The Lies That Ancestry Spreads

I love Ancestry.com. I have been a subscriber for many years and believe that it has revolutionized genealogical research. Records that you had to travel or rent microfilms to see, are now available at the click of a button. It has never been easier to collaborate with distant family members, or even just find them. And by joining Ancestry, you can build a family tree just by putting in some data, searching for potential matches, and selecting the right ones.

But I wonder how much of our research is driven by wishful thinking and not by careful analysis. Or most  likely, incomplete analysis. My biggest pet peeve about Ancestry.com is that wrong information spreads like wildfire and seems to be impossible to remove. After a person posts information in a tree and makes it public, other people are free to pull that information into their own trees. There are seldom any clues as to where the information comes from. But the information spreads from tree to tree until it proliferates and is accepted as fact.

Tell a lie often enough and people start to believe it. 

Of course, nobody is trying to be deceitful. People are just looking for answers, perhaps just another generation back in the family tree. And often Ancestry provides the means to jump back many generations by accepting what others have accepted. It might be too tempting. I've fallen for this myself. But I have been burnt by wasting too much time researching the wrong people, people who were no relation to me, just because I took something as fact that had little or no evidence to back it up.

I do look at other people's family trees on Ancestry. But they are just clues, potential leads, unless the tree includes sources. And if you ask the owner of the tree where they got the information they are likely to reply with the equivalent of a blank stare. That's because they got it from somebody who got it from somebody else who saw it somewhere and they forget.

Putting up a family tree on Ancestry.com tears me up. I want to share. But I don't want to post false information. And my ancestry isn't organized enough to include all my sources when I do post it. I hate documenting sources. But I love seeing them in other's work. I suppose that makes me a bad genealogist.

So with all that said and done, I thought an example might be in order.

Ancestry's ThruLines feature shows ancestors and uses a combination of DNA analysis and existing public family trees to identify potential ancestors. One example is my ancestor, Salucia Sophronia Clark Squibb. ThruLines suggests that her father is Avery Proctor Clark and Avis Clark of Twinsburg, Ohio. They have a daughter Sophrona who is nearly the right age and appears to be a good match. So good in fact, that at least seven Ancestry users show these people as Salucia Sophronia's parents.  Even more, Ancestry seems to take these family trees as evidence of relationships.

But with just a little research, one can find a marriage record for ancestor Salucia Sophronia Clark in Clinton County, Iowa in 1857. The Sophrona Clark of Twinsburg, Ohio would have been 12 years old. That is a red flag in my mind, suggesting she could not be the same person. But even more important is the fact that Sophrona was listed in 1860, 1870 and 1880 censuses for Twinsburg, Ohio. Obviously a different person, as my ancestor was married and in Iowa busy having kids during that time.

So these seven trees are wrong. I don't mind people putting things in their trees in Ancestry, because I think it is actually helpful to test out various relationships, and helps to find more records. But for Ancestry to treat these trees as fact is a mistake and misleads its users. Users must be careful to make sure that relationships from family trees makes sense before they accept it. I wish there was a way for Ancestry to certify relationships in posted family trees.

When Photos Lead Genealogists Astray

While researching my wife's ancestry, I came across a photo of her great great grandparents from a photographer in Harlan, Iowa. Her grandparents and great grandparents lived in that area, but this was the first evidence I had seen that her great great grandparents had immigrated from Denmark and lived around Harlan.

So, that photo shows Marianne Jacobsdatter Keldgord and Peder Christensen Keldgord, my wife's 2nd great grandparents. Notice on the bottom, the photographer was Dammand from Harlan Iowa. Now, I see a lot of things that I don't believe. These days, someone who is handy with powerful software can manipulate images and even videos. But this was a photo from the 19th century. It sure seemed to prove that these people were in Harlan Iowa to get the picture taken.

But I never found other evidence that they were in Harlan.

Then I found another family photo.

Okay, well that is Marianne and Peder, again, along with two of their younger children, who I believe to be, Karen and Charles. This one credited to a photographer in Denmark. It would have been taken around 1870.

Notice that Marianne and Peder are exactly the same in the two photos. Apparently, at this early stage of photography, they were able to copy other photographs by taking a picture of them, and blocking out unwanted features. In this case, I suppose the family had few pictures of their parents and wanted to make copies. They didn't want to see themselves in the photo so had the photographer block them out.

Seeing is not  believing, but maybe this photo is worth a thousand words. It does provide evidence, not that Marianne and Peder were in Iowa, but that they were not in Iowa, or else their kids would have actually had their photos taken. 

Looking back at the photo, it is a good job. But a white background. Very unusual. That should have been a clue that this was not an original photo.