I am guilty of all these vile injustices to posterity and dishonoring my ancestors. Whether by accident – having too much faith in trees and in the beginning not knowing the trees had such rampant mistakes, or new information coming to light which corrects with previously unknown details and not taking enough time to inform other people of the new information and at least try to get the information corrected.

Maiden names? Let’s get that out of the way – ONLY maiden name or put unknown; never the married name. I put Nee unknown and I hope someone will correct me, I bet the search engines for matching people in databases has a preferred unknown word. Just do it.

I am guilty especially when I have added people via online site AncestryDOTcom – in clicking yes to add a family to a tree they might all get added to the tree – especially if a new family with mistakes in any spelling and the wife with the married name. So just remember to fix them. How can the search engine look for your ancestress under her maiden name as a little girl, if you only have her listed as her married name? Certainly, the rule is start with a person’s death record but remember for the ladies they were born with another name. And always take into account from the first record for a person – their death – consider if the people who gave the information would have known all the answers correctly.

And oh, the trees with mistakes – give me a stroke. If I have to see one more tree and argument about the travesty of Orra Eugene Monnette’s first book. Monnette changes the names of all the Money family in his book. He says they are Monnette, and even though he admits in the book the county clerk said this name was not in any county record, Monnette still says these people are Monnettes.

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But the County records do exist and clearly the name of this family for almost 200 years was Money. See the blog of the Jacob Money of North Carolina v John Money of Maryland along with Money Monnette.

Or see the horror of  putting all Lewises into one family that are in William Terrell Lewis’s “Genealogy of the Lewis Family In America: From The Middle Of The Seventeenth Century Down To The Present Time.”

The title is the click bait – and I do believe WTL would never have used that title – I might be wrong. But it was his daughter who actually published after his death. Cousin MLM has seen WTL’s original file in the archives in Montgomery, Alabama and he might know. But he never claimed these people were related. See some of the Lewis story in the blog Colin Powell’s Eyes.

A free eBook of William Terrell Lewis’ research

https://books.google.com/books/about/Genealogy_of_the_Lewis_Family_in_America.html?id=fu4wAAAAMAAJ

 

As a novice, I, like all people, could not imagine and there are few who say the trees are a mess and most of them are full of some kind of mistakes – or sometimes records seem to indicate it is right and then gets copied and then trying to get the mistakes changed is a nightmare.

AncestryDOT said, when I called them ages ago, to add info like DNA proof and record suggestions for changes in comments – and then Ancestry took the comments of the people away – you have to add comments to pictures/scans.

And I know the trees were a mess long before Ancestry – there are heart attacks in Rootsweb trees also – BUT with Rootsweb there are some trees with extensive notes that state proof. These trees came from the wonderful dinosaurs of early genealogy when everyone was trying to learn the right way to research. Later the AncestryDOT leaves and hits were introduced and first without any – “are you sure” compare closely and pick and choose which info is correct – and i called it the search and matching engine on steroids and it hurt us all.

The computers could just as easily show people flags as they do leaves and offer serious suggestions for corrections – like the DNA of these two people does not match and the family line matches this family. – Real stuff.

The worst mistake I made and can’t seem to get communicated to get fixed is the Two Mary Janes. You will find more to the story in a blog about them from one of the first blogs. I had the 1845 UK birth record for the child, it said his mother’s name, Mary Jane Hutton. The 1851 and 1861 censuses have the wife and mother correctly named Mary Jane Kidd. Then the 1862 death notice says Mary Jane, daughter of Abraham Walker. Do what?

Ok, I write to everybody and they all changed Mary Jane to Walker. I got in touch with a Sinclair researcher who has these Walkers and the news goes round the world. Then I find another death notice and a second marriage. The first death was Mary Jane daughter of James Hutton. The second marriage was Mary Jane Walker daughter of Abraham Walker. He had married two Mary Janes! One lady did not answer my email and the mistakes are out there.

The tree mistakes have a new horror with the tree matching on AncestryDNA, if two people have the same incorrect info then a DNA Circle can be created and it appears the DNA is confirming the mistakes.

There is little to do – for all posterity – the wrong ancestors could forever be revered by some.

I hope DNA will change all this. We need to know the distance any type of DNA test will reach and we should enjoy learning more about what matches mean in our trees, whether with or without DNA for genealogy.

Now that AncestryDNA has made it easier to see the AMOUNT of SHARED CENTIMORGANS two people share – we can see more clearly the possible relationships two people could have, based on the amounts.

I will link to more great charts – below

So when you see a match, now look for the amounts, and using several of the charts, compare the amounts you share with to see what that relationship could be. So if the websites look at your two trees and point you to a common ancestors 14 generations ago, you may be thrilled and believe the DNA match proves the line. But then see the amount of shared genes shows the two of you must be 2nd cousins or something similarly close. Then you know that the website’s suggestion was off the mark and you need to re-examine the trees.

Every blog I write and every piece of advice I give these 15 years of internet genealogy and many years before that for traditional – I try to make sure over and over that I am sharing the correct information. And I try to update blogs with any new information so that if new details come to light they will be in the original information with any additions.

Especially with the blog and its reach where mistakes cannot easily be corrected – I have asked for peer review and had lots of feedback. Especially with a few of my more unusual topics or solutions I have made sure I got others to critique and I hope I would never make a mistake that would fail my purpose – to give the research to any who would like it. And as I began, to make a few basics easier to understand.

About the best to learn about how information can and does change Thomas W Jones – wonderful webinar. Learning – what to do when the research is tough.

https://familytreewebinars.com/download.php?webinar_id=872

Most of the errors are unintentional and they are human – I hope any will help me make my tree perfect – for the past, the present and the future.

The Monnette records for easy reading

 

 

FOR SALE:

One copy of Orra Eugene Monnette’s, Monnette Ancestry first book.

Maybe he was trying to say a polite – acceptance of all families in his writing, in his work, “maybe they were brothers”, or “they were probably brothers” – But they was no indication between many of the families in this book that families ever heard of each other, or had any connection in any way, and likely were not related.  But his 2nd book – well, I guess 2nd – his later book, was a nice read of information (adding link)

First settlers of ye plantations of Piscataway and Woodbridge, olde East New Jersey, 1664-1714,: A period of fifty years, Unknown Binding – 1930

 

I hope for time to research the real ancestor, Jacob Money, of North Carolina who suffered from the matching tree linking on steroids. The poor man is dishonored to try to make him John Money of Cecil County and no reason to make him a Catholic Monnette of Calvert County.