Genealogy’s one constant question
The Legal Genealogist doesn’t generally go ballistic while poking around on Ancestry.com.
Particularly when reviewing somebody else’s family tree, I understand that what I’m looking at is generally at best a hint, and often one that will not pan out.
But the one I looked at last night, getting ready to write today’s “my family” blog post, was so bad — in so many ways — that, yes, I went ballistic.
I’m not even going to mention the fact that the tree traces my Davenport line back nine generations further than any competent Davenport researcher has managed.1 Nor that the key link to get to those nine generations has been thoroughly discredited by careful and competent Davenport researchers.2
And I won’t bother mentioning that the tree’s Baker lineage includes the now definitively-disproved descent from Alexander Baker of Boston — whose DNA is different enough from our Baker DNA to suggest that the common ancestors could be Adam and Eve.3
No, what really set me off was the tree’s treatment of one of my Revolutionary War ancestors: David Baker.
I’ve written about David before — he’s an interesting and complex character, born in Virginia in 1749 and died in Western North Carolina in 1838. And for a man who both lived and died in counties with records loss, David’s life is remarkably well documented.4
But not in this tree.
We can start with the fact that the tree lists his name as David Hollis Baker. David never had, never used, a middle name. Not once, not in any record, not at any time.5
So here’s my question to the tree maker — and for all of us all the time as we research: how do we know? If we’re going to include a middle name in a family record, where did we get it? Where does it come from? How do we know?
And David’s birth is there, too, on 3 June 1749, in Culpeper County, Virginia. Except of course Culpeper County is misspelled as “Culpepper.” Again, that question: how do we know? If this is a jurisdiction that we’re unfamiliar with, how do we know how to spell the county or city or town name?
The next entry in his life story is his residence in Queen Anne’s County, Maryland. In 1748. The year before he was born. Which is a neat trick. So here too we have to ask: how do we know?
There is, for this “fact”, a source citation — to an Ancestry collection of compiled Maryland census and census substitute records that simply lists a Daniel Baker — not a David Baker at all. So here it’s clear we don’t know — and shouldn’t list it.
I won’t bother with the entry for the birth of his brother Richard, shown as a captain of dragoons during the Revolutionary War. There was such a person — but that wasn’t David’s brother.
And I won’t mention the birth of his son Thomas in 1764 when, the timeline shows, David was just 14 and unmarried. (Thomas was actually born in 1782.)
And we’ll skip the reported death of David’s father Thomas in 1777 “in explosion in his factory making gunpowder for Continental Army.” That’s a nice story. But how do we know? Where’s the evidence? (Here’s a hint: there isn’t any.)
David is shown as having married in 1777 in Morgantown, Burke County North Carolina. Um… there isn’t a Morgantown in Burke County; the county seat was and is Morganton. And there is a minor little problem with that marriage date. David was away with George Washington in the revolutionary forces. He wasn’t discharged until 1778.6 So we should be asking ourselves how we know — how do we know the date of the marriage? How do we know if David could have been there at that time?
The tree continues through the birth of David’s children to his first wife, and then her death, and his remarriage to my fourth great grandmother, Dorothy Wiseman. The birth of her first son, my third great-grandfather Martin, is recorded in 1797 in Bakersville, Rutherford County, North Carolina. Um… Rutherford County? Let me ask again: how do we know where Bakersville was located? In this case, I can only assume nobody checked. (Hint: Bakersville is not, and was not, ever in Rutherford County.7)
I’m not going to prolong this. It’s painful to see the assertion of the death of David’s brother Henry in 1808, when the records clearly show his will was accepted for probate in the Burke County Court in 1806.8 And I’ll skip my annoyance with the assertion of two additional children to David and Dorothy — William and Louise — both of whom are grandchildren, not children.9
I’ll simply close with the proper record of his death in Bakersville in September 1838 (although it’s shown as Mitchell County, which didn’t exist until 1861) and — sigh — the assertion that he then resided in North Carolina from 1848 to 1862. I would ask one last time: how do we know? What source tells us that? (Hint: the list of Revolutionary War pensioners that’s cited for that fact doesn’t record David’s “residence” at all; it’s his widow Dorothy who’s recorded there.)
Now the truth is, I knew when I opened that family tree, it was going to be bad. Any family tree that includes 49,832 people and 31,692 records — the vast majority of which are other family trees — is a likely candidate for frustration.
