This is not a warning about posting personal information online for your own financial safety.
It’s about contemplating before you post a place of birth for an ancestor if it is speculation. It’s about thinking twice before posting a maiden name for an ancestor online if your only evidence is a gut feeling you had at three in the morning right before the caffeine wore off.
Once a genealogical “fact” gets posted online, it can be impossible to get it removed from all the online trees and other locations where it gets spread. The same thing has always been true about items published in print. A researcher in the 1930s included a maiden name for 18th century Virginia ancestor of mine. Ten years later, she realized the maiden name was wrong. She published a correction in a subsequent publication.
But that first family history she published with the wrong maiden name. It’s the name that appears in about half the online trees that include that relative.
Think before you share genealogical speculation online. And when you are done thinking, think about whether you are really done thinking or not.
10 Responses
Oh, my gosh, YES!! Someone many years ago published a Bailey history, I presume for a reunion?, and it’s mostly wrong. My grandmother is married to her sister’s husband, the siblings did not live where they were listed in the booklet, so many things were not accurate I had a devil of a time sorting it all out. Since then I have made the corrections and posted them on my tree everywhere I have it. I’ve also written the family history and posted it on internet archive. I’m sure there are still trees out there that have the wrong information but if I’m lucky, some people have found my corrections and are using those.
This is so true. On line trees have my mother born to her Uncle, a great great Uncle who died unmarried as the ancestor of numerous individuals and living to a ripe old age, and other similar glitches.
What about posting information to your family tree on applications such as Ancestry.com? Many Ancestry hints may be incorrect and must be deleted when information comes to light. I’ve seen many of my accepted “hints” replicated in the family trees of other members only to find out later that the hint I accepted was incorrect.
If the tree is public, then it’s being posted online. That’s really just part of the same problem.
Michael,
I have a question in regards to this. Let’s see if I can explain it well enough for you to understand what I mean! I am working on my Caldwell line. All 185 trees on Ancestry go a different direction to different parents of my 3 Ggrandfather than I do. I have a few documents for the next generation that seem to prove my theory, but I am looking for DNA matches to help prove some relationships. When I add these names to see if there are DNA descendants, I always write “Research only” or “DNA theory” at the top of their facts pages and build out their family descendants to see if there are matches. I had been turning my tree to Private until I had several DNA matches from that line, but people were wanting to see my tree. What is the best way to do the DNA “test” for matches without leading people astray? Up to this point, I have been lucky enough to have each of my theories pan out, but I am sure my time will come. Thank you so much for your tips and advice. I have learned a lot.
Keeping the tree private and not sharing at all will go a long way to prevent the problem. But as you indicate that’s not always desirable and makes it difficult to bounce ideas of other researchers–and usually relatives have the amount of interest necessary to wade through all the information. I understand why you would want to share the hypothetical tree with others researching the same families as you. The problem is, as I think you’re hinting at, anyone you share it with (even if marked tentative) could share it or post it as being established.
I’ll have to look and see what the private settings on trees are. That private information can sometimes still appear in ThruLines as well–even though it’s private.
DNA-speculated trees can be made private and unsearchable. These are settings on Ancestry. If I were communicating with prospective relatives about my theories, I would be clear that they are theories and when I have definitive answer, I would let them know it was okay to share now, but not before.
Thanks for the reminder, Lisa. The question I actually have now is if a tree is private and unsearchable, does information from that tree get used to populate ThruLines matches?
I just checked into this. Unsearchable trees do not appear in ThruLines results either.
Thank you! I will just make my tree private and unsearchable until I have better documentation.