Genealogy experts and accuracy

[zimmerstutzen]

Been doing a lot of Genealogy research over the past month or so. I once thought that the historical accuracy nit pickers were the chief cause of the lack of new members to the sport. But I have seen some whoppers in recent days. One family tree has a Mr. "X" immigrating to Philadelphia in 1662. Not only that but Mr. X's white daughter in law was born in Somerset PA in 1668? That would have been almost 200 miles inland far beyond the frontier. Another tree had the father born in Massachusetts just ten years after the son was born in England. One person claimed the child of his 18th century ancestor was verified by the social security death index. One of my great grandfather's pictures and a picture of his tombstone that clearly has a different middle initial and dates born and died are attributed by a lady to her grandfather Sometimes I think we are arguing over how many angels can dance of the head of a pin, and then I see such glaring inaccuracies that even my 3rd grade grand daughter would catch them.

 

[Nativearizonan]

I've seen similar mistakes, listing someone as having children after they died, or when they were one year old, for instance. One has to sometimes wade through a lot of garbage, and you have to realize not every line is going to be a clean pedigree. You just try to find one and if you can't, then you have to admit that.

Even if you know who all your ancestors are supposed to be, that doesn't mean you really know who they are. People changed names and misspelled names; they had unrecognized affairs, perhaps involving unknown parties; they adopted kids that showed up on their doorstep, so to speak, when friends, neighbors, family members, or passers by died and left them unattended. Marriages and non marriages went unrecorded as did births and deaths. People were kidnapped, sold into slavery, lived with Indians, had amnesia, and many other possible disturbing things that could hide a true identity.

One of the best known cases showing why it is so hard to trace some folks is Simon Kenton, who went by the name Simon Butler, or just Butler for many years because he thought he had killed a man back home.

 

[Artificer]

My Sister has been doing our family tree for close to 20 years. She belongs to a few online Genealogical sites and has been going to a Lancaster society for a number of years and some others nearby.

She also became a member of a Mennonite Society Genealogical History center to try to track down part of our family line from Pennsylvania and has gone there four times already. Our ancestor is one of nine men with the exact same first/middle/last name as our ancestor and all within two or three years of the same age. So far, my sister has been able discount six of them, but is having a very hard time trying to rule out two of the last three. Part of the trouble was he lived with some other family for a while before his teens and yes, that describes at least two of the remaining possible choices and the third one she is not sure if he lived with someone else for a while, because there is the least amount of information on him growing up.

It is not bad enough there were that many possible choices all with the same first/middle/last name, but his wife was one of at least four women with all the same first/middle/maiden names and again, all within a few years of age. It sure has not helped that both our male ancestor and his wife came from two of the most common family names.

Further, there doesn't seem to be any nicknames for any of the men or women.

Trying to pick out an ancestor from his trade may also prove difficult since so many people were farmers. That and though some are recorded as Brewers or other trades, their main trade was farming. So that can lead one down the wrong track as well.

No wonder so many of the early Pennsylvania communities kept genealogical records, to help ensure people didn't marry in their own family lines. That and though other families with the same last name were not related, they had the same last name as other families in the same general area.

Gus

 

[zimmerstutzen]

A large part of my family came from the Mennonites in Chester/Lancaster county and Quakers as well. The Dutch made things even worse by not having last names or having the last names come first and then change when the father died. Chances are, Artificer, your wife and I are then probably distantly related. One of my ancestors was a big Quaker trouble maker named Gearhart Hendricks. A judge in the Palatinate was asking for authority to expel him and his family from Alzey in now Southern Germany. He came to Philadelphia in 1685 and promptly got the Germantown Friends to ask the Penns' council to outlaw slavery in Pennsylvania. Two of his grandsons became Mayors of colonial Philadelphia.

 

[Artificer]

Yes, if one goes back far enough in the Lancaster area, it is amazing how many distant relations may be found.

Some of "our people" on my Paternal Grandmother's side also came here from the Palatinate, though in our case it was the early 1800's.