But so many of the errors in this tree — so many of the errors we all have made — can be avoided or at least minimized if we ask ourselves the one question that is genealogy’s constant: how do we know? And if we can’t point to an original record, made at the time by a person with firsthand knowledge — or if we can’t construct and write out a proof argument combining bits and pieces from multiple reliable sources — then the reality is, we don’t know. And we make a mistake by asserting it as fact.10
No, he was not David Hollis Baker; he was David Baker. He did not live in Maryland a year before he was born. He did not father a child at age 14. He did not live on for decades after his death and burial.
And we could have known every bit of that if only one question had been asked: how do we know?
Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “How do we know?,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 6 Apr 2019).
SOURCES
- No, I’m not going to identify the tree or the tree owner. My point — now that I’ve calmed down — isn’t to embarrass any individual but to point out how we can all avoid key mistakes in our research. ↩
- See John Scott Davenport, “The Challenge of Virginia Genealogical Research,” in The Pamunkey Davenport Papers, CD-ROM (Charles Town, W.Va. : Pamunkey Davenport Family Association, 2009), 7-9. ↩
- See Judy G. Russell, “The cousin who isn’t,” The Legal Genealogist, posted 8 Feb 2014 (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : accessed 6 Apr 2019). ↩
- See e.g. ibid., “RIP David Baker 1749-1838,” posted 15 Sep 2018. ↩
- See ibid., “Stop middling along!,” posted 24 Aug 2015. ↩
- Don’t take my word for it. Check out David’s pension application. Affidavit of Soldier, 26 September 1832; Dorothy Baker, widow’s pension application no. W.1802, for service of David Baker (Corp., Capt. Thornton’s Co., 3rd Va. Reg.); Revolutionary War Pensions and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, microfilm publication M804, 2670 rolls (Washington, D.C. : National Archives and Records Service, 1974); digital images, Fold3 (https://www.Fold3.com : accessed 14 Sep 2018), David Baker file. ↩
- See “A History of Bakersville, North Carolina,” Carolana.com (http://www.carolana.com/ : accessed 6 Apr 2019). Or we could just look at historical maps… ↩
- Minute Book, Burke County, North Carolina, Court of Common Pleas and Quarter Sessions, January 1804 – April 1807, Part II, p. 678; North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh. ↩
- David named all his children in his 1838 will. See Yancey County Record of Wills 1:30, David Baker, 26 Jan 1838; North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh. ↩
- Because, just as one f’rinstance… you know darned good and well that every single one of these mistakes has been copied into other family trees. Every. Single. One. ↩
Ah, the perennial problem of undocumented and poorly researched online trees! I spent over an hour last night showing why ‘his’ William b.1720 is absolutely not the correct son William b.1717. Someone tacked the right name, wrong date, wrong wife, wrong place. Luckily he’s excited to find someone who ‘knows’!
Perennial for sure — and occasionally just infuriating! 🙂
I see that several people on Ancestry have got one of my ancestors marrying a husband about 500 years older than her. They have an Ann, b 1803 marrying a Bernard b 1236? Really I wonder how he looked at the wedding? Though I have pointed out to these people that this is in the realms of cuckoo land, as she did marry a Bernard b 1801. From maybe the same lineage but different generation
Oooooh… I want his secret!! 🙂
One wonders if that person really has any understanding of what they’re doing. When I add something that I’m not 100% sure of, I include a detailed note with a certainty rating.
That’s excellent, but even noting when something is a working theory and not a proven fact would help — and NOT using other trees as “sources” would be a really really good place to start… “)
I sometimes look at other users’ trees on Ancestry… but if they cite any “Ancestry user tree” as a “source”… I close the browser window.
In times past, I used to try to chase these down to see if there was some underlying research. Far too often, I found “Tree A” citing “Tree B” as a “source”… and “Tree B” citing “Tree A”! This particular stupidity Ancestry.com “should be” able to prevent. But they evidently have “other priorities”.
Judy I like your word ballistic and sympathize with you. I’ve written the book for surname (NGS award winner) and the trees for the family are soooo bad and I am told I’m wrong; but of course no one has, will or can offer proof as to why they are correct. Sources, other trees of course. Argument, “ you wouldn’t believe how many people disagree with you” . That always gets me truth by numbers not documents, good math, and hard work.
Truth by numbers? Now we’re going to vote on it??? 🙂 🙂
A hundred tree-cloners form a herd… a herd must be right. NOT!
What is the best recourse? Do you or did you contact this person with corrections? Should we? Or just move on?
