Is this a legitimate record or is a company trying to scam me?

Question

A commercial Genealogy service has been sending me invitations to join. My mother's fraternal line has been traced back to Germany and my father's maternal line is known back to Scotland. The problem is my father's fraternal line can not be traced back past my great-grandfather, Isaac George Washington Bates. I gave the service this information and they provided with this page of information:

https://www.familytreenow.com/search/census/results?first=Isaac&middle=George%20Washington&last=Bates&dobyyyy=1852&rid=0s0&smck=OJtAykYKAYU2z2JA4drKcg

The problem is, he had three sons and no daughter according to the 1920 census. The sons were named James, Fleet, and Alfred (my grandfather,) not the names listed. I don't know his wife's name, but if I click on her Details link, it produces the record of someone who was born and died in Illinois. The situation is complicated by the story, told to me by a man who claimed to be my grandfather's best friend when they youths. He claimed that my Great- great-grandfather was named James McFarland. He died, my G-g-father murdered his step-father, and fled West.

Answer 1

Here is the same record at Familysearch, and it includes an Alfred https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MC68-PFH

Answer 2

I'd avoid any commercial company that invited me to join out of the blue, if that's what happened.

Comments

Agreed. If you're truly interested, I'd consider investigating their website and seeing if they're a legit company first. And Jamie has a great point as well that a large percentage of records can be found for free at Family Search, so I'm generally not too quick to jump onto a bandwagon pay site until I know for sure that I can't get it for free somewhere else.

Answer 3

They don't seem to be asking for money.  They just aggregate free data that's already out there.  The common complaint is that they're rebroadcasting too much info about living people.  No doubt the same living people who will scream First Amendment if anybody mentions privacy.

Comments

Unless they are in Europe, where they will scream GDPR.