Something else my Sister found out that the Dutch used to do in Pennsylvania was date the tombstones one or in a very few instances, two years after the person had passed and was buried. Going to have to ask my Sister why they did that.

My Sister has also visited most every graveyard from Virginia and Pennsylvania to Iowa where family members are known to have been buried. This to make rubbings of the gravestone markings when they can still be read and to list the location of each grave site. This has also helped in her research a few times by finding information on others in the family or to rule out other people who are not.

Just a couple years ago she found a very old graveyard in Norfolk, VA where family members are buried, though most of the markings have worn thin or off from age. She was hoping to find information on our ancestor who arrived here after the "Uprising of the '15 or '19" from Scotland as a forced Indentured Servant for Life, due to him having rebelled against the English King. But the stones were so worn, she was not able to do that; if he and his wife were actually buried there and we are not sure of that. Still, she located some information on where the "family plots" are, even if not the exact grave for each family member.

Gus

 

[tenngun]

You don’t have to go too far back till lines peter out. My wife has been doing it as a hobby and one of her lines has a John Patrick Roark who was married in KC, orJoplin the next year. And was born in New York, Philadelphia or Boston about 1870 or maybe in Ireland
Take a wild guess on how many John Patrick Roarks or O’Roarks were born between 1865 and 1880 in those four places. And her ancestor may have been a bigamist??? But the wife in the two marriage records has the same name.
Two parts of my line went pretty easy for her when she was researching it. But I have one line that stops in 1850 when a fire burned down court house in Hope Valley RI.

 

[Dr5x]

I believe calling the German settlers in Pennsyl;vania Dutch is a continuation of a very oldeerror. During the American Revolutionary War the various heads of the hundreds (perhaps) Duchies that later combined into the German state we all know today for their good deeds, used to raise a few Kroner here and there by lending out their trios to fight battles no one in this case had any interest in. We have labeled all of these folks as Hessiens coming from the state of Hesse. But there were others.
This annoying habit of having your sons, brothers and father sent off to die for somebody's cause to allow more money for the local lord caused, for some reason a tad of backlash resulting in a lot of the Germans from these various localities to reject all things military to the extent of not even wearing shiny buttons on their clothing and last but not least slipping out of Europe and settling in Pennsylvania where they she done marvelously well as very Basic farmers. .
AS there was no specific place called Germany in those days. they as a class were incorrectly lumped together as "Dutch".

My great Grandfather was 6'9" which was a bit odd in those days and in Prussia was slated to stand on one side of doorway with a matching freak ontheother side hood a sharp pointy thing and becoming a wall ornament. As this lacked charm he took off in a row boat, never returned and came to this country via Santo Domingo. Transportation being inexact in them day. Had he not done o he would have probably been zapped in some noisy idiocy that the Pennsyvanians were avoiding.



They are not Dutch.

U am

 

[Artificer]

Yep, until or unless my Sister can figure out which of the three remaining Pennsylvania men with the same first/middle/last name is our ancestor, that line stops there in the 1840's.

Oh, my Sister has also learned NOT to trust many of the "leafs" on Ancestry.com. Most led down the wrong track. I think she found one that helped a little, but to rule out someone who "might have been" our ancestor.

My Sister just called and she couldn't remember why some of the dates on the Pennsylvania tombstones were a year or two after the person died and she would look that up, but she did tell me something else interesting.

At the Mennonite Society in PA, she found out that in both Amish and Mennonite groups who did not have a Bishop, couples wanting to marry would go to the nearest church to get married, as Pennsylvania required marriage to be by a Minister of some kind. They normally tried to go to a Lutheran Church, but if one was not available, they would take an Episcopalian or other protestant church just to satisfy State requirements. So one can't rule out Amish or Mennonite ancestors, just because they married in another church.

