Question of the Week: What's your most embarrassing genealogical mistake? [closed]

Question

Have you made any embarrassing genealogical mistakes?

It's OK. Most of us have! Share your story so that others can learn from you. :-)

Reply with an answer below, on Facebook, or use the question image to share it on social media.

Comments

Oh there's a few lol. I researched and added the wrong paternal family for my Nana (she was adopted by her mother's second husband) thank goodness I found an earlier census and got it all straightened out. Turns out my Nana's adoptive father was a bit of a daredevil the newspaper research was actually pretty juicy.

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Like a lot of people I am interested in my family tree, but time poor.  I have placed great trust in other people's trees, which undoubtedly leads to a multitude of mistakes.  Thankfully there is a great  community on here to pick up on my mistakes and put me on the right path.

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It would be using my Ancestry family trees as a source!

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My most embarrassing genealogical mistake went on for about three years. This occurred because I believed the fifteen or so primary source records that I had purchased here in Australia all showing my great great grandfather named Albert DeForest were true. At one stage I had every person named DeForest who resided in the US since their early arrival as Huguenots in the 1600’s up to the mid 1850’s accounted for. But could not place DeForest’s birth in Paris, Maine in 1818, which was recorded on his naturalisation papers. He was a model upstanding citizen here in his adopted country and why should I doubt his written word as at one stage he was the Registrar of the BDM in his district and a School Teacher. I even gave the local genealogical group a detailed version of his past and whence he was from.

It was not until I were contacted by a distant cousin of DeForest who said they were visiting Maine and wanted some information on him that things fell into place. I replied I know nothing of him back in the US and for all I know he may have been named Smith. Lucky for me he arrived with a young teenage “bride” who I traced back to Wisconsin who happened to be a housemaid in the Parris home. Not surprising everything about Albert Parris including his birth location in Paris, Maine in 1818 matched that of Albert DeForest’s records he detailed here in Australia. Even the fact that his father was a Councillor at Law in Maine were true. The only exception other than his name change was of his reported marriage to my great great grandmother in Illinois, which having left a wife and four children in the adjoining state of Wisconsin seemed unlikely him marrying again. So a word of warning even primary sources are not always factual.

Answer 1

Discovering that I was related to L. Ron Hubbard from both my Mother's mother and mother's father's sides (despite that fact that my grandparents had absolutely no direct familial, social or even geographical ties)

... The mistake was finding out! : )

Answer 2

I added a spouse to a findagrave profile and put the woman's son as her spouse.   They had the same name. The suggestion was accepted. I had to go back, explain, and ask for a correction of my mistake.

Comments

Denise, we all make mistakes when documenting our research in genealogy. The only people who don't make mistakes are the ones who don't do anything. The key is to learn not only from the mistakes that we make, but also the mistakes of others so we don't copy them.

Answer 3

Two days ago, I posted 3 grave photos of Noah II Read-7325 to the profile of Noah III Read-7324. I've manged to remove them by adding Noah III to them and clicking the button to remove Noah III ...or are they really just hidden in that profile? They didn't show up in the profile of Noah Read-7325 as I had hoped, so I guess I will have to recreate all the information about where and when I took the photos. These two are my 3rd and 4th great grandfathers following up my dad's line and I created the profiles. I know that Jacob Whittemore Read is not be relied on, but the primary records bear him out in this case. My Middlesex Reeds....not so much. Lots of collaborative work yet to do there in combing through vitals, land & probate records to even propose an educated guess as to whether I have 2, or 3 main immigrant Read/Reed/Reade families. I'm pleased that Wikitree encourages Research Notes, G2G, and free space pages. It is too easy for confusion to become accepted as fact.

Comments

You should be able to look at your recent contributions and get to the photos that way, then connect them to the right profile(s).

If they aren't connected to any profile, I think they get deleted after 30 days.

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There are 3 photos attached to Read-7325 - are they the ones you mean?

Answer 4

Can't really remember a long-term one, but recently I spent several hours going through a record again and again, wondering why I couldn't find my ancestor's baptism record in it when it really should have been according to my info. I was incredibly frustrated.

Then I realised I was actually off by a CENTURY. My ancestor was born in 1781, I was looking around the year 1681. I found him in less than 20 minutes once I realised my mistake.

Answer 5

I once traced one of my wife's ancestors to a small village in the Somerset Levels where it appeared that her Gx3 grandfather was a miller. The miller's house still existed and was now a holiday let in the hands of the National Trust. On the strength of this I booked a brief holiday for the whole family at the house.

Shortly before we were due to leave, I discovered that my wife's GG grandmother had lied on her marriage certificate and her father was not James Sherrin as she claimed but was actually one James Ridpath and she was his illegitimate daughter. James Sherrin was purely a figment of her imagination to avoid declaring her illegitimacy.

By sheer fluke she had picked a name which fitted someone born in this village to a tee. It subsequently turned out that the family I should have been looking for came from Suffolk and not Somerset.

Nonetheless, we proceeded with the holiday and had a great time even if we were 200 miles away from where we should have been.

The moral is, never believe anything on a marriage certificate.

Comments

I have a very similar case in my family. My great-grandfather invented a father and forged his birth certificate in 1893, when he was about to get married, because he was too embarrassed to admit that he was illegitimate and his father was not known.

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My entire family (even my LDS cousin) based family research on the lies my great-grandfather had on HIS marriage certificate.  I'm stubborn, however, and kept digging for his parents, and eventually came up with them, and his correct birth information a long, LONG way from where he'd claimed.  (Thanks to some terrific help, here, from members of the Sweden Project, I now have a better fleshed out ancestry on that side.  I have yet to hear back from my LDS cousin, though, regards my refuting all his statements marked as fact based on the lies.)

