Do Ancestry and FamilySearch REALLY Tell Your Family History?

There are 2 phrases that are red flags that something could be wrong with your genealogy. These phrases point to a common misconception about Ancestry and FamilySearch, and how those sites work.

#genealogy #familyhistory #ancestry

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[lindacarroll]

One of the things that drives me crazy about Family Search is that the first person who put in information is considered the "authority." No matter how much documentation you have, anyone can change it back to the wrong information because that is what was there first. Back when I was doing research at the LDS libraries in the 1980s, they accepted trees from anyone with no questions asked. They passed that information on to Ancestry when they were starting up their site. If you are working from an "old" tree, double check every document and do not accept Ancestry Family Trees data at all.

[eathealthieru]

I am correcting fellow researchers (gently) constantly, and every time I am working on a 4th or 5th generation, the hints give me other people who are working with those people, and I go to look at their trees. I find 1700s people with civil war records, marriage records from the 1900s, and so I start contacting researchers. It's a never-ending thing, but I am determined not to let this slide. I ask them nicely to "help me" as I am doing research and these hints are messing with the search engines and also people who don't know are copying them to their trees. So every time someone responds favorably and removes these records that are incorrect, it is a win win win!

[tmpatklk]

So true! I've been working on all the branches of my family tree on FamilySearch and I regularly find incorrectly attached records that add the wrong parents, siblings, locations, etc. A major problem is the frequency of combined given names and surnames. There can be literally hundreds of people with the same first and last name married to a woman with the same first and married name as my relatives. Locations, dates, and maiden names are crucial. I recently had a Tim and Mary couple who lived on a farm in rural Pennsylvania confused with a Tim and Mary living in New York City at the same time. I painstakingly correct faulty trees and note reasons for those edits only to have some undone by another person. Inexperience is a factor. The more one works carefully to piece together records the better. One has to learn how to do things on FamilySearch. Often, the trees have to be viewed as a work in process on the site.

[teresaeckford]

Great video, Amy - I will recommend it to people who are new to family history and genealogy - you clearly delineate the differences without overwhelming the viewer with extraneous information or jargon...

[nickk]

I've been saying the same thing as you for years. Case in point. I found my maternal grandafther on an Ancestry Family Tree and was intrigued to find out what relationship I had with the owner of the tree. Turns out there was none. After contacting her, she replied that my grandfather's name was the only one she could find on Ancestry that fitted, so she added my grandfather to her tree.

These genealogy web sites are useful as a starter reference, but they are not a substitute for proper research, although I understand that can be difficult if you ancestry originates in another country. I am lucky in that my paternal line has been in the area where I live in England for 500 years and many original documents pertaining to the family are held in the archives only 3 miles from where I live!

It's also worth remembering that if you can't find something on a site such as Ancestry, it doesn't mean it is not there, or elsewhere. When archives containing references to my paternal family were added to Ancestry, I found 25% of them had been mis-transcribed, with spellings of names that wouldn't exist in English, let alone any other language! Sites such as Ancestry are a good starting point, but it is a mistake to blindly accept what they offer you and it is certainly a grave error to just copy from someone else's tree to your own. I've seen plenty of instances of an error being propagated through family trees by copying. And if you come to a dead end, then there is not a lot that you can do after that. You can't just add records because they sound right.

[Stretch-bhpd]

I started a tree on family search several years and the next thing I knew, someone added a whole bunch of lines! I had barely put in me, my dad and my husband when someone else added a whole bunch to my husband’s family!!! It irritated me fist because one, I wasn’t aware that people could do that and second, that they are adding “unsourced information “!! I contacted them about this and basically was told that that’s how it works, it’s all one big family tree! I said no, I’m not adding my lines just so someone else can add their information to my tree without documentation! I don’t want to sound selfish here but I told her no, I’m taking my family off family search trees! I use family search for records but not to put my family on it. I occasionally subscribe to ancestry to check for any documentation they have also, which I am currently doing 6 months of world because they had a half of for the 4th of July.

[dukecitywifey]

I have been researching my family since 1974! Ancestry has made things easier but one must do the homework! Children of the deceased don't always get it correct. Children may not be aware of previous marriages. Records even being accurate can be deceiving! A couple of gents in my tree married women with the same name or name used so it appears the same woman is in the census having died years earlier. It is often best to check the relatives as well! The children listed too.

