Genealogy Chat

Sorry to rant folks but it's happened again.Yet another message via a hot match comes my way,and the tree owner can't even be sure who their g/parents are.Strange thing is i know the grandparents,children and grandchildren(ie i 'know' who the tree owner is).Why oh why oh why?Glen

Sometimes I will put rellies on that I'm not sure of and hope someone else may have a bit more definate info. also it's on there to go back to and look into that person properly. Sometimes it is annoying as I have doubts as to whether I am correct. We can't all get it right straight off. Least of all us beginners. Kindest regards Maggie.

you still wearing them Knickers !!!!!! I had a contact email me after a year all excited, turns out she has never bought one cert to confirm any of them so she is going to look into it , that was weeks ago and no more contact.

Still wearing me tinsel pants. What really gets my goat is when someone can't even tell you who their grandparents are.I've had to research the birth family,via the cert route as my half brothers and sisters can't say who g/parents are nor aunts and uncles or cousins. Now i have someone who is descended from another branch who has the same problem,i'm not averse to sharing info and doing lookups via the census etc to try and help,but flipping heck,at least find out your parents parents!!!! Glen

I am with you on this , I was really hoping mine was a definite contact as she is the only one in thtta side of my Tree to be in touch so I was well excited, but now it looks like another waste of time.

A ''lady'' sent me several abusive/aggressive PM's because I (''I'' should be in bold type!) didn't know who HER grandparents were.....!! She was nothing to do with me......In the end, she told me I could leave off looking if I didn't want to ''be bothered''.....charming!! LOL Merry

I have 6 generations of this branch on this site,(mostly via census and parish records back to 1805) and a couple of certs for marriages into my family and a birth cert,yes i'm happy to pass information on,but how come people can't (won't) look for cert refs to get them back to 1901 at least. Glen

really Merry , how rude I bet you were hoping she wasnt a rellie then???

LOL Val.....she was just someone who clicked my name on this board..... Merry

Glen I share your annoyance! It seems to me, recently anyway, that I spend 90% of my time checking other people's sloppy research, after they have claimed a 'definite' connection to someone on my tree. No, of course I dont HAVE to do this, but you know how it is...how do they know that? Does their tree check backwards? Answer is usually no, after a couple of generations. The latest one made me REALLY fed up - our mutual rellie supposedly born 39 years after the marriage of the parents, making mother at least 51, which would be enough to alert ME to the possibility that it was the wrong person. The fact that the supposed parents had already been dead for five years before this man was born was another fact to alert me that it was the wrong person! These deaths took about three minutes to find on the IGI, incidentally, and are extracted records. I pointed all this out and said that perhaps next time he should operate some simple checks before hurling himself back another generation. Response? I AM TOO BUSY. I, of course, am not. I dont mind sharing, really I dont, but in my case anyway, its ALL give and never any take. Olde Crone

Someone sent me a message he other day asking to see my tree - my tree is a 'me tree' on here - and it clearly says that when you click on my name to send me a message. not sure who they were hoping to find, so suggested they told me who they thought 'linked' - reply? ''How do i know who might link you to me until i have seen you tree?'' I left that one to wonder! jess

I wish someone would email me. I've got my William Ketley still hiding out in Essex. Discounted one, because a very nice man emailed me with his complete tree to show me how his William died as a baby. But, there is another GR member with the correct William,I think, and he won't answer. Then there is my Hot Match who has 40 rellies the same as mine and won't answer me. She even has the deliberate mistakes I put in mine to add 'Trying to Find' messages. Oh well, at least I have plenty of other dead people to keep me busy. I did however, take Jean Brown out. Wasn't worth the effort. Poor Jean!

Don't be too harsh; before I started on FH I didn't know the names of my dad's parents (although I was aware that they died several years before I was born). Fortunately he's still around and was able to tell me; if he wasn't I would have been at a brick wall immediately - since I'm not in contact with any of the rest of his family I'd have had to look for his birth certificate, and as his name happens to be David Jones I'd have been unlikely to have much joy with that. I can quite easily imagine that someone who never knew their grandparents, and whose parents are no longer living (or not in contact), would not know their names. Olde Crone, I put unsubstantiated information on my tree in the hope that someone with more definite information may be able to confirm or refute my hypotheses. Everything up to four generations back I am certain is correct, but some earlier details are speculative. I have also had some annoying messages, mostly from those people who take having a Jones born within a year or two of mine several hundred miles away. Some have been rather abrupt and omitted a few of the little words you might expect to accompany a request for help, but I haven't had any outrightly abusive. I'm sorry if others have.

