Let Lineage Societies tag their persons

LegacyUser

Tom Alciere said: Groups such as Mayflower Descendants and Daughters of the American Revolution should be invited to identify FamilyTree persons that entitle people to apply for membership. The user would be alerted to record hints: You are eligible to join if you can prove your relationship to this person.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: The societies will have to negotiate with FamilySearch.

However, a D.A.R. application does not indicate that target person in the application was a Revolutionary Soldier. Mine wasn't, but there are a lot of applications based upon his life. The problem was that he never lived in an area where the battles took place (aside from the Indian troubles encouraged by the British).

The Mayflower descendants have a similar problem. In many instances, some inventive genealogies have been produced to convince others that they are descended from someone on the Mayflower.

I have an ancestral line that those in that line wanted to be connected with a person who produced a Methodist commentary on the Bible in the past. The problem is that there is no verifiable connection back to the author (or a common ancestor). But the family wanted it so bad that even a newspaper obit from years ago even mentioned that the deceased was related to the person who wrote the commentary. He wasn't. It was something that the family fabricated and further research shows a "missing generation" between my immigrant ancestors from Ireland and the author.

Members of many societies are more interested in the pride associated with being descended from a group of people than they do in actually researching their ancestors.