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

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, or on Facebook, or use the question image to share it on any social media.

P.S. This is a question we ask every year. To read more fun responses, see last year's post.

Comments

About 30 years ago, I read an historical account about an ancestor who was traveling with his wife, his brother, his sister, and his brother-in-law. (All named in the account.) Eureka! I'd been searching for his wife's maiden name for ages. I knew that my ancestor's brother-in-law's last name was his wife's maiden name. Of course! So I published it online and even sent it to the local historical society. It never occurred to me that his brother-in-law was his sister's husband!! This mistake has been crowdsourced so heavily that it is even on wikitree- though I have added research notes to explain the error.

Answer 1

Awfully bold of you to think I've peaked! 

Comments

Thanks for the star, Deborah!

Answer 2

Let's see. Other than marking myself as dead on WikiTree one of the biggest and most embarassing mistakes actually led to me making an awesome friend who helped me out with some San Pietro records.

What happened was I added a Tedesco to my tree that I shouldn't have on Familysearch and the person who had that ancestor contacted me and said it was the wrong person. We talked for a bit and it turned out her ancestor was from a town on the opposite side of the toe of Italy's boot than the ancestors I had in my tree.

So, lesson learned. Don't go barking up the wrong tree. We made up and we still talk to this day. Oh and Tedesco is a VERY common Italian name. So, it's easy to conflate that one. At least it all worked out in the end!

Comments

When I was a kid, my Pastor in Akron, Ohio was Rev. Vito Tedesco!

---

Tedesco is a very common Italian name. My great-grandmother was a Tedesco and I am a cousin of genealogist Mary Tedesco. =D

---

I have done that too.  I thought I was marking my aunt's profile and I was in my own on My Heritage.  I think I am still dead in several tree on My Heritage.

---

Well, I gotta say Deena. Ya seem pretty lively. :)

---

Tedesco is an Italian word for German, so you might have a clue for your deep ancestry!

---

Yup. =D It'd have to be VERY deep, I think. Like before the 1500s.

Answer 3

In my early days of doing genealogy, I was looking at a census image and found a new-to-me surname! 'Do'.  The enumerator had written the family as
John Smith
Mary Do
Jane Do
Peter Do

Of course, Mary, Jane, and Peter's surname was Smith, and 'Do' stood for 'Ditto'...

Comments

I had a relative carefully transcribe a Census document into a self published book. Daughter one’s “occupation “ was “Caring for pigs”, daughter two’s occupation was “Do little”.

Turned out the Do was short for ditto and she had mistranscribed “cattle”.

---

I found that 'do' is very popular in England as the abbreviation for ditto - where-as we down under are more in favour of "

Answer 4

Mine was a highly embarrassing mistake that ultimately contributed to me joining WikiTree:

For several years, I had used a private software not connected to anything online and had accumulated ~400 individuals in my personal family tree. Then along came a locally famous family genealogist (we even had played together as children in the sandpit, and he holds a job at a local historical museum), talking about finally having found our connection, and as he's using the same software, we could merge our data files. Hey presto, my database grew to ~2500 individuals overnight! Enter my mistake: I uploaded the whole thing - without even spot-checking its contents! - onto one of those platforms where everyone can have their own tree. Within a couple of weeks, a lady from my home village contacts me and asks how come I connect her in my tree as the daughter of a man from the next village (same LNAB) who definitely is not her father? Turns out that my genealogist friend (whom I now call infamous instead of famous) had completely fabricated his entire data file ... :-o

I took me a couple of months to untangle the mess, i.e. delete my online account together with the wrong tree and reduce my data file to the bona fide ~400 individuals. And then, I looked for a genealogical website which requires collaboration and sourced evidence ... And here I am at WikiTree! :-)

Comments

Audibly gasped at this one.. wow!!

Answer 5

For about half a day in late May of 2004 I thought Unk was an actual surname. Then I realized it was an abbreviation for Unknown.

On April 1st, I created an account for Sloof Lirpa on the DNA Rootsweb forum.  I posted that Unk was a relatively common last name in databases and I proposed creating the Unk Surname DNA Project at Family Tree DNA.  The idea received some support (but as an mtDNA project) since it would at least get that DNA associated with those brick walls.

Comments

Some of my cousins used Unk as a nickname for Uncle.

---

I had a friend who’s surname was Unk. So the name really exist.

---

I thought searching for my Williams and Miller relatives was a task, but imagine having to search for "Unk"?  That would be so annoying for that family.  These stories are great!

---

Actually, I believe Unks is a surname (German).  I have  some Unks’ in my tree and the name is documented.  So don’t feel too badly. Of course this means you have to spell out “unknown” every single time. (lol)

---

Funny!

---

I have a similar story. When I first started looking into my family's genealogy I thought that "mnu" was a real last name and I was very worried about how intermarried my family branches looked to be!! I felt silly once I figured it out. However, the endogamy in my tree was real, just not to the extent the "mnu" once caused me to suspect. 