Hi, I had a really abrupt contact from someone once. I didn't like the tone so I sent back one of those horrible auto responses give me more info or something like that. Turns out he is a rellie, is a really nice guy and gave me a heap of info in exchange fofr my tiny bit. We've even met since. I think that sometimes people don't know what to say to initiate contact and also some people don't have the english skills to be polite. Then you get the real horrible ones too. The problem on this site is that people don't seem to be upfront with their stuff. I have a certain amt of info I am definate of and more that I believe to be correct but haven't all the proof. I am upfront on that. if more people were the same it would be easier. Toni

Hi, have never had a contact who didn't know who their grandparents are yet, but there was one who was going round in circles in about 3 or 4 messages saying that their 5 times great grandparents were my 6 times great grandparents through another of the siblings, the only thing is, when people had 10 or 11 children, how are you supposed to guess which of the siblings they're talking about unless they tell you? Another little gripe is people who send you one of those automatic messages asking to see your tree when they've never contacted you before. The least you'd have thought they could do first is just to check they've got the right person. Anyway, that's my little bit of a rant for the morning. Best wishes to all in your research John

I got one 3 days ago asking me to open my tree to them (standard automated one). I mailed back saying, who do you think the connection is please? No reply. I dont know about you but unless there is a very likely connection I wouldnt want to trundle around someone elses tree on here. Glen, now its summer, shouldnt you change the pants to a thong?

It does seem strange,i hadn't had a contact for several months,then suddenly five in a week.One recent one springs to mind,telling me that my mother has the wrong year of birth and she was born in another town.So gasp shock horror,the person i took to be my mother was really 73 when she had me and was born 125 miles from where i thought!!!Silly me for making such a stupid mistake. A lot of people will know me from the boards,and will know or can check that my tree is less than a year old.Due to my particular circumstances i can't ask living rellies about my ancestors,everything is via research,some names are based on census returns (one changes with each census) and these 5 names are entered in the hope of a match,but they are from 5 generations back,not very recent and direct line ancestors. Glen

I wish people would realise that doing the research yourself is the really fun part of family trees and it need not be expensive, there is a lot of free info if you are prepared to take the time. I started with my family, my Nan is 97 and gave me loads of interesting info, this gave me a real head start.With 4 children I have limited money but found enough free info to get me back 5 generations on many of my branches. I did as much research as i could by my self before joining genes. i would have been embarrased contacting someone if i did not know much. Luckily I have not had any cheeky people contact me yet! Caroline

Most people on here are very nice and when I started some people sent me a lot of brilliant information including copies of wills back to 1600 and a photo of about 30 relatives taken in 1896 all identified. However I have had a couple of strange contacts. One man sent me several E.mails about one particular name, a couple of relatives a long time ago had married into a branch of his family then sent me a tree with thousands of names including most of the Kings of England and France. I also contacted someone asking for imformation about a particular name in a small town. As far as I know I am related to everyone with that name in the town. I got a reply saying i could not possibly be a relative and that he had lost interest in family history a few years ago. My father always used to say you can choose your friends but not your relatives how true.

Its not the fact that people dont KNOW things which annoys me, its the fact that they dont even bother to try to find out, by doing the simplest of checks which are free on the Internet! If I knew this man had the wrong information for the parents, why didnt my contact? I too make a very clear demarcation between absolutely proven on my tree and the not quite proven but I'm hoping you know more than I do sort. I just wish Hot Matchers would make a similar distinction when contacting me. I have realised that if I initiate a contact, giving some basic info about a possible connection, many people simply parrot that information back to me 'Yes, my Joe Bloggs was born in 1745, the son of Arthur and Annie Bloggs'. They forget to tell me that they didnt have a clue about this possibility before I contacted them. Some of this may be down to the fault of Genes publicity - 'Join this Site, press a button and immediately link up with thousands of relations'. I thiunk many Newbies are seduced by this idea and dont really have a clue what time, effort and expense needs to go into a properly researched and factual tree. Olde Crone