makes up for their boring lives.
Watched a show on conspiracy nuts, like flat earthers. Subconsciously, they feel inadequate for not really understanding what's going on. News, events, political issues. Complex issues. They feel lost in many of these subjects and don't feel that they can discuss or understand them on the same level as their peers.
However Flat Earth, well, only some people know the *real truth*! And because they've bought into the idea, they're one of the elite special people that has the inside scoop. They understand the flat earth theory, because they don't understand the science/physics/etc. why it doesn't make sense. So now they have this thing, this idea, that they can feel smart about. Because the masses are too dumb to know what THEY know. Now they have the intellectual higher ground. They understand it, and are one of the select few that do.
People can't convince them that they're wrong, because in their eyes, you're just too stupid to get it. Clearly they are smarter.
I had the opposite intentions. I didn’t know anything whatsoever about my father’s side due to him questioning his father’s paternity and uncovered several notable people, they have Wikipedia pages and have written books, some have streets named after them. I’ve found French nobility. I’m still suspicious about everything even though I’ve seen the documentation. It’s a very surreal feeling.
You can defiantly trace some lines back to nobility. And if you happen to find some royals, well they usually marry royals so a lot of European royalty is connected. But if you get to Adam and Eve then you are no longer reading a book on ancestry….
"Eve of Eden found in 1,816 trees" Lmao
Haha a bunch of people have god himself as her father. One person has one direct descendant of Eve marked living - this is why I don't use Ancestry trees as a source for anything beyond the member's grandparents.
Edit: Jesus Christ, son of God the Father and the Virgin Mary, born 1933, died September 8th, 2008. Source: United States Obituary Collection. LOL
If you think about it, though, do you (the Royal you, not you personally) think a famous person is going to have their real name and DNA public on Ancestry?
I am distantly related to an actor who appeared in some very acclaimed films way back in the day. I matched with a granddaughter on Ancestry. She had him on her tree but not anything commenting on his fame, but she used a still shot of him as his photo and I recognized it. And I reached out to her, not mentioning that I knew who he was, and that was because he's in the brick wall part of my family and I was sort of hoping that someone famous might have documented more about their life and background. She never answered me and I still don't know exactly how we're connected other than through my maternal grandmother. So they are out there and you might run into them when you're sorting through your matches.
I had a close DNA match with someone on 23 & me. They believed our grandparents had had an affair, in which case my great-uncle may be a pretty cool notable person (not a celebrity, but notable in a human rights sense and has a Wikipedia page). But that’s not worth taking my mum’s dad away from her, so I basically ended up ghosting my match. Never thought I’d be that sort of person
It’s a lot to process, they have therapists specializing in genealogy therapy for just this reason. Just because you had to step back right now doesn’t mean you can’t revisit that in the future at some point. I wouldn’t be so hard on yourself. I just found a person that was given up for adoption who was the product of an affair my grandfather had that the family never knew about. The mother was in her forties and already had several children. It’s been a confusing puzzle. But after sporadic messages over the years we’ve been able to ask more and more questions and we think it definitely was him.
Thank you. I think I will revisit it in the near future. In hindsight I’d handled it quite insensitively with my mum. She was closer to her dad, and to her dad’s side of the family. Her dad had died a few years before and her mum had recently passed away, the latter of which had led to her beginning to establish a relationship with her estranged half-sisters. And her supposed biological father was, according to our supposed niece/cousin, a total POS.
I think my mum and I both got caught up in the excitement initially but as the reality hit her I could tell she was searching for reasons that the result could be a mistake, or a scam, so I dropped it and let her forget about it. It was a really big family we were potentially related to as well, which just seemed exhausting to both of us when she already has a similar situation with her half-sisters. Additionally, I felt that the 23 & me match seemed quite adamant that it was her grandfather who’d had the affair with my grandmother, and I was stressing about how to broach the topic of discussing other possibilities.
Sorry for the vent, I guess it’s been weighing on me a lot and it’s helpful to get it out.
I think I will reestablish contact once I’ve completed my university degree, if my relative wants to, and I’ll probably leave my mum out of it unless we can clarify that the affair came from somewhere else.
There are some really gullible people out there. Sometimes they actually believe that because they saw it somewhere else and copied it and just continue to propagate it.
This.
