Re: Ancestry.com public family trees are FILLED with inaccurate crap!!

[Pat...@aol.com]

When it get right down to it it's the fault of the poster in my opinion.
I think that because I have pointed out to several that their information
is incorrect and the usual response is "So what."


In a message dated 4/1/2012 10:31:43 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
sing...@erols.com writes:

Kickin' Ass and Takin' Names wrote:
>
> Yes, they are.
>
> I just added to my Ancestry.com family tree several distant relatives
> -- every bit of info I have added is VALID -- public records, family
> Bibles, newspaper articles, cross-checked, double-checked.
>
> Now, the "little leaf" is showing up and damn near every "hint" is
> crap.

I'm not sure we can honestly blame specific people for those
nasty little leaves. Many of them seem to be the results of
AI linking.

IMO, AI linking is worse than people doing it...at least you
have a 50/50 chance of arguing with a people. You just
can't argue with someone else's computer's AI results. :(

Cheryl


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[R S H]

The problem with that attitude is you are ignoring the situation I run into regularly... in the record search for data on my ancestors in
what is NOW Germany but long before there was a Germany.

In the main I am searching in the area that was under the control of the Catholic Church in Cologne, before the wars and Napoleon decreeing
that the Jews west of the Rhine take surnames in 1808.

I can trace SOME back to the late 1600s or early 1700s by x son of y and a daughter of b chains but many of the records were destroyed
during Crystal Night in 1938 or during the Second World War bombing, and the cemeteries were desecrated as well, so that the information
from tombstones is either gone or the tombstones themselves are gone, broken to pieces, and so on.

The town where my father and his ancestors comes from [Friesheim, southwest of Cologne] was all Catholic and Jewish before the 20th Century.
There were NO Protestants living there at all. Each religion kept its own records for many things, and most of the records in my case were
in the Jewish synagogue, which was destroyed in 1938, and which was attached to my father's family home.

Many of my family did not survive the holocaust and those that did were not overly forthcoming about their family histories, so quite a bit
of the information I have is from many disparate records that work but are NOT absolute in my ability to verify them from official sources,
or find a second source for them.

Is any of the information incorrect? It is quite possible.... and I have indeed found cases where a second review has discovered a missing
generation, and so on... but it is far better to have recorded what IS believed to be accurate than to leave it out and lose it, so that in
the future when more MIGHT be found, this part has been lost.

So in my view it really depends on where in the world you are searching for data and the availability of 'public records'... As for family
bibles, forget it in the part of the world I am searching... they were all destroyed by the Nazi incited rioters. Newspaper articles in
rural Germany did NOT exist where I am searching for the time period I am searching, before 1808, either.

So what would you do in this situation? Quit?

Nations that I know I need records from include:
Germany
Holland
China
Israel
South Africa
Columbia
Mexico
Austria
Russia
Poland

and frankly, Ancestry, as one example, has almost NOTHING from any of those countries. They have the U.S., Canada and the U.K. with some
data from other English speaking countries, but not much. When it comes to the LDS records, they have more but getting at it is difficult,
and again they do not have much covering the areas I am looking at.

I am, frankly, tired of those who have it relatively easy to find their records in the U.S. and England or in Canada way back to the 1700s
and before. Good for them and the documentation they have and can rely on. I do NOT have that sort of documentation available, and those of
us doing the research and cross-checking it and documenting findings have a really difficult time of it, finding our data in small bits and
pieces. Germany does NOT have consolidated records or meaningful records before confederation in 1870 in many parts of the nation, and some
of that country have changed ownership so many times that it is even more difficult to find the correct location where a record MIGHT exist.
The part of Germany I am dealing with was part of France officially when Napoleon controlled it until 1814, for example, but the records
never made it to Paris.

FWIW
RsH

[Keith Nuttle]

I believe there is a huge difference between the data that you are
talking about, and the data in the crap trees on ancestry that is being
discussed. In your case you are working with the documents available
tying to reconstruct the history of your family from what is available.
In the case of the crap trees, the owners are attaching any thing to
their tree just to add names.

In many case this act of adding random data, creates situation where the
parent are born after the children. Or in one case I know, the person
is living in England while her children are being born in New York US.
While this may be possible in the 2000's, in the late 1700's and early
1800's with the ocean voyages take 6 to 8 weeks or longer and the
children born every two years this is impossible.

Your situation is not necessarily unique to Europe. There are areas in
the US when civilization had not yet reached the area, and official
records are quite sparse. I have an ancestor who first appears in the
Binghampton NY area, just as the land have been transferred from the
Indians to the US government. The family may have been illegally living
in the Indiana territory before the transfer. With the nearest Official
government several days away they were born, married, and died without
the benefit of an official record.

In other areas with official governments, the frontier conflicts often
left towns burned, all of the inhabitants dead, and the record dispersed
to the wind. People think of those living in the east coast states of
the US as being immune from this, but Indiana massacres were occurring
in the Pennsylvania New York area into the 1800's.

Final don't forget the US Civil War. Towns were burned and records lost
just as they were in Europe.

Lack of records is the bane of a genealogist

[Pat...@aol.com]

The ones who annoy me the most are those who have included tons of members
of my family and none of them are in any way connected to their trees. Not
even vaguely.


In a message dated 4/3/2012 10:48:17 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
drmorri...@comcast.net writes:

On Sun, 01 Apr 2012 09:14:17 -0400, Keith Nuttle
<Keith_...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:


>What is more if you offer the person with the crap trees, the
>documentation ie. birth, death, marriage certificates with the correct
>information you probably will be ignored. I sometimes think all they
>want is a paper with a lot of names and dates, and don't care if it is
>correct or not. On the other hand if they did not take the time to
>complete the research in the first place, I doubt they would have the
>time to correct their errors.
>
>It seems to me if you are looking for your ancestors you should want to
>HONOR them by identifying their real parents and siblings. Those people
>with the crap trees do not spend enough time on their research to
>realize there may be two families of the same name with daughters named
>Susan. Naming your children after your ancestors was the way to honored
>their your ancestors or a dead sibling. Families repeat the same names
>from generation to generation, and multiple times within siblings
families.

I've noticed the same thing. I have a relative who I suspect is bad
mouthing me because I correspond with them and then never hear from
them but they have the same incorrect information she has.

I've researched the death records from the city where they lived and
the obits but that doesn't seem to satisfy her.

If I'm wrong and someone can prove different records, I'm quite
willing to review them.

I have found some valuable hints though. One was from someone
researching the husband of someone in my family.