Gus

 

[Bo T]

One of my ggmothers was slated to have passed in 1870 as noted on a popular genealogical site. However, she shows up on the 1880 census! And a picture attributed to her family references her in the front center (clearly alive) in 1883/1884. tried to track down ancestors of my surname-found 2 adjacent tracks with the same surname. My surname was clearly borrowed, for what purpose I can only guess at?

 

[Captjoel]

I joined the My Heritage website and started working on my family tree a couple of years ago.

It all started out as a "free" site but once I began getting further down the history trail, I had to upgrade my membership and PAY monthly fees to contribute or add family names to my tree.

Like many things in life, education comes with a price tag.

 

[Rifleman1776]

I've seen similar mistakes, listing someone as having children after they died, or when they were one year old, for instance. One has to sometimes wade through a lot of garbage, and you have to realize not every line is going to be a clean pedigree. You just try to find one and if you can't, then you have to admit that.

Even if you know who all your ancestors are supposed to be, that doesn't mean you really know who they are. People changed names and misspelled names; they had unrecognized affairs, perhaps involving unknown parties; they adopted kids that showed up on their doorstep, so to speak, when friends, neighbors, family members, or passers by died and left them unattended. Marriages and non marriages went unrecorded as did births and deaths. People were kidnapped, sold into slavery, lived with Indians, had amnesia, and many other possible disturbing things that could hide a true identity.

One of the best known cases showing why it is so hard to trace some folks is Simon Kenton, who went by the name Simon Butler, or just Butler for many years because he thought he had killed a man back home.

Good post that summarizes many of the research issues in a nutshell. I, supposedly, am eligible for membership in the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR). But have been unable to tie together a couple generations. Many problems have surfaced. With the very high child mortality rates of the 16th and 17th centuries, names were often reused. Spellings were different for the same child. e.g. Jon, John. Last names varied for many reasons. On my maternal side the last name was changed to avoid political persecution. Names of counties changed making research very-very difficult. Personally, I have given up my family research.

 

[Nativearizonan]

Good post that summarizes many of the research issues in a nutshell. I, supposedly, am eligible for membership in the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR). But have been unable to tie together a couple generations. Many problems have surfaced. With the very high child mortality rates of the 16th and 17th centuries, names were often reused. Spellings were different for the same child. e.g. Jon, John. Last names varied for many reasons. On my maternal side the last name was changed to avoid political persecution. Names of counties changed making research very-very difficult. Personally, I have given up my family research.

The easiest way to research is to find others researching the same family lines, and share with them on one or more of the genealogy websites.

I've never tried to join the SAR, but my mother was a DAR (and DOTC), as was her mother and grandmother, so I don't think it would be difficult; it's just not important to me out west.

I figured if you go back enough generations to find ancestors who may have been in the AWI, you have something like 250 different living ancestors at that time period. If you don't find one, keep trying all your different lines, if it's important to you. Hopefully one will click.

I have one grandfather, died in the 1920s, actually a couple months before my mother was born, buried in TN, whose grave lists his father and mother's names, saying he was born in Alabama; but after that, it is a total nothing. We can't find anything about his parents or his birth anywhere, anyhow. Maybe he lied about his name and/or his parent's names to escape some bill collector or former marriage or who knows what. Either that or his parents were born in a rural area and all records were lost in a fire, if there ever were any records. No family bibles have come forward, or any other proof of these parents.

If you are unlucky enough to have all four grandparents like this one of mine, you are just out of luck. You can still research similar lines and discover a lot of interesting history that you might have otherwise not been aware of.