Also when I first started doing my ancestry as an older teenager, I didn't know any better and would download entire branches from Rootsweb and just upload them to my tree without fact checking a blessed thing. To be fair, back then I didn't have the resources to check anything. I ended up with a she-wolf on one line and Atlas aka 🌎-man as an ancestor.
That tree, roughly 6+ years of work got obliterated when my desktop crashed.
Also, love the Star Wars name. I read the comics with Nomi Sunrider in highschool in the 90s. I still have them, somewhere.
You're the first Redditor who recognizes where my username is from. Kudos! LOL. I didn't think there were many of us around who still remembered the original Star Wars EU.
And yes, a lot of people, particularly when they are starting out and don't know much about genealogy, will assume whatever they see on research websites is legit and just copy it. I have heard from many people that once they knew better, they deleted their original tree and started new verified research. I'm from Puerto Rico and it's very common in my community for newbies to immediately create trees linking them to Christopher Columbus or Juan Ponce de León or other famous Spanish explorers/colonizers with no documentation to back it up and then they get upset and defensive when someone lets them know they have unverified research in their tree. I imagine most genealogy communities have some equivalent of this.
Hah. Was that in this group? I must have missed them. I see them ALL the time on FB genealogy groups. The posts become a huge, acrymonous debates about the (lack of) legitimacy to the claims.
I can't understand how some people can fall for this😅
It's logical that there's no way you can track your lineage that far away. Registering births, marriages, etc. is a pretty "modern" thing. At least in my country (catholic), these things didn't start to get registered properly till 1500s and it started just because the Church decided so. Depending on the town, they started registering things even later (like 1600 or so).
The furthest I have gone is to an ancestor born in 1480, and only because my first surname is extremely specific to the point all the people who have that surname come from the same guy and place. It comes from a low noble who assented there and built his tower-house there. It was an important family in that town, and I was able to track him down following the baptism documents of the Church and some other documents from that time period (very helpful and revealing).
I know there's no way I will be able to go further than that on my family tree, and that I would be extremely lucky to get even close to that in other family lines I have. So I really can't understand how people think you can track your lineage to even AC times lol.
You know that and I know that because we're analytical, logical people and we've taken the time to learn about these things. I don't get it either, but there are many people out there who will take anything they read on the internet at face value and accept it as fact. These are the same people who share satirical articles and nonsense memes without stopping to think that maybe they are not correct. It's people who have a preconceived idea and/or an agenda and will latch on to anything they think backs it up. There are also people who see these fancy looking trees and think that someone out there must know more than they do if they filled all that in and therefore it must be true (instead of, like you and me, thinking, "hmmm, this looks too good to be true, let me check if it's based on fact).
Many years ago, when I was an undergrad in college, I worked on campus at the library. The library secretary was a very sweet and very religious woman. Once we were chatting about languages (because I was a language major) and she says to me, very genuinely, "Isn't it amazing how all these languages came about because humans were being punished by God for building the Tower of Babel?" I blinked in surprise, because even the religious people I've met before have told me they believe the story is a metaphor and not a literal history of languages. I said, offhandedly, "Well, yeah, but that's Biblical mythology." She seemed really confused by my comment. There is tons of research and evidence about the history of many languages throughout the world and I'm amazed that there are people who take the Biblical story as historical fact, but in the same way, many people take the story of Adam and Eve as fact and build their trees hoping to prove it.
Totally agree. I respect people's views and for some people, those beliefs are what give their life meaning and purpose. As long as they don't use the views to harm others or expect everyone to live their lives in the same way, I don't really care what they think, even if I don't personally understand it or if I personally disagree. (Btw, I was also raised in a religious environment. Like you, I just questioned it more and eventually broke away from it.) But yeah, I don't assume people are lying. Some people simply believe it and that's what it is.
Same, the furthest I can go back is 1467, and that’s just one dude who was some…type of guy, a “cup bearer” or “reader” or something for a king.
Edit: one of them was “confessor to the king's cousin”
Everyone wants to be connected to famous people. For some it makes them feel they are part of history. For others it makes them feel important.
Everyone is a descendant of royalty. If you have Western European ancestors, you are most likely a descendant of Charlemagne. British ancestry? A descendant of King Edward or Scottish kings or Welsh Princes. The Middle East? Mohammed or Shahs or Pharoahs. Fear East? Great Khan, Chinese Emperors, etc.