This tree is hopeless, Clare. I couldn’t begin even to explain all the issues just with this one ancestor of mine who’s not even in the treemaker’s direct line. My own theory is that we can’t change other people’s minds — we can only do our best to ensure that our own research is as accurate as possible, as documented as possible, in the hope that — eventually — the good will overcome the sloppy.
Clare, I agree with Judy. Make your tree e best you can and don’t be afraid to stand alone with accuracy.
I wish when I forget to check the privacy policy box I didn’t have to go back and write my entire post over again.
I wish we didn’t have to have a privacy box, but we do, and bloggers all have to use add-ons for this which means we don’t control the features. All I can say is I’ll keep looking for a better one. In the meantime, if it’s a long comment, writing it offline (such as in a text editor) is the way to go so you can copy-paste as much as needed.
I feel your pain. 20 years ago a person, who shall not be named, attached my 4th great grandfather Linsey to her ancestor who had a child named Lansea because of a Deed INDEX! She didn’t bother to check the actual deed that mentioned her ancestor’s daughter Lansea J. She not only refused to make the correction when notified of the error, she shared it far and wide without mentioning that little problem, because ‘it fit’. (A direct quote.)
I recently corresponded with a genealogist working for someone connected to the family. I shared the little issue with the deed when I noted they had connected my ancestor to that family in their tree. They’ve been going over their research and keep coming back to me pointing the same information that led me to wonder if Lansea and Linsey were the same. Trying to show that they are right and I’m wrong?? I explain what they’ve missed and point out that no matter how much circumstantial evidence they find, a daughter still isn’t a son.
Occasionally, I send a copy of the deed along with a note that daughter doesn’t mean son to some of those ‘rabid followers’. They ignore it but I’ve done my due diligence. Now it’s their problem.
I resist saying so many things I really want to say.
The sad part is that I recently found evidence that suggests that they are related just not father and son.
I’ll just keep on working on this by myself, digging through every record I can find. They can bury their heads where the sun doesn’t shine all they want.
My heart always sinks when I look at a family tree which has new or different information and the source is simply other Ancestry trees. But Ancestry promotes the practice of copying information from other trees to our own. It offers us ancestors and records from other trees as though these were exciting new discoveries instead of other people’s wild and unsourced hypotheses – it simply has no way of telling the difference. (Its new ThruLines feature carries this to extremes.) And don’t get me started on My Heritage … I live with it, because the occasional nugget of truth is sometimes there, but – like you – I do sometimes get very exasperated.
Carole, I’m so glad you made this point. I don’t mind people copying each others mistakes, but Ancestry pushes matches that are often ludicrous, and I agree, the Thrulines has exacerbated this by adding a veneer of scientific authority to what is actually a tangle of human error.
Judy, I get what our point that we aren’t responsible for other people’s trees. As you said, “…we can only do our best to ensure that our own research is as accurate as possible.” But now and then, if it feels right, I’ll send a quick, friendly note with a correction and source. There are those recipients who never reply, but usually I hear back from someone who thanks me and makes the change. However, that particular tree sounds as if it’s beyond redemption!
Oh absolutely — if it’s one or even a handful of small changes, I’ll often send along a note, especially if the person shares my line. But in this case “beyond redemption” is a very good phrase.
Thank you, Judy, for your short rant. I get the same feelings sometimes researching for my own tree. Occasionally I’ll look at other trees on Ancestry or FS, and the errors are just amazing. I can only conclude that some folks are just name collectors, not genealogists. Your note 10 is probably very true, but I also see many where my better (I hope) info is also copied to many other trees. Usually without attribution, but I’m OK with it.
With 49000+ names in this tree, yeah, name collector for sure. And it’s precisely because the good can be copied as well as the bad that we all need to make our own online work as good as it can be.
This post definitely struck a chord with me as well. We can all make mistakes, but there are many who let their enthusiasm get the better of them and they just take other people’s trees on faith and/or they don’t perform due diligence in examining the sources before adding. It is frustrating indeed and I sympathize with the going “ballistic” when it’s a particularly bad tree. Unfortunately, there’s no real recourse, except to make sure your work is as good as it can be.
Oh SO many of those trees I have seen. I mean, if you’re gonna have a crappy tree, at least don’t make it public! I haven’t gone off on one in awhile, but I’ve seen many that deserve it. Thank you for this. It was a fun read.