 

[Artie Peltier]

Don’t give up Rifleman! It’s not easy, that’s for sure. Been doing it for quite a few years now. My last name is Peltier, spelled that way back to my grandfather. Before that it’s spelled Pelletier! Took me Four months to find my 2nd great grandfather and he was buried same town in another cemetery, one mile away! The great part is they were all fur trappers that came from France,then to Quebec and settled in the New England area where I live! Best of luck and keep looking. You will run into a lot of bad info from people that get carried away. Take notes compare and keep going. Art

 

[tenngun]

It’s great to do and I have interest in my ancestors but it also makes me smile. I have a Robinson ancestor that was transported from Scotland to Connecticut in 1747. Since then there have been a series of Robinson men leading to me. Roughly four per century, seven men stand between us. And seven women with different names. In fact in1747 there were about 120 different people alive from whom I’m descended. Of corse 50% of them are the direct male ancestors to Humphreyis Weavers Folks, English Bosses, Dutch Bosses, and Irish Welsh and Norwegian lines I haven’t investigated. Most of us have kings and criminals in our family trees. We fade in to an ocean pretty quick, for most of us even our family names disappear by the fifteenth century.

 

[Artificer]

Indeed, depending on what country one's ancestors came from and what time period, once you get to an ancestor who came over in the 17th or 18th century, you will run out of information going further back. This is particularly true of the Germanic States. We have had much better luck with the Scottish, Welsh and English lines; but even there you can't get too much further back without going to the countries and spending a lot of time researching there.

Interesting you should mention we all have Kings or Royalty in our family trees.

The first time I read that was in the book "The Walking Drum" by Louis L'Amour back in the mid/late 1980's. He posited his theory that we all have Nobility in our family tree's, though it may go back many generations before any of us will ever know about it. The idea was the Serfs died out and only the nobility could afford the shelter, clothing, food and especially to have enough wives/children. The last because of high numbers of deaths of women giving birth and high numbers of deaths of infant through early years of childhood.

Not only that, but almost everyone who has at least European Ancestry, does so because their ancestors had some kind of natural immunity or survivability protection against the plagues and other rampant diseases.

Gus

 

[tenngun]

That’s true but I was thinking more about babies born with poor women and wealthy men, left hand of the bed shal we say. And also the fact that the younger sons of nobility often migrated in to poverty. Their birth gave them a chance but bad luck or bad dessions oft led poor outcomes, and children born to such marriages,especially girls may well marry ”˜below their station.

 

[innocent bystander]

I guess I'm lucky as being a "Henkel" I have a genealogy book prepared by the Henckel (alternate spellings: Henkel, Hinkel, Hinkle) Family Association in 1964 which goes back to the original Rev. Anthony Jacob Henckel who emigrated from Germany in 1717. He was from the Frankfort area of the Palatinate. And of course, there's quite a number of Henkels in Germany today, not the least of which is the Henkel Corporation (wish I had ties to that company!).

 

[Nativearizonan]

It’s great to do and I have interest in my ancestors but it also makes me smile. I have a Robinson ancestor that was transported from Scotland to Connecticut in 1747. Since then there have been a series of Robinson men leading to me. Roughly four per century, seven men stand between us. And seven women with different names. In fact in1747 there were about 120 different people alive from whom I’m descended. Of corse 50% of them are the direct male ancestors to Humphreyis Weavers Folks, English Bosses, Dutch Bosses, and Irish Welsh and Norwegian lines I haven’t investigated. Most of us have kings and criminals in our family trees. We fade in to an ocean pretty quick, for most of us even our family names disappear by the fifteenth century.

You might check you math on that. Given your figure of 25 years per generation, I did a chart to show how fast the numbers multiply:

parents = 2, Years Before Present 25
grandparents = 4, YBP 50
g-grandparent = 8, YBP 75
gg-gps = 16, YBP 100
ggg-gps = 32, YBP 125
gggg-gps = 64 YBP 150
ggggg-gps = 128, YBP 175
gggggg-gps = 256, YBP 200
ggggggg - gps = 512, YBP 225
gggggggg-gps = 1024, YBP 250

 

[Bo T]

That's assuming 25 years on average, but some of us ended up from the tail end of the procreating. So 40 years/generation is more likely for some. Of course it's possible that on the front end 15 years per generation is possible.

 

[tenngun]

I had seven generations before my birth and my Robinson ancestor landed here in 1747. For a 128, so I did round down to the 120.