Rant About Nicked Ancestors

[DJHawkes]

I've made it my own little beef that anyone trying to nick my ancestors get short shrift from me, I've come across a humdinger last night. A Canadian researcher has purloined my great grandfather and all 10 of his siblings and adopted them to a couple with the same name as his parents but the couple were from Staffordshire not Todmorden. Apparently, to this Canadian, Walsall is just up the road from Tod. He also has added a further 8 siblings, the last 4 of which were born in and died in Toronto. That would have meant my great grandfather's dad and mum would have had t shoot over to toronto from tod for 9 months 3 times , (on 2 occasions it would have bee after my great great grandfather had died and been buried in tod)
I have spent a few minutes systematically and patiently going through the profiles of my ancestors on his tree leaving a message on each one telling him he's wrong.
I blame ancestry as they must have come up with the hint for him to have added them, though his lack of geographica knowledge and common sense are also a factor.
It's annoying, but also somehow satisfying, lol

[Old_Geezer]

We all make mistakes, as the Dalek said climbing off the dustbin.

One can genuinely make wrong connections. Why should someone else's error make you so irate ?

[jackthehat]

I have a trio of researchers who have misappropriated my ancestors as their own. This has multiplied as additional researches have mistakenly added these misidentifcations to their own trees.....

I politely explained where the original three had gone wrong......all of them contacted me to say that *I* was the one who was wrong.

However, they have been convinced enough to purchase BMD certs, etc. and publish them in their trees.........so I've nicked them for my tree.

Saved me some cash! LoL

[DJHawkes]

Because all this person has done is click and select the names, he has obviously not actually looked at each individual, if he had then it would have been obvious that they are not the same family, in 2 cases the children must have been 3 or 4 month pregnancies. If nothing else it's poor mathamatical skills! I take my genealogy seriously and woe betide anyone that skims off any of my ancestors as their own without doing the proper checks.

[TheOtherHalf]

Ive found that too DJHawkes. Lots of people have nicked my ancestors and added them to their tree when they are obviously not the correct ones. One even nicked a photo of mine and put it to the wrong person on his tree (same name and dob). Its infuriating. When people contact me and ask for permission I always try to check their tree to see if it is the right connection. I even ask how they are connected

[DJHawkes]

jack that is also a problem, as down the years it could steer other people wrongly. what's the point of correct detailed research with back up evidence if some eejit just corrupts it!

[DJHawkes]

TOH it's possible to contact each other quite easily and I am sure ancestry is kean for the info to be accurate, but as my tree is private it does mean that noone can read my research, but if i make it public i know that so much will just be nicked without any communication. It's something that aggravates me too, I can't help it as it is a very important part of my life after almost 30 years work on it all.

[Svejk]

We're all related.

[Barmaid]

I got so fed up with people nicking stuff and getting it wrong, I hid mine.

[DJHawkes]

i agree svejk, but not as closely as some of these people think! It's all about the evidence, and yes Barmaid, I hide mine, makes me think how many hidden ones are as wrong as the public ones though : (

[AB Editor]

"Apparently, to this Canadian, Walsall is just up the road from Tod"

That is almost certainly it. Distances in Canada between settlements is vast, much like Oz or the US - so there is a culture of a three hour drive not actually being that "far away" conceptually in their heads.

It's hard to explain to colonial commoners that you can't travel more than 300 miles in your own country in any direction before you get wet feet or enter another one!

I think he probably meant well.

(FYI, article being loaded up today - published this week some time.)

[DJHawkes]

I totally get the colonial driving thing i seriosuly do, but genealogy is not geography and so more checks can and should be made especially when you are dealing with another country. In actual fact, take lincolnshire last century, up until the 1870s noone went anywhere, not even the next village unless it was to marry, and that was rare. When I am looking at my lincolnshire ancestry if i find a marriage or ecensus entry more than 15 miles from a birth village i doubt it's relevence until i have real proof it is a true migrant!

[AB Editor]

Naturally, but he might be new :)

[DJHawkes]

is it you ed? They are new, well this profile is, joined 7th august. they seriously need support then. Their free trail is ending this week by the look of it, if they shell out membership but carry on making the mistakes like this then they are wasting their money.

[carrot99]

My tree is quite small because I try to check and double check everyone. So I was miffed when some woman kept nicking my relatives without adding anyone new herself. I wouldn't have minded if she'd made an effort to find new relatives that we could share but she didn't. So I added a few bogus 18th century Williams and Sarahs which she duly copied. Stupid I know but made me feel better when I deleted them a bit later knowing she wouldn't check.

[DJHawkes]

like your style carrot but i do think that in the future ancestry will become a massively important reference source for future generations yet they do not put enough emphasis on accuracy themselves, their transcriptions are appalling and sometimes beyond conprehension, last night i found one of my great uncles had married a widow called Lucy Hollas and on her marriage entry her father is tranbscribed as Thomas Henry SONIK (bearing in mins he lived in West Yorkshire!)but as it is possible to look at the original entry in the register on ancestry, it is obvious that his name was written as Thomas Henry Smith!

[woofgang]

why will ancestry become "massively important"? I get it as a hobby, I really do but to be honest so what who my ancestors were?

[DJHawkes]

because they are buying up anything and eveything and will probably carry on doing so, which means it will be the main access point to thousands of secondary sources and even primary sources that would otherwise be inaccessible or lost.

[Hypognosis]

Someone explained to me that transcribers work under instructions to write what they see and NOT to -interpret- what they see. The latter approach must have developed a bad reputation for introducing as many errors as it averted.

I have seen many a census entry where I have had to scan other names on the page to 'decode' the enumerator's handwriting style and confirm it is the person I wanted.

I can only conclude that the transcription work was farmed out to some subcontractor where the workers are under pressure to transcribe X-hundred census lines per day and do not have the luxury of spending 3-5 mins staring at one name.

With regard to nicked ancestors, my current pet theory is that they are interrogating the IGI and, like me, drawing a complete blank when they look in the right village and era. They widen the search in space and time until they finally get a name match. Almost without realising it, they have leaped to the conclusion that the IGI is fully populated with data.

I suspect it isn't. If your ancestor is searchable online, it's only because of the (dreaded) "user-submitted data". Some other (American, LDS-type) person's properly done research led them to the correct parish microfilm record, which they've paid for a copy of and then typed their findings into the computer system, in a voluntary capacity.

They have no reason to type in thousands of other parish records, for people nothing to do with their family line.

Look how long the freeREG project is taking to build up data. (It's all volunteer transcribers).

And what if the Church of LDS team who came here to microfilm our records missed a register here or there? Did they visit every church in the Isles or just the main public record offices?

[DJHawkes]

well they weren't allowed to do any cheshire registers back in the 1980s and 90s ecause the bishop objected to their motives, which to a certain extent i agreed with as postumous baptism is abit hard to get your head round as a marketing tool

[Hypognosis]

There was an offhand remark made, possibly in the Matthew Pinsent episode WDYTYA, to the effect that the ulterior motive for the LDS interest in genealogy is that what they are really trying to do is link their family line back to royalty, since that then makes them direct descendents of JC himself.

Without which, there is no ticket for the spaceship, according to some more humourous spin (outwith the above TV show offhand remark).

Hence a certain level of desperation to link themselves to any ready-built tree which 'takes them back' to somewhere closer to that goal but with only a few click's worth of effort and zero actual research or effort of deductive thought.