How do you correct information on Ancestry.com?

[bucolic_frolic]

I've only spent 15 minutes looking at family trees, and they have hyperlinked everything together, from 1890 to today. Other families lumped with mine, several "siblings" that don't belong in my family tree, my mom listed as the wrong person from birth to death and all the events in between. They cross reference with findagrave and other sources. It's an outrage.

[Ocelot II]

1. I think if you have an account you can do it.

[secondwind]

2. I found it too intrusive, and got off it.

[Sherman A1]

3. I actually leave some incorrect information on my trees

I know what is what and others really don't need to.

[bucolic_frolic]

5. I get your point, but facts are facts

I've done genealogy since 1998. LDS Family History Centers were a regular visit. They were very precise with their information, you could even send your family tree to the "Mother Ship" as they referred to it, in Utah, to have your tree recorded. Accuracy was paramount, and Ancestry became an integral part of their data. To have everything scrambled makes the entire project useless for the purposes they state for their genealogy research. It is one of their good deeds.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

13. No, they're not.

They have the same problem as Ancestry among their submitted family trees.

I even saw a family tree on a computer at a local LDS Library years ago (using a CD sent to them from Utah) in which the submitter claimed to know their ancestry going back to Adam and Eve!

It was pretty impressive, actually, because at least the submitter seemed to have all of his supposed ancestors, famous historical figures, in chronological order -- e.g., Aristotle coming after Socrates. They just moved great distances across the globe sometimes to beget some other historically significant person.

I wondered if some young Mormon was angry about being compelled to research their family tree, so he decided to invent one for the ages!

So many family trees even have supposed parents born AFTER their children!

Ancestry is fine if the researcher mostly sticks to original sources.

People shouldn't quickly believe the cited sources in family trees either because those can be lies too! I found one that correctly named the title of a film from the LDS, and even the film number, but the supposed marriage contained within it was NOT there!

[wnylib]

14. I have seen a family tree for one

branch of my grandmother's family that also goes back to Adam and Eve. It is accurate for several generations, but then veers off the rails to claim an ancestral connection between some Welsh and Scottish names in the British Isles to "Celts" of the Middle East who supposedly traced back to some Israeli tribes, and from there to Adam and Eve. In making the connection to ancient Israel, several centuries were condensed until the end result was 6000 years ago for Adam and Eve.

I've also seen other listings (not my family's) at Ancestry based on info taken from LDS records that have names and dates so jumbled that there is a gap of 2 centuries between a father and son.

Even census records are only as accurate as the person who spoke to the census taker, and dependent on the census taker's listening skills.

My aunt found an amusing census entry for an ancestor in my grandfather's family. The man's first name was Gottlieb. The census taker recorded it as Cutlip due to the ancestor's accent, and the place of birth as Bear, Germany. But he was actually from a German speaking family in Bern, Switzerland.

Ancestry and LDS listings are only clues or guides. They have to be verified by further research.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

15. Absolutely! I especially learned to question...

... submitted family trees, but I still used them as a guide. And sometimes original sources later verified the trees, despite how the submitter had failed to cite any sources.

One of my paternal ancestors was always listed as a son of a particular family where they lived, but the (supposed) father's will didn't include my ancestor (whose first name was unusual) as one of his children. Was my ancestor disowned or something?

But there was another man in that vicinity with the same surname, who died almost 30 years earlier, so I delved more into courthouse records about him. (That record was not found online anywhere.) And sure enough, I found a deed which named his widow and their three children... with my ancestor included. So I later had the only submitted family tree which had the correct father shown for that ancestor (citing my source), among numerous others which seemed to simply parrot the first family tree that was incorrect.

[Irish_Dem]

4. I am on Ancestry all the time, it is a hobby of mine.

If you pm me I will tell you how to clean up your tree.

[mahina]

6. Ugh

Not a fan

It’s better if you don’t correct it in my view. Let the treasure hunters work a little bit harder. Wish I didn’t know how that worked.

[njhoneybadger]

7. You don't correct other people's trees. You make your own.

People don't know how to merge duplicates, change relationships, or even delete wrong entries and their trees end up being a big mess.

[applegrove]

8. I had a family tree done in 1895 or so. I felt an obligation to put it

up. No way I know all the people descended from that 1800s tree.

[bucolic_frolic]

9. Imagine finding your 1895 tree expanded with 3 times the number of people in your families

I get everyone can't be tracked. But old families don't grow. I'm not sure if I've misinterpreted your post, but I think that's what you were saying.

