

[coombs]

I have not done any DNA testing yet, but it may help for 3 ancestors who said "not born in county" in 1841 (those counties they lived in 1841 were Essex, Oxfordshire and Middlesex) and died before the 1851 census. But that is the thrill of the chase, wondering where these 3 came from originally.

[Josephine]

My tree is quite large (15,000+ individuals) but that's because I do a lot of descendancy research. So not just my direct ancestors and their children, but cousins across multiple generations, including their spouses. I've also done research for the in-laws of my aunts and uncles, and a few of my friends, which I have all connected back to my main tree. That causes the tree to grow quite quickly. Despite this my tree doesn't go any further back than 1540 and most ancestral lines fizzle out in the early 1700s.

I don't have quite as many people in my tree but it's big because I do the same thing. I also have my husband's various family lines in the same database. I don't have any trees online.

I document everything I can. If I can't find (or afford) to get source documents when I'm adding someone to my tree, I'll make a note of where I found the info (from a descendant, in a book, an online tree of someone who appears to actually be related to the line in question, etc.) with TO BE PROVEN in all caps.

[Josephine]

Re. the DNA name collectors.

I was contacted by someone who has a distant DNA connection to my brother (I manage my brother's DNA page). This man saw my extremely basic tree but, because I've shared my various trees with relatives who've turned around and put them all onto Ancestry, this man has copied and pasted both of my parents' trees and all of their relatives' trees into his own.

The weird thing is that this man is probably related to me through some shared ancestor from the late 1700s on my mother's English side but he doesn't know how and I haven't been able to figure it out. He doesn't need my mother's Scottish trees and he most certainly doesn't need my father's ancestry at all but he's been a very busy beaver, copying and pasting like mad, and for what? It won't help him solve the question of how we are related! This is inexplicable to me.

[dsquared]

According to a tree on Ancestry my father died sixteen years before he did! Looking at the tree I don't think the owner is a relative just a connection and I haven't got the energy to correct her. I tend to use Ancestry trees as hints if I'm at a loss but always seek evidence before adding to my research. There are so many errors out there.