Hints from other people's family trees
As I go back in time, often the only hints I can find are other members' family trees. However, I often find that these "ancestors" have absolutely no sources attached to them so that I can verify that these are indeed my ancestors. I am beginning to think that there is absolutely no worth in adding these people to my tree. It seems that some family trees have just been copied from other people's family trees willy nilly and not one proves where the information originally comes from. Do others add such information to their trees when it can't be proven? I really am in a quandry and would be interested to hear your views.
Comments
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If you are researching on FamilySearch, there are no "other members' family trees." The FSFT is a single collaborative tree for all people that we all maintain together.
If you are looking at other well-known genealogy websites, where each user keeps a separate tree, I recommend using trees created by other people only as clues. If, for example, a cousin's tree indicates that your 3rd GGF was born in a specific townland and county in Ireland, don't accept that without researching independently.
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Thank you for your useful comments. I must admit, that is what I do already. What I tend to do is to allow them onto my tree and then try to verify them bu doing my own research. I use roots magic 9 as a backup so unfortunately some of these unverified people are transferred there and then can get onto Family search from roots magic if Im not careful. Do you think I should remove people who have been imported like this into Family Search and explain that there are no sources to prove the relationships and also do the same with other unverified sources that I come across?
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Bearing in mind that it is a single tree as Aine says, I am reluctant to make changes unless I I am fairly certain that I am correct. To illustrate what I mean, one of my ancestors has been linked by another user to a person of the correct name and around the correct time but who was christened in a parish some 20 miles from where she got married. I think it unlikely that this is correct partly because of the distance and partly because there are two more records of persons with the right name and date but from other places similarly a long way from where she was married. Which is correct? Are none of them correct? I do not know so I have contented myself with leaving the link in place but putting an alert note on the record to express my concerns about its accuracy. In the meantime, like you, I maintain my tree elsewhere interchanging between it and Family Tree but not adding what I consider to be doubtful links from Family Tree to my tree.
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I keep a tree on another website, separate from my primary tree, where I document same-name people in my areas of research. That way I can keep track of those records/people I have found, without running the risk of conflating same-name people in my primary tree or here in the collaborative tree. The research in that tree has helped people researching those names.
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