I was just now checking hints on a particular person and ran across these trees that are so out of whack that I just had to say something. There were 7 trees connected with this person. I want to use this example to point out the way some people just mindlessly download and attach data without even checking the validity of the data. The parents of this particular person were well known in South Georgia. Of the 7 trees with hints, 4 out of the 7 have the same absolutely incorrect dates and locations for her birth, death, and the name of her parents. I sent e mails just now to the 4 who were so absolutely wrong. I doubt that I will hear from any of them. They had her born in Canada and dying in Massachusetts and her parents dying before she was even born. Please, please, do not do this sort of thing. Think before you add someone and do at least some checking before you manually add them. Don't just add mindless junk. Member trees such as this just reiterate the idea that so many member trees are just filled with junk.

It's so sad that people are doing this. They are not doing proper genealogical research and not proofing what they find, they are are just thinking that since it is on ancestry it must be right. In a few years there will be so many mistakes showing up in family trees everywhere, not just on the ancestry trees and it will be a mess to straighten out, if anyone bothers to try to fix the mess.

I would like to see ancestry put more information about research methods and standards on the main page that we see when we log into the site.

I think I would like to see the merging of other's trees done away with. At least, if someone had to manually enter dates and places, perhaps they would think twice. Although, last night I pulled up the same person through rootsweb and found the same nutty data there about this particular female. This data may have been what started that whole mess anyway. I just cannot understand though how anyone can put a list with 9 children on it, all born in Georgia except for one who right in the middle of those children was suddenly born in Canada. Not very many people in 1822 in Georgia suddenly went to Canada for the birth of a child. You would think that would send up a signal. Except the ones who added that never even looked back at it because they were just padding their tree with more names.

In most instances people are just following Ancestry.com's marketing plan, cobbling tree bits together instead of doing research.

Ancestry would have them think doing this *is* "doing research." That is the real tragedy here.

The other side of the coin is that in most instances the evidence for the relationships and sundry other assertions is **not** available on the internet. It is in the treasure-houses: County Courthouses, Historical Societies, Town, State and National Archives.

You won't find Ancestry.com acknowledging that it does not have the requisite local-records databases (images of actual documents) for doing actual records research, aside from the limited data available in, say, 1850+ US Federal Census enumerations.

What help is available as guides is mainly limited to material available on the Ancestry.com site (here again, the marketing drive). Thus, for example, the guide to researching immigrant ancestors circulated some months ago urged such things as checking for treasure troves of letters in one's parents' attic (which newer houses don't have). Without really saying so, the guide is principally about post-1875 immigrants, somehow forgetting to mention the previous 250-odd years. Gee whiz, my family clean forgot to save those letters from our Mayflower ancestors and the 1630s-1750s immigrants.

There are good guides to doing actual research, accessible on familysearch.com, and from Rootsweb's Home Page, as well as elsewhere on the internet as well as in such books as /The Source/. The helpful guide/tips-type materials that are available on the Ancestry.com site are badly organized, hard to find, and not particularly publicized.

Ancestry.com markets its tree-hosting to people who haven't a clue to the nature of evidence and how to find it, with emphasis on finding a photo of a great-gran born around 1880. Since most people do not learn in school how to do research these days, it is not "their fault."

It will be wonderful when the LDS' project to digitize its microfilms of actual local records, and make them available on the internet, begins to be implemented on the requisite massive scale. This will be something of a counterbalance to tree-cobbling, for those willing to do some actual research in documents.

In the meantime, one has to let the tree-cobbling be what it is. Bad genealogy lasts a really long time, since no one goes around destroying non-documented genealogical publications or deleting silly trees. Eventually maybe the web sites devoted to documentation of family trees will expand more quickly than the Ancestry.com variety.

Hi mbmjlm

In regards to the one child born in Canada to a Georgia family.

Unless you have hard evidence to the contrary don't dismiss it out of hand.

My great grandparents, Stephen B. and Mary Smith had 9 children, the first 7 of whom were born in NY, the 7th being born in Roslyn, NY in Nov 1855. Their 8th child Isaac was born in Illinois 14 months later in Jan 1858. The 9th was born in Port Washington, NY in May of 1861.

It turns out that the whole family moved to Charleston, Ill. in 1856 and returned to Long Island in 1860.

Our ancestors were more mobile than we tend to think. Especially if they had easy access to the sea.

Dave Smith

Not this bunch. They stayed in Georgia. I know that for a fact. I agree many were mobile but not this particular family and not in 1822.

For me, the worst aspect of tree-cobbling is that it has become near impossible for me to find any members who may have info I want. When I first joined Ancestry a few years ago, family tree searches of known ancestors revealed several distant cousins who had loads of information, documents and even pictures that they sent me through the mail. Their research enabled me to continue and find new facts on my own, which I shared back with them.

These days, however, any time I search for an ancestor, all I get is my own information copied in dozens of trees. Every now and then, when I notice that some of their info doesn't exactly match my own, I write and ask how they came about a particular fact--hoping that perhaps they have an old marriage license or newspaper story, etc. I rarely get any responses, likely because those departures from my info were just lifted from someone else's tree and merged with theirs!

I also no longer get messages from people asking for my help, which is such a shame. I try to get every document I have onto my family tree, and write stories passed down through generations, but there is still so much "personal" stuff that I am eager to share, and it's like nobody wants any of it. Just three years ago my small group of cousins and I were circulating our respective memories, documents, and cool research stories (the "journeys" that make it so fun!), but now, despite dozens of people seemingly caring to add my research to their trees, there are surprisingly few people who genuinely seem to care about these old relatives.

I agree 100%! Many casual 'researchers' aren't proving anything and the entire tree is based on their assumptions or someone elses. I'd also like to see Ancestry put more information about research methods and genealogical standards on the home page. I'd also like them to go one step further and put a warning on the page when a member tree is displayed that this is not a genealogical record but a compilation of the individual's research and assumpitons that could be fraught with errors.

. . . and cause them to disappoint subscribers and lose revenue? NOT.

At the very least, it would improve the product if it could give you a warning when you enter something that does not fit datewise. The other day I entered a custom tag for an obit, after death, and ancestry did give me a little box warning that this event was occurring after death. That was good, there should be more warnings like that, such as children born after parents are dead, or the mother is 10 years old, etc. If someone is moving a tree from another, the option should be available to run a report showing errors. I know that the tress at ancestry are not a genealogical program, but since so many people are using it as a program, ancestry needs to step up and improve the product.