Sunday, July 31, 2016

the Sunday Soapbox | Bad Genealogy



Gotta get this off my chest. Gotta.

Been seeing this on Ancestry since I started my quest to find Faulkner. I KNEW it was wrong. Doesn't make a lick of sense. Yet, here it is. Still being shared. Still being attached to Public Member Trees. Oh for crying out loud! Look at it! Seriously. 

Look at Samuel FAULKENDER. Says he was born in Pennsylvania. Says his son James was also born in Pennsylvania. One could surmise that Samuel lived his whole life in Pennsylvania. Which would also make William FAULKENDER of Wallkill, New York most  likely NOT his father.

The distance between Huntingdon Co., PA and Ulster Co., NY is almost 300 miles. That's about a 4 1/2 hour drive at 60 miles an hour. How long do you suppose it took by wagon? 

Samuel FAULKENDER (of the William FAULKENDER will abstract) was residing on a substantial piece of farmland in 1784. (It says so, right there in the abstract!) I suppose he COULD have migrated from Pennsylvania with his parents, grew up on 1000 acres of farmland in New York, sold off the land he inherited, then migrated back to Pennsylvania, where he married and had a son.

I suppose he COULD have.

But he didn't.

It would not have been hard, at all, to simply check the census records for Wallkill. It would have been more difficult, I guess, to consider that the surname might be incorrect. Or, hey, wait! That the guy in New York was NOT the father of the guy in Pennsylvania, just because they had the same surname! After all, the guy in New York did have a son named Samuel! What more proof do we need? 

It has been linked and "sourced" to at least 10 trees on Ancestry. Most recently June 2016. Even with my note attached stating it is not correct.

Bad genealogy hurts everyone. 
Question everything. 
At the very least, keep it to yourself until you are certain!


That is all. 


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