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Sunday, July 30, 2017

Hornet's Nest

The Gorse Fox followed up on some of his blog comments regarding genealogical research. He put a post onto Facebook:

Insert Tongue in cheek 
Is it possible to erase other people's trees from Ancestry? I am finding so many bits of research that have no sources or don't pass basic sense checks. As I said in answer to a post the other day I found one woman in my wife's line who was so sturdy she had 10 children after she died. Today I have found, according to another researcher, that her 6th Gt grandfather was born in 1692 and died in 1950. Now, I know she is from sturdy stock - but 258 years seems a good age to die. Is there some way to nuke these trees? 
Remove tongue from cheek
Well this stirred up a hornet's nest with 193 comments so far. These vary from serious responses (which he didn't really need), indignant and angry comments, and some humorous anecdotes (which is what he was expecting).

First observation is that there are some very miserable and angry small-minded people out there. The Gorse Fox's advice to them is to crawl back into a hole and fester by yourselves.

Secondly he thought he'd repeat some of the anecdotes that made him smile:

  • I love the trees where the mother has 32-34 kids....starting when she was 11-12 y.o. all the way to her 160th birthday !!!!
  • My favorite is the 4yo who gave birth, the tree owner adamantly insisted (sprinkled with cuss words) there was no mistake!
  • One humongous tree I saw went back all the way to God. This "faithful" genealogist was nearly giggling with glee over his extensive research. I tried to avoid being rude and did so with the exception of commenting on his ancestor, the famed Helen of Troy. I learned from his tree that she was born in British Columbia, Canada. 
  • I know exactly who my parents are, and when they were married. I have them on my tree, along with a copy of their marriage certificate. Someone copied them from my tree to hers, but has my father married to a different woman entirely, getting married in a different state entirely, and she even attached a marriage certificate that has different names on it as her "source" and "proof." I sent a message to her via the Ancestry message and she wrote back that she has the name Bruno in her family and when she saw Bruno on my tree she thought they belonged to her. She even said (and I quote) " I had no idea there were two sets of Bruno." REALLY? Only one Bruno family in all of Italy?!?
  • Mine involved a nun who never left the convent - they had married her into their family and given her a lot of children.
  • I have found my own grandmother listed on someone else's tree, because apparently her father, James Anderson, was the only James Anderson the tree owner could find. 
  • I've seen children's births after both parents deaths among other mistake
  • I had one that insisted my great uncle had a child 2 years after died and no amount of proof would change her mind. 
  • I had a DNA match with hint that liked to an ancestor but when I looked at their tree the kids were born before the father.
And just add another anecdote from today, the Gorse Fox found an nth Gt-grandmother of the Silver Vixen who, according to one researcher, had 23 children from three marriages - several of the children were born in the same years as other from the other (apparently simultaneous) marriages.

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