Wrong info on Ancestry Trees

[coombs]

Another Ancestry tree has a mutual ancestor who is said to have died in 1849, which is true, but is on the 1851 census according to the tree owner.

The enumerator must have enumerated the skeletons in the local churchyard. 

[rosie17]

Another Ancestry tree has a mutual ancestor who is said to have died in 1849, which is true, but is on the 1851 census according to the tree owner.

I have a a few of them also relating to some of my ancestors 

Rosie

[dowdstree]

I have had a few over the years and a couple of tree owners did acknowledge their error and change their tree.

Others have totally ignored my polite request and evidence to support it.

An example was a great aunt who died in the 1960's. She never married. The tree owner gave her a middle name (parents, siblings etc were correct) and had her going to New Zealand and marrying and having numerous children. I couldn't convince her that she had the wrong person even when I told her I had attended the funeral. 

Dorrie

[Ray T]

I suppose people don’t like to admit that they could possibly get things wrong - your tree is totally correct, isn’t it? Which is why I gave up pointing out errors a long time ago and my only public tree expressly asks that, if anyone has reason to doubt anything it contains, they get in touch. Nobody ever has!

[Andrew Tarr]

Others have totally ignored my polite request and evidence to support it.

Being charitable, it seems possible in these days of continuous electronic intrusion, that recipients may say 'never heard of this sender', or perhaps their system just blocks some messages automatically ?

[coombs]

As Columbo said "Everything is open for doubt" when investigating homicides. That also applies to through and well researched trees, everything can be open for review. Such as, for example, you have a lot of documentary evidence that a certain man was the father of your illegitimate ancestor, and the man married the mother when the baseborn ancestor was a baby, and add the man to the tree as the father, but then you later find a new piece of evidence that goes against everything what you have found, such as a marriage banns record for your baseborn ancestor's mother to another man when she was in the early stages of pregnancy, and the wedding never appeared to go ahead, and the banns record hints that the earlier man was the father, and she then met another man who likely said he was the father and said so in documents, to help the mother out in an embarrassing situation.

[Andrew Tarr]

As Columbo said "Everything is open for doubt" when investigating homicides. That also applies to through and well researched trees, everything can be open for review.

That is the correct scientific approach.  A theory designed to explain all known results can always be superseded by a better one.  I have a chemistry degree.

[LeedsHipPriest69]

I have an ancestor Charles Boulton baptised in 1756 and died in 1806 in Whitchurch, Shropshire

There's one hint that checks out, the rest I've ignored primarily because most are suggestions to look at a whole stack of other trees, all of which share one common theme, a death in Wem Shropshire in 1841, the only problem a simple search on GRO shows the said Charles Boulton that died in 1841 was a mere one year old, yet so many add this to death to their tree.

In this case I've not contacted any of them (yet), for one thing there are too many of them, but do wonder if they would be remotely interested.

[coombs]

I have an ancestor called Ebenezer Goodacre, nee Martin, of Bermondsey, London, and someone has accepted a hint for an Ebenezer Goodacre living in Massachusetts, America in about 1790ish. Remotely possible but likely to be 2 different people. Compelling evidence will make me accept or deny the hint myself.