Genealogy Forum UK

Ok, this has happened to me before whilst compiling my tree and I drove myself silly imagining I was decended from royalty ( albeit via the wotkhouse in the 19th century). I eventually severed the links at a reasonable cut off point. Now, its happened again with my husbands tree. Using Familysearch, I merged one of his ancestors from about 1750 and wham! The whole dynasty opened up again, right back to about 740 AD. On clicking on some of these people, I read that some may even be fictional. Im going to do the same as I did with my tree. I know that we are all possibly descended from William the conquerer but you have to be controlled when compiling your tree. Theres no way of proving these links so no point in including them. How far back would you go?

I never rely on others research, knowing how inaccurate my own research can be how can I expect others not to make mistakes.

I did the same with Ancestry- at the start it was exciting to have a rel from William the Conqueror and show definite links going right back even blue blood but thanks to real sites such as this forum and links in BCC show a much clearer picture yes you can get proof going back further but it is very time consuming,costly and looking at original documents etc at local Archives if lucky but more can be done with perseverance and far more satisfying than just putting in unproven links Kind Regards RF

It is very hard to go back a very long way, unless there are records you can define as your family.
DNA...well that is now opening up other avenues..
It is very easy to get carried away.
Family search, Mormons, that is not something I would trust without verifying it. Part of the religion is to do family tree. Although it has proved a very useful tool too.
Always better to climb the right tree, verify, then get the roots as much as you can!

Good to know I’m not the only one to get sucked in. I’ve now chopped off those branches that I haven't verified myself. And I’ve also started to be more selective about who I include. Like the fact that great great great grandfather had 10 brothers and each brother had 10 children. Believe me, I’ve listed some like that.