[christadawnwheeler]

I'm glad I'm not the only one having this problem. There is a popular family tree of my ancestor online that is completely wrong. I figured out the lady responsible has my ancestor and someone with the same name but different county confused. I have documentation to prove she has the wrong guy but she either deleted my comments., changes it back after I've fixed it, or started a new profile with her info and had the one I got amended deleted. It's frustrating. She has never shown proof of her info and is basically peddling lies.

[tonisjustknotright]

I am learning to slow down and pull up any records available to read them and then see if they do pertain to my family. Many times, when I am not certain, I ignore the hints. I am trying to be more careful as I have made all the mistakes you talked about. I have many things to clean up as I go back to them.

[rwssinor]

Amy, thank you. Well said. Having had to prove my family history for lineage societies such as the SAR, First Families of Ohio and many more have really provided me a great toolbox to understand how to research effectively. I love your term for hints — possibilities!

[LindaMeade]

FamilySearch royally messed up my great great grandfather Cortland Hyde’s mother as a Mary Blatchley instead of a Mary Wilber, which gave me a huge mess of incorrect cousins.

[mattpotter]

The Hints you get on Ancestry come from other people's family trees, they're records that other people have added to a person, usually with the same name, born around the same year, in a similar location (this can be as wide as the country, so it might not even be close). They may also have the same parents, or even one parent, and they may have attached to that person the exact records you've already attached and so they are suggesting these records too are from your ancestor. So the trees and hints are not separate entities, and are only as good as the person that has added them, and how thorough they were when adding them. I would say a lot of the time they're ok to accept, but check them yourself before adding and if they don't pass the threshold for being your ancestor don't accept them, leave them undecided.

[lindakay]

Hi Amy! You're my favorite genealogy coach.

I had an epiphany last night.

History and stories matter SO MUCH!

Last night, I was listening to a video about the first Dutch in America. I already know I'm extremely Dutch. But I've never known what relatives I got it from.

So this documentary was talking about Dutch house furnishings.

They mentioned keepsake chest. I don't remember what they called it. My mom called hers a hope chest. It's for keeping the mementos that are too expensive to display out in the open. Or items that you're saving to make house with.

My mom started one for me when I was about 4.

I'm almost positive this tradition is from her mom's family.

[allenjackman]

Very well stated Amy. Mistakes get copied from one site to another and then if you ask for a source for someone's information they suddenly clam up and won't respond!

[trishoconnor]

Records can definitely be wrong. I had a brother, born several years before me, who died in early infancy, and my father did not find out until decades later that his death certificate had been filed with the wrong first name, as it happens my father's name. Apparently, someone was under the impression that the baby boy was a "Junior, " but he wasn't. The family's next son (who is still living) was given this name, not the firstborn male who only lived a few days. This error also meant that when the state eventually started cross referencing birth and death certificates to make identity theft of deceased infants (once a common way of changing one's identity) more difficult, my deceased brother's certificates were never linked. I have reason to believe someone did in fact eventually set up an identity in his name. Think of the mess all of this could make for some genealogist down the road! They might find the erroneous death certificate and think that my currently living brother was the one who died as a baby and that his birth certificate must have the wrong year, or they might find later records of the identity thief and understandably assume he was a member of our family. I'm sure such things happened in the past, too, and the more time goes by, the harder it becomes to realize that the records are misleading.

[hyacinth]

Someone on Ancestry had my parents in their tree, so I looked at it wondering if they were cousins of mine. They had my dad in the wrong family! I emailed them to inform them of that, because they are MY parents and I remember my grandparents. I never heard back and it wasn't corrected.

[hstteacher]

thanks -- great information -- I have seen lots of inconsistencies on both Ancestry & Family Search -- I look at what people have posted, but I know that I cannot really rely on the information unless I have thoroughly researched it myself in whatever records are available.

[ANota-ogyp]

Any cooperative family tree can become a big mess. The biggest mistake I encountered? I myself got 5 extra siblings from a participant unknown to me. The pinnacle was the question of whether I was sure that it was wrong. ....
Yah dude, like I don't know how many people were sitting at the dinner table, when my parents got married, when my brothers and sisters were born....until my father passed away, after almost 60 years of marriage, my parents were always together.

[Heinzish]

The "potential parent" on Ancestry option isn't reliable. They take the info from other trees which may or may not be accurate.

[micheledavison]

It isn't always the websites that are the issue either. Some of the genealogists who wrote books 100-200 years ago got it wrong. I have been fighting for 20 years to make people understand that the roughly 20 yo Scottish Daniel Davison in Ipswich MA is 1650 is NOT the same Daniel Davison that was born in 1650 in Charlestown MA to an Englishman because a Davisson genealogist said it was so.