---

I've made worse mistakes, but this is hilarious!  You've made my day!! Thanks!

---

This is similar to my most embarrassing genealogic mistake...  In searching my Native American line I found the Native American surname name of an ancester:  MDNUNK.  It was in my tree for a long time, until my brother-in-law informed me it was Maiden Name Unknown.  Embarrassing indeed! 

---

I did the same thing with MNU.

Answer 6

My paternal grandmother had several siblings. I knew about two, but I found a third on a census record. After some research for "Gussie" I incorrectly assigned the profile as female.  After further research I found that Gustave was male, had married and children.  I wonder to this day why there was no communication, that I am aware of, between my grandmother and her brother.

Answer 7

Twenty years or so ago, I got caught up in an older cousin's research that had our great-grandfather as the descendant of a man who had a book written about him. He was a scoundrel! I copied all of her research. It seems a lot of people did as well. Years later, during some family research on a few DNA matches, I found out that man was not our great-grandfather, but our 3rd cousin, 3x removed.

The wonderful thing that came out of that though was finding out who our real great-grandfather was and his actual story (and that of his father and mother ... of which I am still working on). The sad part has been trying to get others to update their trees. It has been tedious at best.

Comments

Thanks, Angela, for sharing this.

Copying someone else's "research" without verifying the facts seems to happen all too often (see my mistake above). We need more WikiTree in genealogy!

---

In her defense, our great-grandfather was an orphan and he had the same name as the man she was attributing records to. Thankfully, upon closer inspection, it became obvious that the records were for a different man. The funny thing was, once that was done, it became obvious that the man who was his father also had a cousin of the same name and everyone had them combined as the same person. It took a lot of work to separate that whole web and we still find trees that have them all wrong.

I read yours as well and I can't imagine trying to untangle that mess! I know that had to be a ton of work!

---

Oh, I didn't mean to attack - sorry if you felt you had to defend. Most mistakes are innocent and well-meant. Still, they can take an inordinate amount of fixing as your example also testifies.

Wrt to "trees that have them all wrong", I had to stop trying to find and correct them. I admire anyone who has the mental capacity and health to do that, though. More power to you!

---

Oh no! I wasn't defending. I was just sharing more because it was crazy how it all went down and how many people in that family branch have the same names over and over and over. I tell anyone that has a "Belt" line that most of their branches will be made up of William's, Robert's, Charles', Benjamin's and Thomas' and they all name their children that ... who name all of their children that. You have to be prepared to get someone confused! lol

---

I too have been there, having posted a “theoretical” connection to see if it might attract evidence, only to realize dozens of people picked up my “theory” as fact. Cat was out of the bag long, long before I realized I might have led people astray. It happens, given systems that enable you to duplicate other’s work without thinking too hard on the evidence. That’s why the Wikitree one-tree model makes so much sense!

---

It's indeed crazy how certain names run in certain families. For my mother's Graul line, at the turn of the century, it seems to have been Otto and Paul. I know her great uncle Otto died in WWI, so imagine my surprise when I got the search result that there were nine Otto Graul who died in military action. And that's just those who died. For Paul, it's three who died plus three who were wounded - and yes, you guessed it, one of them is my mother's grandfather - he died of his wounds in 1921. War is terrible and really to be avoided if you can!

---

In my family it is Johnathon, over and over. 

Answer 8

Apart from barking up the wrong family tree the embarassment factor, for me, was turned up a few notches as not only did I bark up the wrong family tree I also wrote a semi-fictional book about that family thinking they were mine.

Comments

Classic!

---

Love it! Too funny!

I started writing an historical novel based on the story passed down for generations of my mother's mother's line about how her 3G-grandfather had snagged himself a bride from a "bride ship" as soon as it docked in New Zealand. That story is even enshrined in a newspaper article that is cited on his WT profile (Reeve-256) so he was still telling that story in his 90s.

But when I found their marriage record on the NZ BDM, I discovered they'd actually married something like 5 years after her ship had docked, so either he'd been telling a tall tale all that time or his memory had conveniently lost 5 years.

(Unfortunately, that discovery took the wind out of my sails, and I've never been able to finish the book.)

Answer 9

Well.. I've read eight answers and all I can say is "yes, I know exactly how that feels, I'm guilty of each and every one of those.. more or less". I also think it is only embarrassing when someone else finds out or when you make the same mistake twice.

Comments

Reminds me of a great proverb I learned in Tanzania: "To make a mistake is not a mistake. To repeat a mistake, that's a mistake!"