[applegrove]

10. Yes. For me I wasn't afraid of mistakes, I can see how aggravating that would be. For me it

was a privacy versus access issue. Someone coming along in 200 years would still have access and that was important enough for me that I gave up privacy. I'm not on it anymore. I would be really annoyed to find a tree corrupted like you did. I did find a few distant cousins when I was at it. Glad I'm not there today if it is as you say. Ancestry is not the only one where stuff gets corrupted. I've seen it elsewhere though I think it was malicious in that case.

[Algernon Moncrieff]

11. OK - you need to realize this isn't how Ancestry works.

They are a database repository and link to information sources.

All you need to do is create a tree based on what you know to be true. Document your sources.

If you want to reach out to the owners of other trees and point out the possible error of their ways, feel free -- but don't hold your breath. A lot of people do their tree, lose interest, and quit Ancestry. Others are convinced they are right. Stil others have your family in their tree because you all are 7th cousins (or similar) and they aren't going to put a lot of time/effort/caring into fixing that.

[bucolic_frolic]

12. Yes, I'm beginning to realize

I'm thinking of Ancestry1999. You could take their info from genealogists to the bank. Now we're all amateur sleuths.

[Historic NY]

19. I've actually hired them on and with my finding out stuff they were pretty successful

with the Italian Genealogist who had to go to city halls and archives where the info is not digitalized and make copies. I was able to come up with a couple of relations there and here that had gaps but the data all matched. We're back to around 1500. Unfortunately, it will means another go. There is a monastery over there that has the towns records which was closed during Covid. They definitely got info my family never knew. My ggfsather from Italy came here 3 times in the late 1880s for some period to NY City. No one even knew but I now suspect that given our last name as it was correctly spelled it had to do with a major "family" person. A cousin I found said a lot of time they didn't talk about such things. His last name is notorious also. It was strange but they did find a 3rd ggrfather was murdered. Now if we can crack the Irish side beyond 1825. They have been zeroing in on DNA markers, I have to try another test as not all DNA companies do the same tests.

[csziggy]

16. A lot of family trees are completely inaccurate

Never rely on someone else's trees for reliable information. The most I ever do is to look to see what their actual sources - meaning records, not yet someone else's tree - and see if those are accurate. And then I check to see if the record they used as a source is correct for the person I am researching. Often it is not.

I ran into a series of trees about an ancestor of mine, an Aaron Harlan. Now, in that line, there was a series of four or five Aaron Harlans, father to son, etc. That series of trees had Aarons married to their mothers, or to their son's wives, or various other combinations. How screwed up is a tree when they list a man as being married to a woman who died before he was born?

I only bother correcting inaccuracies for actual records, mostly transcription errors for census records. Most notable was the surname transcribed as both "Lucker" and "Fucker" when it should have been Tucker - not the same Tucker, either.

[Montauk6]

17. If it's a family tree, and you have an account

You could try messaging the person running that tree. They may or may not respond but it never hurts to try.

I know for the records, you can add notes for correction. Lately, I've been noticing the Ancestry transcribers getting lazy. For example, if a death certificate give the full date of birth, the transcription will give just the year. Or when the mother's maiden name is clearly spelled out, they will just give the married name and put the maiden name in the highly useless Also Known As field.

[Historic NY]

18. Lots of people jumble stuff they think is theirs....

someone built a tree using my ggfather as theirs for way upstate NY he never left Manhattan. I tried to tell the person but she gleefully goes off. A majority of my family are confirmed with DNA and you can put markers on your tree.

[timms139]

20. True surnames may

have been changed by census takers in America back then . Lots of the ones from Ireland and places couldn't read and write so the census takers could only spell the surnames as they sounded which changed a lot of names . Ours changed from Moulin to Mullins here and in Ireland . When they heard we are Moulins sounded like Mullins and shouldn't of had a s at the end and in some cases was put down as Mullin.

[bucolic_frolic]

21. The census takers in any given area tended to be the ethnicity of earlier immigrants

NYC, for example, many were German or English or even Dutch, not that they didn't speak English, but they were taking information from the next wave - the Irish, Italian, Polish, Russian immigrants. Some immigrants were illiterate, plus they wanted to be Americans so they Anglicized their names, especially first names. All of this especially true for immigration officials - Ellis Island, Castle Garden. And the handwriting! Then transcribed by volunteers committed to genealogy, and often with the vision problems of older people.

So yeah, I hear you!