How do I tell them?

[davierj]

My grandfather, Richard Jones, married Elizabeth Jones.   The witnesses were Joneses and no prizes for guessing the surnames of the officiating minister and registrar.   Fortunately I was able to trace my grandfather’s family back a few generations.   No such luck with my grandmother’s family, despite her mother’s maiden name being Clayton.

[coombs]

On FindMyPast I typed, in general, the 1851 census year, and over 20'000 people lived in Oxford city in 1851, so I typed in a keyword such as "Devon" to see how many were in Oxford in 1851 and it was about 200, and about 1000 or so residents of Oxford in 1851 were born London/Middlesex, and around 1500 from Berkshire, about 400 from Bucks, 300 from Gloucestershire and inbetween 80 to 200 people from places like Devon, Norfolk, Essex, Kent, Suffolk etc, and only about 30 from Dorset and 30 from Sussex. A clever search engine way of finding out how many from another county were living in a certain English city in 1851. FindMyPast does have good keyword search features. In regards to James Smith, it is likely he was from perhaps Berks, Bucks, Gloucs or London but could have been in the smaller bracket of strays in Oxford who came from further afield.

I have an Inkpen surname in Oxford in the 1760s and the surname is a Dorset and Sussex name.

If I find another secret illegitimate child thanks to the 1921 census I think "Shall i tell them" to cousins in contact, or just let them see my updated tree over time, and they find out.

[LizzieW]

I've found, in general, people don't want to know they've made a mistake - especially if their tree is on Ancestry - all they want to do is collect names.  There are trees with one of my g.grans dying in USA, she never left the UK, another one has a great aunt dying at the address I was living at, on the same day as my gran died.  Obviously, it was my gran who died, not the great aunt (her sister) who had died 20 years previously, but when I contacted the person with the wrong information, they wouldn't believe me even though in this case my gran lived with us and died at the address too.  I have her death certificate and also a newspaper cutting about her funeral listing all the people who went to the funeral and the floral tributes given (like they used to put in the local papers years ago).

I've decided life is too short to bother about these name collectors and others with the wrong information, so I ignore them knowing I have the correct information with the all the proof.