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| My Great-Grandfather, August H. Vonderheide, with his first three great-grancdhildren |
Anyone who has been doing genealogy for any
length of time knows not to trust family trees on ancestry.com at face value.
They may be absolutely correct and include wonderful source citations. They may
serve as a starting point for conducting your own research on an elusive
ancestor. Best of all, they may lead you to connecting to “cousins” who are
researching the same ancestor. I’ve had all three experiences.
Through Ancestry, I've had the pleasure of
meeting and forming relationships with cousins who were working on the same
family members. I’m very close to a 2nd, 3rd, 4th
and 5th cousin I would not have discovered in any other way. One newly-discovered
cousin lives about 15 minutes away from me, and we discovered that our
gg-grandparents were brothers who ran their own business as blacksmiths in
Cincinnati in the 1840s. What a delightful discovery.
BUT . . .
Not all discoveries are this positive. On
ancestry, the company lets you know if someone is copying information from your
tree to theirs. When I see the same name appearing over and over, I always
contact them through the Member Connect option to see if we are related. A
couple of days ago, I followed this procedure to contact someone who had
included my g-grandfather in his tree. He had it totally wrong, and I
offered to help him straighten it out. I did not expect to get this reply:
There may not be any
logical or traceable connection at all, as the tree, by this time, is not
actually a "family tree", but more correctly, a "community
tree". In the process of assembling this interconnected tapestry, the
families of various in-laws, or even second or third spouses, are included,
which makes some of the "connections" a little obscure. I include
something I call "cousin of a cousin", as your cousins may have an
entirely different set of cousins, and when these families are expanded,
gradually most of a community is included. So I probably bumped into (unnamed ancestor) by including parts of somebody else's tree, and if this
information is incorrect, perhaps I was not sufficiently prudent in
verification. Perhaps you could provide clarification?
The core of my tree is
based in southwestern Wisconsin, Grant county, and expanding outward from
there. Some goes back to European or Canadian pasts, and has stretched back and
forth across the United States several times. In truth, I probably have no connection at all with some 95% or more of
the people on the tree, and in fact, I am not even a direct relative of the
base person, John Doe*. He was a brother-in-law to my first cousin, and I
started the tree shortly after he died, as a sort of memorial. John* was about
8 or 9 years older than me, and he hung out with my older brother and my first
cousins. He was always pretty much of a maverick when he was 17, and he was not
much changed by the time he was 70. I pursue the expansion of the tree mostly
for the intellectual challenge, as it is both a test of deductive capabilities,
sorting out the scattered acts, and a way to fill time during retirement years.
And I like to think it may be a starting point for somebody else who wants to
start their own tree. Good Hunting.
*Name
changed to protect the guilty.
I don’t think I have an answer for this one. Do you?
You can't just "click and claim" him -- he's mine.
You can't just "click and claim" him -- he's mine.
Submitted by Kathy Reed
Good job, Kathy!!!!
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading, Karen.
DeleteKathy, I wouldn't fault this gentleman at all for his gracious and honest reply to your contact. Each person who uses Ancestry (or any other resource on this planet, for that matter) does so with his or her own goals in mind. You'll find many trees on Ancestry with over 10,000 people in them, and surely each entry has not been fully documented. In those trees, I've found not only some wonderful clues about who to look for in my own searching, but also some glaring errors (yesterday, someone married to his own sister!) which have motivated me to expand my own research to figure out what the real truth was. I've contacted people about errors and have figured out that not everyone is as invested in your ancestor as you are, but many will not take the time and effort to reply as graciously as this man has. Nowadays, before I contact someone, I check to see how many people are in their tree--that may be a pretty good clue as to how interested they will be in making corrections.
ReplyDeleteI have more to say on this, but I want to think it through and maybe write a blog post about it. Thanks for sharing this gentleman's perspective. It's always helpful to get a look at things through someone else's eyes!
Thank you for your thoughtful response. As mentioned in the post, I. too have used trees to give me clues on elusive ancestors. However, I wish this community would be more cautious about trees they post and trees they claim. Recently I was trying to "prove" an ancestor. I was thrilled to discover that 37 ancestor trees included the name in question. However, when I started reviewing them, there were at least 25 variations in that same family group. I have a 4th cousin who is an excellent researcher. She discovered that she had made an error. She tried to inform others who had "clicked and claimed" her research that she had made an error and gave them the evidence for the correction. Not one of them took her advice saying that it was listed that way in 40 other trees so it "had to be right." She couldn't convey that those 40 trees used her information as an original source. All of us, especially me, have made mistakes. That's not my concern. My concern is with the minority of people who make no effort to add trees without much thought. I can't wait to read your post and I hope you let me know when it is posted.
DeleteHey, Kathy, good thing you made Randy's Best of the Genea-Blogs post this week! It reminded me to finish up and post, and come back to let you know I ended up with two posts, dated Nov. 1 and Nov. 4, at Before My Time (http://krentz.blogspot.com/).
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ReplyDeleteI have to respectfully, disagree with the author. Her ancestor isn't hers. My mother was also a wife, a daughter, an aunt, a cousin or some type of in-law to other people, who may all want her on their trees. A person may also be doing a one-place study and want my mother on their tree. In a historical sense she belongs to everyone. And since I put her death information on a public tree, I can no longer care who "clicks and claims" her as their own what ever there reason may be. I may decide, if they have relationships and facts about life wrong about her life to gently provide corrections, but the accuracy of their tree is ultimately their business and no one else's. My responsibility is to my tree and making it as accurate as it can be based on the known information and sources I myself have been able to discover. One of those discoveries may have come from following a clue provided in another person's public tree, but I must do my own due diligence.
ReplyDeleteThank you for taking the time to comment. I agree that in a historical sense, all of us are fair game for inclusion. I also had never considered a one-place study. However, I am concerned about the number of "newbies" in particular, who do not realize that it is necessary to do their own due diligence. I appreciate your response.
DeleteI was a "newbie" not long ago and learned the hard way about adding people to your tree. I'm still trying to clean it up. I wish Ancestry would address this issue by bringing it to the attention of the "newbies" that they should verify the information and not add people until they are verified. I know it won't happen but in my genealogy dream world it is possible. I too contact people who I see have added my ancestors but the majority of the time I do not hear anything from them. I still put my tree out there and hope that it helps someone else along the way and that maybe someday I will get a cousin connection from it.
ReplyDeleteShannon, I would continue to do exactly what you are doing. Maybe I am fortunate in being able to make several cousin connections -- and I predict, over time, you will too.
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