Hi Judy, feels good to get that off your chest, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, my wife is usually the one who has to endure my rants when I find trees that are as bad as the one you described. As is your practice, I never just copy things from other trees; at best other trees are hints that I use to do my own research. And like you, I become really suspicious of any tree having that many people in it. I’ve been doing genealogy for at least 25 years, and my tree only has a little over 7,000 people in it, and the only reason it is that large is because I tend to include siblings of my direct lines and their spouses and children. I’m not saying that very large trees can’t be well-researched, but so many of them seem to be “name collectors” as pointed out by another commenter.
I was initially dubious about Family Search’s policy of “One Big Family Tree, For Everyone”. Now, I’m more sympathetic. Errors are bound to creep in everyone’s tree. As many have pointed out, no source is indisputable – census, military registers, family recollections – you name it. In my case I fill the Notes section of a person in my tree with all the caveats about his details (as well as the usual salacious comments) as a hint to myself about why I picked a relationship. If every one in my tree was “indisputably” sourced, it would be minuscule. Only pretty sure just about Mom & Dad, but who knows?
Family Search’s approach is basically a Peer Review process: Throw it up against the wall and see what sticks. Where there’s a conflict between yours and someone else’s tree, you can settle it the open, subject to mediation, I suppose. You can swap sources and arguments. Not perfect, but attractive, and it can lead to new branches.
Do you have the same problems with Family Search as you do with Ancestry?
Absolutely yes! One big problem is people who decide to upload one of those 30,00-40,000 unverified family trees and merge all the profiles that look similar with what is already there. Then they walk away, leaving behind generations of corrupted data, severed genuine relationships, and spurious new ones that take everyone else hours and hours of time to unravel and clean up. I’m on my third case since Christmas and a new one just came to light today. Not fixing it isn’t an option, because so many people copy what’s on the FamilySearch tree uncritcally, that the polluted data will go viral if it’s left to fester.
At least as bad! “Consensus” is not useful when researchers and cloners have equal weight. There are several constructions on Family Search that I know to a moral certainty to be incorrect (99%+) but that simply cannot be eradicated. I’ve corrected them only to be in turn “corrected” by “citations” to “One World Tree”… which is, AFAICT, nothing but an aggregation of opinion or aspiration. I have totally given up on trying to correct falsehoods on Family Search. They are abundant, and they cannot be fixed.
I understand the frustration over this wildly fictional expansion of your family tree. I have seen people do weird things to my family tree online too. In this case described above I think the characterization of the author as a “name collector” is very appropriate. Generally what I see a lot of online I choose to call “Wishful Thinking” – People wanting to go that one generation further back when you have no sources to support it (or a source that doesn’t apply). . . or Ancestry gave you a Hint and the person assumed it was correct simply because it was fed to them.
I have enjoyed being on wikitree.com with the collaborative aspect of it. When I run across an unsourced (or badly sourced) gedcom someone uploaded long ago and walked away from, I get my kicks from correcting their data and adding sources where appropriate or fixing relationships when appropriate.
And when I find that the only source out there is a copy and paste done from an online tree, I add that url with a note of whether the other tree was sourced or not. In my mind doing this creates a trail of where possibly unsubstantiated data came from.
We live in a world where many people are interested in their “family trees”, but know nothing about the value and importance of sourcing those trees.
Really enjoyed your article. I have started sending e mails when I see where someone has included a middle name for a person but I don’t see documentation. I ask How did you determine that his middle name was Harrison? I have also told a person through e mail that it wasn’t possible for an ancestor to be living in another state during the census when she was living with her parents in a different state during the same census. I also pointed out that she would have been traveling by horseback so it would have been impossible. Sometimes he/she replies to my e mail sometimes not. I always want facts.
I will often ask if the tree seems to have some real work that went into it, and sometimes get answers as well. Not often, but sometimes.
Normally, one would expect that a person appearing in the US Census residing in one state could not possibly be the same person as the one simultaneously appearing in the same US Census residing in a different state, but You know what they say — “Never say ‘Never.’” I have an entire family group recorded in the 1880 US Census residing in New York and also residing in Connecticut. The New York address matched their primary home. The Connecticut address matched their second home, the same homestread that their family had built and farmed for over 100 years. I haveno idea vwhere they actually were on the day the two enumertors recorded their names. I only know that both enumerators were referring to the same five people.
I did find a 1930 census with my great uncle listed in one place, then about 2 weeks later, he was listed in a different place, by another census taker. And I know these were both definitely him, due to various clues. He had just moved from town to the farm. So it’s unlikely, but it is possible, to be listed more than once in the same census.
