Lemmings.....

[MarkCDodd]

I am researching some Cooksey relatives from Roley Regis in the early 1600's (and shockingly, Maryland in the U.S.A! I have American blood upline....)

On Ancestry I came across 105 other family trees with these Cooksey in them.

On Genes Reunited I found another 30.

Everyone of them has wrong information simply copied from one to another without verification.

Occasionally somebody quotes I.G.I as their source yet when you look ath the I.G.I records they are simply submitted by L.D.S members and never refer to actual parish registers or other forms of proof.

Such I.G.I entries are no more authoratative than any of the 105 family trees on Ancestry.

So I enter the correct information on my trees with photographs of the actual parish registry entries and tombstones and now I am getting e-mails telling me how wrong I am and as a service they will give me the correct information.

When I point out that I have proof and they have none, apart from I.G.I, I am informed that is the most accurate and authoratative source so I must be wrong.

"So the Church Wardens and clerks who entered the information in the registers back in the 1600's were wrong as well?" I ask.

"Must be. I.G.I says so!"

"So the masons who carved the tombstones are wrong as well?"

"Yep!"

Lemmings.....

[Northern Lass]

This is why we like to check out the actual registers as even the IGI extracted
have mistakes, I have found a few when cross checking.

I would like to think that no one uses submitted on the BCC tree and if they must then it only goes
in as a possible to be checked by the actual parish register.

I agree though you can't use others ancestry trees only as maybe to look at and then verify.

I am fed up with contacting people on ancestry and saying look I have this certif or looked up info
and you have it incorrect....I did this with one we were chasing on here, I ended up buying the certificate to find
out the true info and several trees were all saying the same incorrect info. I contacted all of them.
Only one said thanks
I dont bother now

If there are errors in our tree I hope folk will let us know and we can look into it,
and check it out.

But I have to say that some of these vicars or whoever entered the info have made some huge errors!
that we have proved to be so
one I remember they put the wrong brides witnesses on the entry....the one next in the PR had the correct ones!

[Sharon]

i guess we all try our best, but can we ever be sure....my brother in law married in the Black Country last December. His dad is recorded as retired, even though he was mentioned in the service and prayers were said for him as he died 18 months ago...

[MarkCDodd]

These 105 people on Ancestry did not do their best.

They do not verify the information they used.

You can be forgiven for checking a record and getting the wrong information, such as retired instead of deceased.

Not checking your sources at all invalidates your tree and on sites such as Ancestry, this misinformation gets spread as gospel.

Looking furhter into the mistakes on these 105 trees, they have an English gentleman marrying a lady from Maryland in the USA even though he never left England and she never left the USA. In fact a distant cousin of his married this lady.

A Google search of the lady in question will result in several excellent and well researched Cooksey family trees.

Why do a family tree at all if you blindly accept bad data?

Makes no sense to me.