Ancestry.com bogus famous relatives?

Question:Beware of so called famous relatives. I have ran across lines of people that gave birth at 3 and over 100. Anyone else having problems trying to research their ancestry? Isn't there some way that the site can have checks that put a flag up? There was one line that showed the person would've given birth at almost 75. What is the point of even going there when the info is clearly wrong????

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Beware of so called famous relatives. I have ran across lines of people that gave birth at 3 and over 100. Anyone else having problems trying to research their ancestry? Isn't there some way that the site can have checks that put a flag up? There was one line that showed the person would've given birth at almost 75. What is the point of even going there when the info is clearly wrong????

Family Trees on ANY website, free or paid must be viewed only as CLUES as to where to get documentation not as fact.
None of the Family History Websites require documentation. Even when you see the same information repreatedly by many different submitters, that is no guarantee it is correct. A lot of people copy without verifying and that is not a way to do family history.

Also, if a person has a Family Tree Maker and a subscription to Genealogy.Com, for instance, they can merge other people's trees into theirs and then upload the merged tree into various genealogical website. People who do that are more interested in collecting names in their database rather than quality genealogy.

Ancestry.Com can't be beat for the records it has on line. They seem to be getting more all the time.

You have to realize no website managers have any way of actually knowing if what people submit is accurate. If they don't require documentation it means they get a lot of junk.

Ancestry.Com has 4 programs, Ancestry World Tree, One World Tree, Public Member Tree and Personal Member Tree.
Their One World Tree is nothing but TRASH. When they set it up the took they liberties of taking information people had submitted to Ancestry World Tree(their oldest and largest) and they put people in showing all the different info submitters had on an individual. However, I have seen more than once where they combined 2 people into 1.

So definitely, stay away from One World Tree.

The new Public Member Trees and Personal Member Trees do send up a flag if say you show a child born after the mother died. I have put info in Public Member Tree and find it is great for bringing documents forward to it.

That is the problem with the family trees section of Ancestry. There is no documentation required to submit a tree and many people who find their "family" simply copy other people's undecumented trees and accept them as gospel. The user contributed trees are only good to use as a POTENTIAL direction to look in. Any information that you pick up from the MUST be verified before you add it to your tree.

I don't recommend a budding genealogist to copy any online genealogy. I always recommend the painstaking process of starting with ones self and working back person by person, generation by generation finding documentation to support all dates and places. If one follows the paper trail and documents their sources, there is little chance of failure. We would all love to find that magic "book" uncovering the mystery of our heritage, but quite simply put, it isn't out there.

The famous relative feature on ancestry.com is mostly for amusement purposes. It clearly states that the information is only as accurate as the information that customers, like you and I, have provided. It all depends on the information collected from site users and if you will look at some of the public user trees, you'll understand why the famous relative feature is not something to be taken seriously.

Ancestry.com has a wealth of information to help you with your research. Searching the databases and ignoring the family trees is probably the best way to use the site. Don't get discouraged.

Along with what Shirley and HSK said, I just want to reiterate a point here. Ancestry did not create the information in the database. It is there because the average person like you and me submitted the information of our individual family trees. Many people do so without having documented or verifying any of their information that they may have gotten from other places. As far as the famous relatives go, Ancestry's database just does a search comparing your info to others looking for common information to make connections to. If other people did not submit accurate information, then the connections Ancestry makes will not be accurate. A computer does that. People do not sit there and do this for you. It is not their fault. It is the fault of the submitters who provided false information. Use those as clues to further your own research. Verify and document everything so that you are not one of those people out there passing along bad information for others.

You have experience enough to see that there are mistakes, which is true of ALL the online databases, to some extent.
ONLINE family trees are nothing more than compiled research from other persons. The same is true for lines submitted to the LDS church files.
The majority of experienced researcher know this. I refer persons to the files, but try to warn persons to check for themselves.
Put it this way.. you are far better off than those who can look right at such errors, and not even realize it. Even more sad? Many persons won't believe you when you do warn them, because they are more interested in "wow, I found my family tree back to Adam and Eve, in 23 minutes, and have 2 trillion people now in my file". If you mention verifying the info, the reply is often "but WHY? its all a hobby anyway, isnt' it?? "

This is a very serious problem at present, because so many new and inexperienced researchers are using Internet sites like Ancestry. Many tend to take what they see as Gospel and lots of spurious or just impossible information is being passed on without checking. I have had similar experiences with the UK's genesreunited site where women in their late fifties are shown as giving birth. The IGI has similar rubbish on it and I recently discovered that much of its early information prior to the copying of church records etc.was put on by Mormon settlers over 100 years ago from memory!
Also a lot of subsequently disproved lineages are still to be found on the IGI

Been doing this for 22 years. And I will gladly look at any submitted genealogy. Have many times found very solid information that has helped me a lot.

But they are always just clues if you will. And just because one section is solid, doesn't mean it all is solid and vice versa.

Consider my own database. It has over 9,000 individuals in it. oooooo. But in that database I have about 700 people that are very, very solid, my core genealogy. These are very well referenced and documented. I have about 100 more that are fairly solid. They look good right now, of course are documented, but not quite completely checked out. Still what I consider part of my core genealogy.

But what about the other 8,200 people? Those are what I call "that's cool but who knows". They are lines I pulled from various sources (usually someone else's genealogy). They are completely uncertified. And yes, through those I can "show" I'm related to Charlemagne, Robert the Bruce, in fact, one line goes back to a Gallo-Roman senator prior to 1000AD. Do I believe for a second I'm actually related to that senator? Of course not.

But if you looked at my database, if you first looked at one of the solid entries, you might assume the entire database is solid - IT ISN'T. Likewise, you may see that I have Charlemagne in the database and just assume the whole thing is bogus - IT ISN'T.

What you want to do is find the connection point to YOUR lines. Then examine those people on an individual basis. Are they well documented? Can you check yourself some of the documentation? If so, add them. If not, use them as a clue for your own research. Then step to the next person, and the next. At some point, you will most certainly hit the "make believe" part. That's where you stop.

But always use someone else's genealogy on an individual by indivual basis starting with the common ancestor to YOUR genealogy. And be prepared to stop at any time. NEVER NEVER NEVER merge someone elses database with your own. NEVER. There is no way to "unmerge" once you do and about 100% of the time, you will screw up your own work.

This holds not only for online genealogies, no matter WHAT the source (pay,free, whatever), but even printed genealogies. Just like anyone can submit online genealogies (there are even cases where people completely make up one, submit it, and then sees if anyone copies it), anyone can get a genealogy book printed.

Ted likes to say that half the online genealogies are better than the other half. Definitely true. BUT inside any genealogy, especially large databases, there is probably 90% make believe and 10% accurate. That 10% accurate can be a gold mine. Just be careful and if it isn't documented, treat it as VERY suspect. Any decent genealogist will always document their solid entries.