Amen, Judy. Just today I had a similar thing happen to me. Sometimes I wish that I only had my tree just on my computer. Cannot begin to tell you the times I have tried to help someone and they say “but it must be true, it’s on Ancestry, FamilySearch, or (pick any online location)” . Sigh.
Some years ago I found a tree in which the poster had my father MARRIED to his mother. Yes – that’s true. . . . . amazing. It took me five years of hounding the fellow before he made the correction. Yikes!!!
This post is a good reminder but I’m really torn on what we should do about errors in online trees. Firstly, this is an extreme case of errors and it’s creator is in a different league to anyone who would read your blog so I too would probably have shook my head and moved on but…..
I agree we need to post good information ourselves but in the world of DNA I would prefer my match has a tree that starts out correct then moves into the land of fiction somewhere in the 1800s than no tree at all and I want to encourage beginner genealogists who are starting out, as that person might have the key to my brick wall.
I made mistakes in the beginning and some may still be some in my tree on a few of my collateral lines where I didn’t do reasonably exhaustive research rather reasonably convenient research. I would want someone to tell me about any errors they found in my tree.
I’m a fan of creating private unsearchable quick and dirty trees for DNA matches. While creating a Q&D tree I saw a number of online trees had identified the parents of a women who married in 1929 in her mid forties with a single child in their tree. When I did a quick look online for her obituary I found she died in 1989 with 4 more children. So either the woman lived to over 100 and had 5 kids after 45 or the tree is an amalgamation of a people with the same name. I pretty sure it is the later.
I didn’t contact the poster or 10+ people who had copied this information. I feel like a bad genealogy citizen for not asking or following it up but without truly documenting it I just feel my opinion is speculation too. I don’t have time to do enough research to tell what is correct but I know if that was my family I wouldn’t be copying it without more research as something doesn’t seem right.
So I’m torn between how I would like people to treat me and how I treated the people who had this biological miracle person in their tree.
I hope the genealogy companies give us more tools to prevent errors. I know MyHeritage have some great tools at finding errors but I would like to see more companies with tools to prevent them in the first place. I bet the tree you refer to will be copied and the copier will not be warned about the events before their birth.
The tree has already been copied — sigh. My own take on this is to contact relatives I want to work with and nudge them gently in the right direction — and ignore the rest.
I have learnt that I can really not rely on other trees at all. Even the best researched have errors, including my one I’m sure. I filter all “facts” through a test tree before inclusion in the master tree. I also have separate trees for different lines. All a bit ott? To me, no. Even with this I’m sure there are errors.
In the army we talked about making the terrain fit the map rather than the other way around. I see so much of this in trees. Early “official” publications can be as bad. People making questionable links to there’s for social standing or financial reasons were not unheard of.
I am mystified (perhaps just envious) at trees with 10,000+ people. That, to me, is many years of work. I have 3400 odd after 15 years of scrutiny.
These trees are an aid and nothing more. I recently deleted my tree on Myheritage and uploaded my master because it included to many hints gleaned from other trees. I have learnt (once again) to do my own research and accept obody unless there are documents that prove they are who they are meant to be.
The reality is that, as genealogists, we shouldn’t rely on anything by itself — we want to do our reasonably exhaustive research to gather all possible clues and then examine each and every one of them carefully and critically. I don’t reject anything out of hand (except the idea of someone living before birth or after death — or giving birth at age 72!! 🙂 ) but I don’t accept anything without that critical review.
Yesterday (before seeing this post) I added some carefully created notes to one of my 4th great grandfathers in my online tree, explaining why I currently believe what I have concluded about his family situation and also that I do not consider this “proven” yet. My conclusions do not differ from others I have seen online for this person, but at least I have done a thorough job of researching and correlating various sources, documenting the analysis of those and calling out the remaining questions. For me this was a responsible way to get the conclusions out there but also warn others before they blindly accept my conclusions.
A very nice way of proceeding.
When I first started out doing the family tree a couple of my paternal first cousins gave me our shared branch which seemed pretty solid but I wanted to nail everything down a bit more.
