Finding new relatives and sharing information

Alicat

Over the years, I have found various new relatives through sites like Ancestry and Geni. Some have been a wealth of information and have given me valuable details that I might not have found myself. However, the others are very frustrating! I find some people adding family members to their trees without sufficient evidence and second-guessing information. I try to be polite and cheerful when trying to point out their inaccuracies (or rather, lack of evidence) but it's quite annoying.

Just this week I found someone connected to a branch of my Dublin family. I was quite delighted to find them but as I've gone through their information, I see that they have the family hopping between Ireland and Scotland, but have no evidence to back it up other than a couple, of the same name as mine, happened to live in Scotland around the same time. I'm waiting for this person to get back to me to explain to me how they arrived at the Scotland conclusion but I'm presuming it will have been sloppy guesswork.

I don't know about everyone else but I really try to get at least two pieces of solid evidence for every connection. I can see how people can be easily led away from the correct path by relations with incorrect information though. Its quite exciting to find somebody with what looks like new information.

How many of you would use other people's trees and information while doing your research? Do you double check their information or trust that they have done their homework? Or do you stay away from them all together and prefer to find certs, registers, newspaper articles etc. yourself?

shanew

A lot of the public trees on Ancestry, Mundia etc are filled with the types of errors you've seen... people magically bouncing around Ireland, or around the world with no evidence. You'll quite often see basic errors propagated across multiple trees, so presumably there's a lot a copying or sharing going on.

Few of the trees show sources and quite a number I've seen recently quote a UK or Irish BMD Index reference as a source - so they probably haven't even seen a cert!

That said they can be worth checking as I've come across a few great connections, but I'd treat most of the details are interesting stories rather than definite facts.

I gave up long ago trying to pass on corrections....


Shane

Elizabetha

I like to make the connections myself even when I come accross relatives trees, mainly because for me thats the whole joy of it. And yes I have seen cases of "country hopping" and obviously wrong information on trees. I have to say though I dont let them know their mistakes anymore because of people taking the hump about it.....

RGM

Yeah, I've mentioned this before. Really, really frustrating.

I have been lucky though in that I've connected with several distant cousins who did their homework. I also was handed an extensive list of the descendants of one third-great-grandfather that was done 25 years ago, meaning it was compiled via old-fashioned, in-person research. Still working through that to connect to all the present-day relations.

pinkypinky

Agree with what everyone else said. I take on what they say, examine their evidence and decide if it's good enough. Often it's been fine. I have a good excuse: my UCD lecturer was a stickler for getting the definite proof. I had a seminar piece to present once and I had made a leap of faith on a connection which had nothing definite 17 separate pieces of circumstantial evidence, which he was happy with. I did eventually find proof in a roundabout way!

One cousin had arrived at the conclusion that one person was two: I know how he got there but when I politely asked, he just never replied. Very irritating!

dee12_7

I agree that its quite annoying when people guess information but before I add somebodys information to my tree I compare the information I have already, that Im confident is correct, with the info that they have and see if it weighs up.If im not confident that my info is correct I would never take someone elses word for it unless they have something significant to support their story.

At the moment my tree is set to private because I have information about a couple of people that im not sure is correct and I dont want other people assuming its right and copying it.

I also get quite frustrated by people contacting me asking me for information about a person or people but when I respond and help them out whatever way I can and then ask them about something or somebody that I might not know about,I get no response!