Saturday, September 5, 2015

Family Trees posted on-line

I will probably incur the wrath of hundreds who have put their family trees on the internet. Numerous free and pay sites offer the opportunity to post family trees.

Few, if any, require documentation. As well meaning as these researchers are, it seems that fitting pieces together is often more important than fitting the RIGHT pieces together. Even those who post trees with limited documentation frequently ignore the documentation.

I have made my share of errors during 25 years of research. I do try to fix those errors as soon as possible. Example, a few months ago I discovered that I had the wrong John Low in my tree and mentioned that foul-up in a couple of posts.

A few years ago, I discovered that "Anny Ice" was not the wife of Jacob Crousore. It was Ama Jemima Smith. I notified several people with Crousore-related trees and gave explanation and documentation. Almost no response. About 20-22 trees still have Anny as Jacob's wife.

If you are going to post a tree on-line, please do the following:
(1) Document, document, document!
(2) If you don't have a source, add "probably," "believed to be," or some other disclaimer.
(3) Check your dates to make sure everything fits.

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