They’d got my paternal grandfather back to a nearby village and so I went out to look through the parish church’s graveyard. I finally found the grave of my purported great-grandparents which included a lot of their children, amongst them my “grandfather” who died aged 4. So all that branch had to be cut free and, checking their research, it looks like they’d just plumped for the birth registration closest to the year of birth estimate from the censuses – not the best move (how did they know? They didn’t. They guessed). After ordering a number of birth certificates it turned out he was none of them, something confirmed by the 1939 Register. We started from scratch, visited one of the cousins and wrote down every rumour we knew. I then crowdsourced the effort and it quickly became clear that his baptism and birth registration were under a misspelled surname. We’ve since got an atDNA match through my great-grandmother, his mother, showing we’ve now got the right tree.
Unfortunately, on the same visit they told me that they’d been contacted by a “cousin” descended from my grandmother’s “grandparents” to inform us that the man we thought was our grandmother’s father died unmarried in Ireland. How did they know? They hired a professional genealogist in Ireland who rooted out all the information for them, including the location of the family farm which one cousin had visited. Tearing it all up and starting again I found 3 possible candidates for my great-grandfather and, without going around the graveyards checking for their burials (assuming you could find them) there is no way to tell which is which. I have to guess the genealogist didn’t want to present such equivocal results to my cousins so just picked one at random. We’re just lucky it was the easiest to disprove. We’ve not managed to build this tree back up again but have a few DNA results seem to be pointing us towards certain individuals. Unfortunately we are lacking my great-grandparents wedding which would really help.
So how did my cousin’s know? Answer: they didn’t, although they didn’t know the genealogist didn’t know so I’ll let them off there (as we’re deep into known unknowns territory). If everyone had been a bit clearer about their doubts we’d not have wasted time and money chasing ghosts and we might be further along with our tree.
I have a similar issue with the information that I find on FamilySearch. The other day I discovered that someone had built a tree that included my father. They listed him as deceased, which is completely wrong. I can attest most certainly, that my father who is 90 and living near me, is very much alive.
I feel your pain.
My family tree is convoluted at best with ancestors from China (very difficult to get records), Hawaii ( the “hanai” practice of placing your child/children with multiple other families without record, and having them take THEIR last name, but having them still be your child)and a lack of written records period. When I find information, I mine it like it’s gold and substantiate, support and attach proof.
Then someone I’ve never met, but is a DNA match for a 3rd or 4th cousin finds my tree and picks what he/she wants and then builds their tree from mine and then data mines other trees. Next thing I know, other trees sprout up and my mother has 4 new fathers, my grandmother has 3 new husbands, and others keep grabbing erroneous info and perpetuating the MYTH. It’s like falling down the rabbit hole.
I understand that good genealogy helps others, but poorly researched and documented genealogy that is cut and pasted makes me want to keep my tree private.
Oh my. Oh dear. That’s just awful. Four new fathers? (giggle)
Lori, I currently keep my tree private and have added family members who are serious about genealogy. I know that my work would be valuable to others researching similar ancestors, but at this point I prefer to keep my tree close to home. I think many people who are into genealogy today aren’t educated and see it as a fun hobby, which in turn leads to the garbage in the various trees.
I rarely use trees to do research. I do the work the old-fashioned way, by following the papertrail back carefully one gen at a time, using multiple verifiable sources. When I feel that I have a pretty solid handle on a line (including collatorals because they are both proof and clues, I’ll check on FamilySearch to see if someone is actively researching the same line and has info with citations that might help me. Very occasionally this happens, and both of us benefit. Most of the time I find nothing of use. But I can find things on FS to follow up on (the birth of a child in a gap, for instance, that doesn’t show up in later records because it died soon after). I can then check that out. But FS allows one to select one item to add to your tree, and ignore all those that don’t look right. I tried My Heritage, and was appalled to discover that when a match is identified, MH grafts the entire tree onto yours, with no way to evaluate it. Fortunately, I was able to reverse the action and dumped MH. I refuse to use their hints; it is a dubious process. MH does not have record sets that are useful to me anyway, though others might find them useful. MH makes me nuts with conjectures and no or little quality control on matches. FamilySearch at least has good record sets that I can search in a systematic way. As for Virginia, I think I’m just going to have to move there.
At least now I don’t feel so pedantic! I am chasing my g g grandfather who came to Australia. In almost all online sites he is listed as a certain person which definitely does not match his death cert. Or marriage cert. But it is just accepted. Now a local cemetery wants to put up a momento to this man
But I still can’t connect it. Still looking.
We have to be pedantic or we’re not being good researchers!
Congratulations! Your blog has been included in INTERESTING BLOGS at FRIDAY FOSSICKING at
https://thatmomentintime-crissouli.blogspot.com/2019/04/friday-fossicking-12-april-2019.html
Thank you, Chris