the Sunday Soapbox | DNA and 'Discoveries' ~ Who Is Bob's Mother?

Well, I'm no DNA expert. Far from it. But I do understand the basics. I've started the sometimes boring process of educating myself with seminars, webinars and reading material. I have a love/hate relationship with DNA. I love what it can add to my genealogical research, but I also hate the sometimes difficult reality that some matches may not ever be solved, in my lifetime anyway.

Then there's this other problem.

Maybe you've noticed it too.

The Ancestor Discoveries on Ancestry.

I don't pay much attention to them, but there they are every time I log in to my AncestryDNA page.

Maybe I'm ignorant. I'm not too proud to admit there's a lot I don't have working knowledge about.

But I ponder on this:

There is one particular "ancestor" that keeps showing up as a possible relation. She has been added to myriad family trees without much more documentation than someone else's tree. She has been added to a group of trees with whom I know I share a common, proved, ancestor. She has been declared the mother of this particular ancestor.

Problem is, there is no proof.

None.

Zip.

It's pure speculation.

So, like unsourced Public Trees, we (or I anyway) now have this issue of 'DNA' 'related' ancestors. And I'm thinking, I could put Bozo the Clown in my tree as this guy's (we'll call him Bob) mother. If everyone else who was a proved relation to Bob does the same thing well, I'd bet that Bozo would show up as an Ancestry Discovery!

I have red hair and I do have an odd fondness for clowns, but I'm certain Bozo and I are not related.

I'm okay with not knowing who Bob's mother is. The records most likely exist somewhere - we're talking 1800 Maryland - I will continue to pursue the truth and ignore the unproved.

But not everyone will.

How big of a problem will this become?

Am I way off base here, or is this a genuine concern?

I'd love to hear your thoughts!


©2017 Anne Faulkner - AncestorArchaeology.net, All Rights Reserved

the Sunday Soapbox | Responsibility In Genealogy or Please, Stop!

Stop! Stop right now! If you are unsure of something, or if it just 'seems' like it might be correct - please, don't do it! Make sure all the facts are, in fact, correct before proceeding. Especially if you are going to meddle in a public crowd-sourced project. You are not being "helpful". You are potentially messing up years of other people's research. Of course I'm talking about genealogy here, and the big, group-effort world trees. There is enough bad genealogy out there already, why add to it? Some days I want to just say "STOP" this is a job for the professionals! But love of genealogy is not something I really want to discourage. However ......

 Earlier this week I was greeted with an inbox message from FamilySearch detailing the weekly changes on my watch list. "Recent Changes In Family Tree" it was titled. Now, usually I glance at these but nothing raises the alarm flag.

Usually.

This week was different. This week listed Samuel Faulkner, James Faulkner, Harrison Faulkner and Martha McBride among others. At first I was excited - another Faulkner researcher!! I've dreamed of this! It's been a long, lonely road thus far and Finding Faulkner has not come easily. But then I saw this:

 DELETED!!!!! What the #%**?!? Oh, no. No, no, no. Then I saw this:

Argh!!! adamjerrypeters1 what are you doing?!? Yes, I hoped that adamjerrypeters1 found Samuel's actual birthdate, christening record and wife's surname, among all the changes he preformed. 

I hoped.

I was wrong. Of course I was wrong.

adamjerrypeters1 was being helpful. Merging some names that were similar enough. Deleting other's that no longer fit the new family. The reason given for the changes? "updated info". That's all. No other explanation, AND none of it was sourced! The 'new' Samuel Faulkner was born and christened in England in 1741, death date UNK. Wife? Martha, daughter? Ann. Married? Yes, in England. Sources? NO. The 'old' Samuel Faulkner was born in New York in about 1740, died in New York about 1811, son Col. James Faulkner. Source? 1.

As for deleting Col. James Faulkner? I just don't know. adamjerrypeters1 replaced him with a James Faulkner also born in 1779, wife UNK, two children (maybe) one born in Nova Scotia, one born in Massachusetts. Then he tried to link Harrison Faulkner, born in New York as another child.

Rat's nest.

I don't know. I have no words. I eventually restored it, left detailed notes and added a few more sources to be on the safe side. I wondered what other messes adamjerrypeters1 left around FamilySearch. And, if no one is watching, will these 'improvements' become 'truths'?

Normally I leave a wide berth around all of the community trees. Geni is the worst of them. I have dabbled in WikiTree, I had not yet really explored FamilySearch, but I did expect more from them. 

Lesson learned.

I have strong, but mixed feelings about all of this. My frustration with all the bad research made public, the abandoned trees, the just plain nonsensical reasoning led me to choose to keep my research mostly off-line. I do keep a private online tree at Ancestry and at FindMyPast. I plan to go 'public' with my Faulkner tree now that the research is solid. This mess of public trees was the driving force behind my decision to start my blog. A place where I could document my research publicly, but where I remained in control. 

Just coming off a week of intense education in the form of  BCG's Free Day of Quality Education webinars, I was reminded that we must be mindful in our work and to practice responsible genealogy.

Genealogy, once  the hobby of grandmothers and the academic crowd. Researching pedigrees and descendants of nobility. Serious stuff. Not a lot of fun.

But genealogy IS fun. And the World Trees make it more inclusive than ever before. It's fun to put your family history up on Ancestry, FamilySearch, WikiTree, etc and find cousins and kin you didn't know existed. And we've all made some rookie moves, okay lots of rookie moves, when we first started out. We had to crawl before we could run.

So, how do we encourage these enthusiastic 'helpers' without chasing them away? How do we keep the public research as accurate as possible? I don't really know. Maybe it's something that just needs to work itself out. 

But please, I beg you. As tempting as it might seem to 'help' out and 'fix' a few things, it does so much more harm than good. And someone, somewhere is left to straighten out your mess. When they had better, more productive things to do.

Preaching to the choir, I know.

Thanks for listening.

©2106 Anne Faulkner - AncestorArchaeology.net, All Rights Reserved

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. 

©Anne Faulkner - AncestorArchaeology.net, All Rights Reserved.