There, I said it and I'm glad.
I am the amateur genealogist in our family. My Family Tree Maker file has nearly 3,500 names in it what with all the aunts and uncles and in-laws and offspring and second cousins three times removed and all. I admit it. I do enjoy learning about relatives and even relatives of relatives. It's like a sickness, an itch that can't be scratched.
So I dig through online census pages and as many free things as I can find. I'm often tempted to break down and spend actual money to be able to look at old newspaper obituaries and ship passenger manifests and other stuff of which I am not even aware, but so far I have resisted the urge. I am nothing if not thrifty. Frugal. Okay, cheap.
In the meantime, it's an engaging hobby, but I have found that the site Find-A-Grave has bad information mixed in with the good and it's impossible to tell which is which unless you already know the truth.
Case in point: There's some accurate information about my stepmother, Mildred Louise Williams Houston Brague Fuller, such as her date and place of birth, date of death, and place of burial, and even a photograph of her headstone, but then it goes off the rails with erroneous information about her parents. Find-A-Grave says Mildred's parents were Charles Erasmus Williams and Maud Lee Gamewell, and that is just plain wrong, Wrong, WRONG. I knew her father, Russell Sterling Williams, Sr., personally and his second wife, Virginia, whom he married after his first wife, Pearl Cannon, died. I happen to know for a fact that the mother of Russ's 11 children was Pearl Cannon. Russ and Pearl's offspring were Cleo and Mildred and John and Margaret and Kenneth (who died in infancy) and Russ, Jr., and Marvin and Billy and Faye and Freddie and Sue. I knew all of them except Kenneth. How can Find-A-Grave be so right at times and then so wrong at other times? And what is even more important, how can researchers trust what they find if they also find information they know is not true?
Furthermore, while it is apparently very easy to enter erroneous information into Find-A-Grave, it is very difficult to get it corrected. I stay exasperated.
Another case in point: I found information about my biological father, who is buried at a certain cemetery in New Jersey. Find-A-Grave's page has his written information correct, but the photograph of his supposed grave is not his at all; it is actually another person with the same first and last name but a different middle initial, with different birth and death dates, and who -- if you do a little digging (no pun intended) -- is buried in a different cemetery in a different town.
My stepmother Mildred is probably unique in that all three of her three husbands are buried around her. Find-A-Grave, however, lists a fourth husband out of the blue that none of us have ever heard of, an obvious mistake.
I wish people who think they are helping would do a little more research and verify their information before they publish it for the world to see.
And I hesitate to pay money to access information when the free information cannot be trusted to be accurate.
Would you?
I was paying $100 every six months for basic Ancestry.com access. I let my membership drop, and they offered to renew it for $80, so I took them up on it. Like you, I find it addictive, but I'm only sticking with direct ascendants and their children. In other words, no cousins. I'm up to over 300 people in my tree, but I have found researchers with over 40,000. THERE'S an addict for you! I have wondered a lot about find-a-grave because, along with censuses, it's a primary resource, yet the people who contribute to it offer no validation. What I've found about ancestral research in general is that it's fairly easy back to 1850, but then it becomes guess work simply because the censuses contain so little info. Speaking of censuses, they too contain many, many errors, and it's rare that I find another researcher who has an inkling of what constitutes evidence. They instead build their trees by copying information from other people's trees. In answer to your questions, I would have to get a lot further along with my research than I now am to pay more money for access. Have you had any DNA studies yet? Ancestry.com is offering their's for $60 until Xmas.
ReplyDeleteSnowbrush, there's a woman in our church, Jane C., who has over 8,000 people in her tree and I thought THAT was a lot, but 40,000 -- WOW!
DeleteDid I ever tell you that on the Brague side (not even bio, but who cares?), I am related to President Grover Cleveland? It's true. My paternal great-grandmother (not bio), Bloomy Jane Cleveland, turns out to be sixth cousins with the aforementioned Grover Cleveland, so that makes me (not bio) his sixth cousin, three times removed. All this stuff makes my head hurt. Another reason for not spending money on it.
We have not had any DNA studies done, no, again because it costs $$$, but I did discover that my real bio-dad, who skipped out and joined the Army exactly one week before I was born, is buried in a Roman Catholic cemetery in New Jersey and that his mother was born in Quebec, Canada.
I will stop now before you become bored. I fear that I may already be too late.
I've found no famous relatives, but then I've found no criminals either. As for DNA studies, Rhymes, you can spring for $59. I presume to pressure you in this way because I think you will be glad you spent the money. I had mine done on 23andMe, and now I've sent off for the Ancestry.com kit to, hopefully, confirm what 23andMe told me.
DeleteAnother thing that I would like from you would be for you to give up any thought that you bore me, at least when you're talking about yourself as opposed to posts that are about other people and other things.
BTW, I made my first FindaGrave correction today. In the past, I've alonly made census corrections--have you done any of that yet?
Snowbrush, I have never managed to make a FindaGrave correction, though I have tried. That fact only adds to my frustration. I am going to have to look further into the matter now that you have piqued my interest.
DeleteMy sister has discovered the same thing, that the info on FIND A GRAVE is not always accurate. Still, it is wonderful to find photos of the graves you are searching for and I am amazed at how many of my people are buried in the area in or around Stephens County.
ReplyDeleteKay G., I do appreciate the photographs of the graves. Stephens County, that's Toccoa, right?
DeleteThe trouble is that once this false information is out there it gradually takes on the mantle of truth.
ReplyDeleteYorkshire Pudding, you are so right. How does one counter this unfortunate tendency, or does one just give up and go along with the misinformed crowd? For example, I discovered in our 1940 U.S. census that my mother's brother's family's surname was misspelled by the census taker. It was only one little letter change, a 'b' changed to a 'v', but it seemed to make my uncle's family into Russian Jews instead of German Jews. I suppose it's too late to ask for a refund.
DeleteI find people's desire to know they past fascinating. My maternal great uncle spent a great deal of his life (and doubtless of his wealth) travelling the country churches going through registers and so on and traced our family back until the 1300s. My brother is very interested and has checked things as far as he can and says there is a 'leap of faith' in relation to names in a parish register somewhere around 1540. It's perhaps because we have this knowledge that I'm not really interested. On the other hand on the paternal side of the family my father lost his natural and his stepfather before he was 6 and his mother not long after and was brought up by a much older sister. I know the house where his mother was born in Wales. However her birth was never recorded. I've never been curious enough to do anything (I leave that to my interested brother) and shall doubtless die in blissful ignorance and the world will carry on regardless.
ReplyDeleteGraham, I find the cavalier attitude in your final sentence shocking (I'm kidding). Some people are into family history and some are not. I understand. It is certainly true that the world will carry on regardless. I could while away the hours conferrin' with the flowers, but I prefer digging into my history. I suppose that is the height of conceit, when I think about it.
DeleteI salute your use of the word regardless. So many people (over here, anyway) ignorantly say 'irregardless'. My dad (non-bio) -- I suppose I should call him my stepfather but that sounds odd to my ears -- went a step further and coined a word without even being aware of it, 'ilregardless', which he used his whole life, or at least the last 20-odd years of his life in which I knew him.