Genealogy Chat

Morning

Just a question....
When you look at other peoples trees and see really bad errors, (eg on Ancestry) do you bother to email the tree owner and point out their mistake or 'tut tut' :-S :-S and move on..

I have several trees on Ancestry for different reasons, but my main tree is private, and figure if researchers want the info badly enough they will email me .. although this reasoning appears 'useless' as I have found over the last few years that nobody bothers to contact other people if they see a match. I have been with GR for many years and in the last 2 or 3 I have had only one or two contacts and no replies to my contacting others, I am almost at a stage where I will not renew my membership, but I digress :-S :-S

Many tks to all who do contact.. :-D :-D


Cheers
Karen of Brisbane

PS .. I am off to work, so will reply later .... :-)

Morning, Karen.

I would send a message to say you think/know there is a mistake - if they are serious about their trees they will take on board what you have said, do some more research and thank you for pointing it out to them.

I had someone write to me about a possible wrong marriage in my tree here on GR and I am so grateful to them because they were right. It was a direct line in my tree and it actually solved a big family mystery for me.

I couldn't thank them enough!

I've mailed and pointed out mistakes and people generally seem grateful. When I've mailed on here to view other peoples trees I've had very few responses. Two to be precise. I think people set up trees, do a month or two of internet search and then abandon the project.

I agree with Lynski, it is worth trying to contact someone who has wrong data in their tree. I do find there is much less contact as a result of my trees on Ancestry than I get from my one tree on GR.

I keep my main tree public on Ancestry and anyone is welcome to use that information as I am resonably confident that it is as correct as I can make it. By and large I try to limit it to direct ancestors, their siblings and other spouses and children of siblings.

The other tree of my family I keep private because I use it to include more distant relations and other families of the same name in the same village in order to establish links. I keep that private because I don't want contacts about too distant relatives and because I can't necessarily guarantee that the families and data are correct.

I also have a couple of public trees for families where one member has the same name as someone in my tree. This is because there are trees on Ancestry where information relating to my ancestors have been wrongly assigned to their namesakes on the other trees. As the owners have not responded to direct comments I hope that eventually Ancestry hints will put them on the right track.

I was up into the early hours this morning sending messages re. wrong information on a tree.
It always surprises me that logic doesn't kick in and the poster of the tree doesn't ask themselves why for example a workman in Portsmouth would suddenly die in Yorkshire. A match of names on the index was just that, - a name, when a simple check would show him still with his wife and family in Portsmouth in 1911 census.
I know people can die far from home, but looking for other evidence of a match would soon eliminate this worker.

Gwyn

On Ancestry tree's,there is an option to add a comment,does any do that,if they have found further info. about a person.


Nick

Afternoon all,

Many tks for your points of view..

Lynski .. I would also be gratefull

Nick .. the only time I comment on a document is for a 'correction', sometimes only in the far left column, as after reading the original document the transcription appears corrct, but I know the info is wrong...
sometimes I add corrections attached to the document itself, which Ancestry then says yes or no .. but have never added a comment at the bottom of someones tree ..

Gwyn .. it also amazes me what some researchers have attached to their trees ,, I 'try' to verify everything .... and look at the info to make sure it makes sense....

Ken .. I have kept my tree on Ancestry private as I have spent loads of hours researching the info, but will share with anyone when asked .. nicely...
(just had a request on Ancestry today as follows .... :-S :-S
"can i see this tree thanks i have one world now getting a lot of info from the family thanx ."
Now I wonder why people get upset when requests come thru like this .. or I am I being picky, also this person has added no names to her tree ... so I have no idea who she wants to know about ...:-S :-S)

Ok end of ramblings

Cheers
Karen of Brisbane :-D :-D

I have a Private tree on ancestry ................ I got tired of people taking names and adding them wrongly to their trees!


My favourite story is of my great aunt and husband who emigrated from Lancashire to Newark, New Jersey 3 days after their marriage in 1902.

I followed a "leaf" tip from ancestry .......... and found them added on to another tree ...................................... as parents of children born in 1820 :-D

It turned out that the true parents of the children were ALSO born in Lancashire, and ALSO emigrated to Newark, New Jersey ......... but about 90 years before my guys!

In that case, I left a comment on the tree correcting the information, and asked the owner to remove them


He did, within a couple of days.



sylvia

i seem to have a problem that im the only one that is shareing my info certs photos ect.
i have now stoped shareing as i am fed up with other people just takeing of me and doing a runner.

just a cuple of weeks ago i have some one though ancestry ask me if i had any info for how 3/granmother i sent them a marrige cert and a photo of her head stone.

in return thay said thay had a photo of her although i do aready have a photo of 3/granmother i still said that would be nice and yes please please send what you have.

arrr im still whating and i have sent them an email to even ask them if thay got the info i sent them and thay had the cheek to say yes
but im still whating for them to send a photo to me
so thats it i will not send any info to any one no more
people will have to send me what thay have first from now on befor i send any think back

I had a photo of a person I was researching on my tree on Ancestry. A few days ago I had a "leaf" hint that the person was on another family tree. When I investigated I found she had taken the photograph but I couldn't see how the family fitted in with what she had.