And he had no need to lie to cover up illegitimacy.  I think it was just so he could appear more interesting, or (more likely) more "English".  Not sure how the latter would have worked, though, because he reportedly had a very strong Swedish accent.  Maybe he just liked telling "tall tales".  

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I did some work for the National Trust on the illegitimate children of James Disraeli (Benjamin's brother) and even there I came across one of his daughters inventing a father on her marriage certificate. You would have thought that her parentage would have been a source of some pride but no, she had to invent somebody whose surname was the same as her mother's maiden name to cover up her illegitimacy.

This problem is so widespread that I am sure that in the UK at least, registrars were complicit and even perhaps advised to tell people to cover up their illegitimacy in this way.

Incidentally Melanie, what does LDS mean?

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LDS means Latter Day Saints, as far as I know. My great-grandfather was "lucky" in that his mother's last name was Schmidt, which is the most common surname in Germany. So inventing a situation where the father had the same surname as the mother wasn't all that unlikely in his case.

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Latter Day Saints - ie Mormon.  My cousin did his required "stint" of genealogical research, but stopped at gr-granddad's own statements regards birth and parentage as presented on the marriage documents.   
He - the cousin - also stayed with the 3-greats-grandfather being Scottish, because that's what we'd been told.  Again, my stubbornness paid off and I found gr-gr-gr-grandad - and his whole family - arriving from IRELAND, not Scotland.  (That tale did not involve lies, though, just mis-information.)

I (and my Mum, when she was alive) spent many fruitless hours (days, weeks, years!) looking for the liar's English mother and a Swedish father who might, just maybe, have been visiting Liverpool and got married there, fathering g-grandad.  Neither of us ever found anything (we even had people in the Queensland State Library helping us at one point) -- and a few years ago my stubbornness paid off and I found out WHY we'd never found anything in England.  'Cause the old liar had probably never even been in Liverpool - unless it was to change ships on his way from Sweden to "Amerika".  (Still need to find his trip from America to Australia - but that'll happen one day.)

Answer 6

It's awfully bold to think I have peaked. 

Answer 7

I blindly accepted that all the information on other people's trees were correct.  I had to start over!

Comments

You are not alone in this, Tabatha! Me, too!

Answer 8

Three years ago when I did my DNA test and found my maternal first cousin, using his (my) family tree I found my birth mother, Elsie Ruth Brooks, as I researched her  in my novice excited way, I found out she married a Earnst Davis in a town near the south Alabama town she grew up in. Rushing ahead, I called the church in the town where they were married, and speaking to the church secretary, explained who I was and that Ruth was my mother  (before marrying Davis). You can imagine the surprize in her voice, ( this being the heart of the bible belt) and this happened in 1949. It also turned out Ruth had 2 children close bto my age (now 72) I was thinking  "oh boy, siblings, as it turned out this was the wrong Ruth with the same name same husband's name close time of marriage, etc. I tried to correct the mistake by calling the church office, but I fear the story exploded into the countryside and I'm sure I created an untrue storm by my zeal to get to the story.

As a side light, I found my mother, unfortunately she past in 2002 3 days before my birthday, but I did find her son, my younger brother, who along with the whole Brooks family have accepted me with open arms.

Comments

Now, that's a happy ending.

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Thanks Pip, I'm now waiting on DNA test for either a paternal first cousin, or half sister, her father had two brothers, so we'll see.

Good to hear from you, one of the people 'm caring for is at the end of his journey, the other is still going good if not well,  miss the weekend chat, and am ;looking forward to getting back with ya'll.

By the way we are having blizzards up here today through tomorrow. As they say up here, if you don't like the weather, just wait 15 minutes.

All the best, James

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Blizzards in Wales?!?

We do miss you in the Chat. Come back when you can!

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Yep, amber warning till 10 am tomorrow, we are 900 feet up, if I can figure out how to put some pictures on the chat I'll try.

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Would love to see them!

Answer 9

Oh, I've made several, making assumptions or adding without evaluating the data.

One was assuming that and man and woman buried together were husband and wife. a family member cleared that up. It was brother and sister.

Another was adding some ancestors mainly because I wanted them to be ancestors. When I went back and looked, the dates just did not work out.

Comments

That's an....unfortunate mistake. Whoops. LOL!

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"Adding some ancestors because I wanted them to be ancestors." Don't we all have ancestors like that? Including people who never existed at all.Thanks, Pip

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True that, Joyce!

Answer 10

i had two husbands,  He was Leslie John Hunter, but he was adopted and was born Leslie John Murray, and i had a profile for each name instead of correcting the first one.

His biological mother was correct , but the father was the adopted one on the first profile. Tried to correct this and ended up with two husbands on my profile. i have merged them know and they are correct. Merrilyn Hunter , howard 11715

Answer 11

I keep running into similar names.  I found a lot of George Parkers and a lot of Benjamin Peltons.  At least the Benjamins were all in one line.  I had two Parker Families merge, with several George Parkers on either side.  I checked to see if there were distantly related before the merger, and found that I had confused a maternal George Parker with a paternal one;

Answer 12

Oof!! I just discovered that I had married off an eight-year-old girl. They didn't DO that in Sweden in 1680.

Answer 13

Do Not Overlook the Background behind a real estate transaction!

I could have saved myself 30 years of brick wall research if I had only wondered why my 3xs great-grandfather purchased land in 1849 from County Commissioners in 2 counties.  The court case behind that land purchase would have much earlier revealed a Prerogative Case involving land among the two counties and not only the list of my 3xs great-grandfather's siblings and parents, but would have connected so much earlier to my REV WAR 5xs great-grandfather, who appeared to elude all other possibilities of connection.