Answer 10

I have sometimes had too much faith in on line trees, particularly on 'family search'. These trees are generally accurate but some records, particularly old ones, lack sources. I hope I have learned my lesson and I double check the sources now 

Answer 11

I've enjoyed reading all the embarrassing mistakes. I've had several, but most recently, I was contacted by a woman who let me know that I had marked her mother-in-law, "Deborah" a maternal second cousin of mine, as deceased on my family tree, but she was alive and well. I took a look, only to see that I had found a death notice for a same name person, and didn't check carefully to see that the birth date was entirely off the mark. Actually, this turned out to be a blessing, though, because this branch of the family tree was kind of lost to me due to my mother's mother dying in her twenties and her parents and siblings moving from Virginia to Louisiana. Also, by coincidence, I had recently discovered a sweet letter written by Deborah's mother, "Kathryn," at age eleven, to my mother in 1940, seeking to know her cousin in Virginia. I was able to share the letter with Kathryn's family.

Comments

What a lovely outcome! ❤️

Answer 12

Oh, y’know, same-old, same-old, announcing loudly and proudly to the *entire* family that we are Plantagenets, when turns out this connection was invented by a 19th century genealogist to flatter the feelings of clients who deeply desired to descend from royalty. Failed to read the fine print on the “evidence”, but Wikitree eventually set me straight! Not before I gave my sisters tiaras, and my sisters made several travelling FB posts from “Great-Grand-daddy King John’s castle” etc. I have in-laws to this day with whom I dare not bring up new genealogical information, the eye rolls behind polite smiles can be unbearable .

Lesson well-learned, after having to prune my family tree (and closet!) of all the errant crowns, tiaras and castle images. Of course, I only put them in the tickle trunk*, as I figured the day might come when I would have solid documentation of our actual connection to the Plantagenets. Thanks to Wikitree, the lessons it teaches and the fabulous collaborators in the Wikitree family, that day did come! Worth your weight in gold, every one of you!!   

The whole thing gave me time to think about how and why we value these connections to “celebrity” ancestors. I have lots of thoughts on this, which I’ll save for a different G2G question in the future!

(*tickle trunk = Canadianism, Google it! )

Comments

Nice to see “tickle trunk” pop up somewhere other than CBC!

---

Been there, done that. Later found my ancestor isn't King John, but his father Henry II through a different son. If I wanted to work at it I could apply to the Royal Bastard Society.

Answer 13

When I had just started in genealogy, back in 1990, I was looking for one of my ancestors, Hendrik Brinks, the father of Egbert Brinks (1800-1867).

I knew he died in 1852. His death certificate states he died aged 80 on 14-Jun-1852, and that he was born in the village of Holten.

So I had to look through the baptisms of Holten from 1771 and 1772 to find him.

Lo and behold: on 23-Feb-1772 Dirk Brinks and Hendrina Hendrix (Dutch women are always mentioned by their maiden name in the Netherlands, even back then) had their son Hendrik baptized. Found him!

I found the marriage of their parents, their baptisms, and later on their ancestors as well: three more generations before hitting my brick wall(s).

Fast forward to 13-Aug-2018: my favourite genealogy show "Verborgen Verleden" (Dutch version of the BBC-series "Who do you think you are") has an episode on Tom Egbers, then a well known Dutch sports presenter.

While watching the show, my attention is peaked when I see some familiar names and villages when they show parts of his ancestral tree. It turns out that Tom Egbers and me are 5th cousins, since Tom descends from Jan Albert Brinks/Egbers (1809-1883), a brother of my ancestor Egbert Brinks (1800-1867).

The TV show names their father as "Hendrik Brinkes/Egbers/Vlikkers" (1771-~1810), a slight deviation from the "Hendrik Brinkes" (1771-1811) I found back then. But that is completely understandable, since people in the east (and north) of the country often took the name of the farm where they lived as their surname (quite common in those regions until Napoleon demanded fixed surnames in 1811 by law - 98% of the surnames were fixed after that, the last 2% being fixed by another law in 1825).

But the TV show has Hendrik's father as "Egbert Brinkes" (1741-1797), not the Dirk Brinks (1734-1807) I found over 27 years earlier... Huh?

So, after rewatching the show to see if I understood that correctly, I immediately look up the baptisms in Holten in 1771/1772 (conveniently available online, so I didn't have to visit the provincial archives like I had to in 1991). On the same (2-page-)scan that shows Dirk Brinks on the right page, who has his son Hendrik baptized on 23-Feb-1772, there is also a "Echtbert Hendriks" on the left page, who has his son Hendrik baptized on 30-Jun-1771. It mentions his mother "Leida" (no surname) and "Hendrina Hendrix" as the witness.

After some more research it turns out that the woman named "Hendrina Hendrix" (Dirk Brinks' wife), who is mentioned on both baptisms, is actually an AUNT of Echtbert/Egbert's son Hendrik, making both Hendriks eachothers cousins!

The Dirk Brinks (1734-1807) and Hendrina Hendrix (1739-1802) I considered to be my ancestors, were NOT my ancestors after all!

