Saturday, 14 November 2009

14th: OneWorldTree - check the sources

Oh the joys of "researchers" attaching people to their trees on the strength of Ancestry's hints without checking the sources.
I've just noticed that OneWorldTree, Ancestry's attempt to do what OneGreatFamily do rather better, has assigned a son Robert (born 1811 Anderston) to my John and Catherine (GRAY) BAIN, and he now appears in several trees, many of which erroneously include rather a lot of the descendants of John and Catherine as their relations.
I checked why Ancestry seem to think he belongs to John and Catherine and see that if you examine the sources, they've taken the data from two tree submissions, one being the Rootsweb tree of mine that they pinched many years back (and which I can no longer access to correct in any way shape or form - for the current version, see WorldConnect db LornaHenderson). That tree shows a male born 1826 to John and Catherine.
The other tree source is that of a Robert born 1818 Anderston Scotland to a John and Isabella (MacDONALD) and married to a Barbara FERGUSON, and dying in Polk, Minnesota in 1904.
Whereas John and Catherine have a large gap in their children that he could fit in, the Anderston Scotland Robert has siblings born in 1820 in Anderston when John and Catherine had Elizabeth up in Caithness, so it seems rather unlikely he fits with John and Catherine at all.
Check the sources!

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