I mailed her and asked if she was researching this family as I was finding it very difficult and was she related...the tree and photograph have since vanished.

Whenever I contact someone who might have a connection to me I always put as much information as I can so that they can compare before writing back (hopefully!).

Well, I recently got a request here on GR that just said -

Can I see your tree. It has my nan in it.

I don't think so..............I would certainly need more information than that!

On 2 occasions I have had someone point out, that I had connected the wrong people into my tree, I was most appreciative of them pointing this out and immediately removed them and apologized.

However a person on 'Genes' had my Grandfather in his tree, in the wrong family and twice I pointed out that he was wrong and could he please remove my grandfather from his tree and he just ignored me.

I have spent many hours contacting people on Ancestry who have my sister m to John Downing b 1723, despite the fact that they also have my sister's (and my) father correctly named with the correct y.o.b.1899. They also have our mother's correct name but incorrectly b 1908 instead of 1900, in Massacheusetts instead of Hamilton NZ. I think many of the yanks who have trees on Ancestry are totally innumerate. I mean to say, how can my sister have married a man who was born 176 years before her own father was born? And had children before he was born too.

Not many people replied to my email pointing out the error but one who did insisted that the info must be correct as there 'are 9 world trees that have it'. I pointed out the 9 wrongs dont make a right. Others suggested that my email was rude. I worded it as politely as possible pointing out the error. Only one or two thanked me and corrected their tree.

There are still about 160 people who have my family in their trees. The trouble is that new people keep clicking on 'add hint' without bothering to check before adding. And on Ancestry's new Mundia site there are another 20 with the same stupid error.

That is why I refer to them as yanks. They are jerks who dont know the first thing about researching.

Huia (getting balder by the second.) :-|

That must be very frustrating Huia.
I found a match with 1 name on here and made contact. When I looked at his tree he had her married to a completely different family. I explained that if this had been a true match, I had a huge tree going back a long way for this person. He replied, saying he didn't know where he had got her name from, but agreed it was incorrect, but she is still on his tree.

Tks everyone for adding to this topic...

I think we all have some stories to add .. and its all a bit fustrating .. :-S :-S

Cheers
Karen :-D

Like I have said before, so many of the trees on Ancestry relating to my family are wrong. In my naivety I thought people would be pleased to be told (in a polite way) that it was wrong I know I would want to know. I then started adding comments, but like Pam said when I next looked several trees were closed to me - their loss.

I got so excited a few months ago, I was looking for my gg grandmothers death, someone had it in their tree, when I contacted them they admitted they had copied from another tree which was also wrong :-S

Carol

I am stuck in several key areas with my tree. I've asked on here and I've looked at other peoples trees and been given misleading ideas about various relationships. People make assumptions because they can't find the right answer. I have a Charles Matthew Siggs that I keep harping on about. No evidence of a marriage to the woman he lived with and had at least 8 children with but another Charles Matthew Siggs did marry and have 3 children with a different woman. In 3 trees that I know of people have marked them down as the same person, it's a possibility but there's NO EVIDENCE for it. And it repeats with his grandfather, one name, 4 marriages and people have made up various combinations of those. It would be too easy to accept what they have as being right and proudly display my family tree. I have another who married a son to his own mother and then had his mother as a daughter...

To be honest, I am scared of investigating too many trees on ancestry re my father.

I've told this story several times over the last 3 or 4 years.

A second cousin (the grandson of my father's eldest brother) started studying the paternal family in the 1980s, doing some of the work with my own brother. He produced a fantastic, well documented 20+ page document taking the family all the way back to 1740.

His brother then acquired, by somewhat nefarious means, all that work, and uploaded it as a One Name Study on the ONSG site. He also arranged a convention of the name around 2000 (only about 100 or so selected people invited though, very few of his family even being told about it). He produced a CD for the convention of the whole family tree, mostly as done by his brother but also with extra work by him.

Family members in Australia got hold of that cd 2 or 3 years later, then made a copy for me.


Imagine my utter and complete surprise and horror when I opened that cd, and discovered that I was the daughter of my BROTHER and my MOTHER.

My father had disappeared, not even shown anywhere, my brother was about 30 years younger than his alleged "wife", and was 10 years older than me. :-S :-S


I tried and tried to contact that person to get him to correct the information on the ONS ........ the cd I could nothing about 'cos that was in circulation. He refused to have any contact with me ................largely I think because I inadvertently let out to him in the very first communication that I had proof that he had not done all the work, and that it was uncertain how he had got the files.


The ONS was removed from the ONSG site .............. and is no longer available.


I finally managed to make contact with someone in the US who had the wrong information, and is now maintaining the family information. She assures me that she has corrected the error, and has brought my father "back to life" .......... and I can only believe that she has done that. I do have access to her massive tree on ancestry


HOWEVER, there are a hundred or more cds out there with the information on it. People have added it to their trees, and presumably it is still being copied.



sorry for the length of this!

Oh dear :-D

Welcome

love the name :-D :-D :-D



May I call you Cracher? :-D