But, luckily, Hendrina Hendrix' brother Echtbert/Engbert/Egbert Brinkes/Brinkhuis (1741-1797) and his wife Aleijda/Leida van de Horst (~1745-1807) ARE my ancestors, so all the research I did in 1990 on the ancestors of Hendrina Hendrix is still useable, as they are (of course) also the ancestors of her brother Echtbert/Engbert/Egbert.

I had to do new research on Echtbert/Engbert/Egbert Brinkes/Brinkhuis, and even got back one generation further than on Dirk Brinks' ancestors...

Answer 14

When I was researching the Orgains in Virginia, I found that my great-grandfather Orgain's wife was named Rebecca Lucas Orgain. I knew that many in our family had kept their maiden name as their middle name after marriage so I searched everywhere for some record of a Rebecca Lucas before marriage but there was none. The only one I found was born two generations before this Rebecca. So, I had hit a brick wall. It wasn't until about a year later that the mystery of Rebecca was solved when I met an Orgain cousin on Ancestry's message boards. Rebecca Lucas Orgain was an Orgain by birth and married her cousin, my great-grandfather. All that wasted time...but meeting my cousin led to him sharing all of the research that was done by another Orgain cousin which likely saved me years of research.

Answer 15

When I was a baby Geneologist, I copied trees. Hey I didn't know better!

Comments

Yeah, I did the same thing ONCE. When I started my genealogy I found a 20-year old database with thousands of local people (Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia) and found 5,500 of them related to me. Nothing was sourced. So I dumped those 5,500 into my software. That was in 2016. But since then I've been researching all those one by one fixing some errors, tossing out some I couldn't prove relation, but adding a lot of detail (and sources) as I move along, and finding a lot more people as I work through them. Still maybe 30% of that original group not yet researched and I'm almost at 20,000 names now. I've never since accepted other people's work without verification. There are a lot of unsourced trees out there. Sometimes they are still useful but only as a starting point ... they give me people to look for that I didn't know about yet.

Answer 16

Assuming - You know what that did! After a lot of research I found in Germany who I thought was my 3rd cousin 1x removed in Germany. He wasn't into genealogy, but I sparked his interest and he shared what he had that was passed down in his family. He was anxious for me to find any of his ancestors who immigrated to the US while I was interested in going back. Anyway, after a year of corresponding and becoming friends, I looked again at our connecting ancestor - Catherine Meyer. He had a death date for her and when I found her death record it showed her parents, and they weren't my ancestors. I was able with that record to find her birth which was 1817 not 1820 when my Catherine Meyer was born. We were both disappointed but would remain penpals. I helped answer a lot of questions he had about his ancestors and I'm still working on his tree for him. And I'm still looking for what happened to my Catherine (my great grandmother's sister). Even though  I am pretty careful, I now am even more careful of who I put in my tree.

Answer 17

Ah. Early on in my journey I found a lot of links on another platform that lead me to believe we were a Mayflower family.

I proclaimed it to my clan as a great find. Alas, the Mayflower people did not agree.  I learned that day, that just because 60 people say it is true does not make it so.  After research...I found for this to be true my ancestor had to be married at the same time to men in completely different parts of the country.

Then I joined Wikitree.

Answer 18

It was the best vacation of my life!  All by myself I drove from Texas to Mississippi to trace my several times great grandfather, Colonel Cowles Mead and his family.  He was a grandfather to my 3rd great-grandmother, Mary Moffitt Robertson, through his daughter, Mary.  Family researchers on Ancestry had tracked him down and I wanted to know more.

In Natchez, at a local bar (don't judge me), I met some folks who said that he had a house in town that was still standing!  They introduced me to the folks that owned it, and I toured my ancestor's house.  What a thrill!  I went to Indian mounds where my people were buried.  I walked part of the Natchez Trace, as some of them might have done.  At a Mississippi visitor center, the folks were excited to meet a descendant, and gave me all kinds of wonderful information.

I went to Jackson and worked several days in the library on my genealogy  They let me actually hold an ancient book written by one of my ancestors.  Believe me, I was over the moon!

Then...I came home and started trying to connect all the dots with citations.  Oops.  It turned out that Cowles Mead's daughter, Mary, did have a daughter named "Mary"...but she never married!  I was absolutely no kin to these people!  Ancestry researcher were wrong!  Can you believe that?

Ah well, it was still a great vacation.  AND, I learned to check my sources!

Answer 19

Believing that other genealogists are humble / honest enough individuals who will accept reliable sources that disprove their ancestor [so-so] is not the son / daughter of a noble person.

Though these genealogists do tend to frequent places like FamilySearch, Geni and Facebook Genealogy Groups.

Answer 20

Thinking “Six More” on a family group sheet was some odd nickname. It took months for me to realize it just meant “and six more children.”