Be cautious ~ Ancestry.com can trick you

www.Ancestry.com is a wonderful tool to track ancestors and the new WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE television program makes it more exciting. It also deludes one into thinking it's all there and true. However, over the past week, I have been reminded of something my cousin, Tess, told me some months ago. People input information even if they don't know if it's true and copy family trees just because.

For real! The past couple of days, I wanted to clean up my home page on www.ancestry.com. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the program, I'll briefly explain. When the program 'sees' a family ancestor's name, it tries to match it with documents and other people's family trees. When a little leaf flaps in the breeze by an ancestor's name, you know it's hinting there's information just waiting for you.... So, you click on the leaf and viola! Documents, census, marriage, birth and death lists AND other people's family trees who are looking, looking, looking just like you. I have FOUND many distant relations of my ancestors..a gold mine.

HOWEVER, some people tend to ignore many facts and just copy other family trees into their own. There are many checks and re-checks to make sure the person is truly YOUR ancestor. Then, once you are sure, you look at their spouse, the ages, where they were born or lived and their children. I shake my head as I think back on the past couple of days and remember there are some family trees who have copied or added impractical information. For example, there are children listed who are born before the marriage by 20 years (which can occur.....) or the children are born after the mother or father's date of death. Or one child is born in Ohio and all the other children are born in Vermont and every census attached shows Vermont. Upon a closer look, you might find that child born in Ohio has the same name but nothing else matches. So I am very, very, very careful to only add family members who make sense! Yes, I may make errors but plausible ones.

On the exciting finds though, there is an ancestor on my mother's paternal side named Isiah Hubbard. He was a Revolutionary War Patriot and is buried about ten miles from where I lived in Ohio in the 1970s. And the name of the town he was buried in? HUBBARD, OHIO ~ You'd think it might have piqued my curiosity at the time, wouldn't you? AND a relative posted a last Will and Testament of an ancestor that was thrilling to read over and over again! Now, back at it...there may be something just waiting for me to find ~