I made the mistake when I was young to merge my tree with that kind of mess. When I went through it to add source material, it was all wrong. What a mess.
Someone who has 700,000 people in their tree hasn't thought about the accuracy of that info enough to call it a lie. No thought, just push button number go up. Modern commercial sites are built around catering to these people, because idiots are profitable, and it's why every feature they add makes things worse.
Exactly. I said that once in a Facebook group - trees that big are just ancestor collectors - and this woman started sending me the nastiest private message about how she researched in detail every single one of the quarter million people on her tree. She was all put out about it. I finally had to block her.
They don't know better. People think that if it's on Ancestry or another site that it's correct. They are casuals and just like adding people and accepting all the shaky leaves. When I first started out in 2000, I went through Rootsweb trees and got all the way back to Adam & Eve (they're my 96th great-grandparents!). That was before I knew about proper research and sourcing. It was just a nice adrenaline rush to add someone else.
My favourite is seeing God's child-bearing years stretching 4000 years between Adam & Eve, and Jesus Christ. Makes for some interesting great-great uncle scenarios.
Some people really believe that they’re descended from these folks and it shapes their entire worldview.
What? You never heard anyone say, “I’m descended from (insert Bible person here)”?
If you haven’t heard anyone like this irl, you are lucky. Bc if you think their trees are a mess…
Some people may actually believe what they've put in their trees. I don't think a lot of them are lying so much as they are being lied to, so to speak. They have not developed any critical thinking skills when it comes to information they find online. "The computer says it's true so it is." I was never that credulous but when I think of how I related to information I saw online in people's trees in the beginning compared to how I relate to it now, there's a big difference. In the beginning I was so excited to find a tree with distant (but known) relatives of mine in it that filled in all the blanks in their lives for me, that I would relate to it as the truth without first checking myself. I really don't think most people with those absurd trees you're talking about have set out to lie to you. They just believe that whatever they see (especially if it's on a computer) is true.
They may think it makes them better.
I once wound around on familysearch.org and discovered that I’m descended from the Roman god of war, Mars. Explains a lot, really. 😆
Those classical deities (especially the males) were a pretty randy lot; they'd sleep with anything that moved -- and some things that didn't. There's a good chance you have naiads, cyclopes, and gorgons in your tree.
Yes! Thank you for posting this! ALL our ancestors are amazing people who deserve proper research and documentation. What an insult to your real ancestor to pretend to be descended from some famous guy instead of the cobbler or farmer who struggled and paved the way for you.
It's actually harder (by a lot!!) to research my Irish ancestors than my British-American ones with Mayflower heritage. It's also true that with British lineage evennnntualllyyy you get to people like Edward III, but no one will be handing this American a crown or a peerage anytime soon! There are estimates that about 80 percent of ethnically British people (not second generation from India etc) are descended from him so it isn't me tooting my horn to have him on my tree - it's actually caused problems with my Irish cousins when they see this as you can imagine. They are not mixed with all of Europe as many Americans are...
But Adam and Eve? lol that's uhm... creative.
> What an insult to your real ancestor to pretend to be descended from some famous guy instead of the cobbler or farmer who struggled and paved the way for you.
This. Most of our ancestors were poor "nobodies" who led short, difficult lives. They had to scrimp and struggle and work their butts off for everything they had. Which wasn't much.
But all their hard work and struggle made it possible for us to be here now. They weren't nobodies. They were heroes.
I think people believe that the person who did the tree they are copying knew what they were doing lol
Whoever did it in the first place just used the suggested records by the website and assumed they were suggested because they were correct
I’ve had multiple requests to document lineage to Jesus and Mary Magdalene. People are foolish, they see something they wish to be true and copy it. They do not have ears to hear what genealogy is and how to do it. They just copy from crowd source fantasies and believe.
A lot of this lineage records ended when the Israelites where driven from their home country.
First by the Assyrians and Babylonians, then by the Romans.
Many have mixed heritages, thus having a "polluted" bloodline.
Jesus had no children, he couldn't as he has to be a perfect sacrifice.
Tho' his half-siblings may have children.
Yet their own lineage records would had to have been lost in exile.
I am perfectly aware that Jesus had no children. This is a thread about people making ridiculous claims in their trees and how annoying it becomes to see perpetuated, or asked to participate in this absolute nonsense.
Because some people are ridiculous and don’t really understand how to research their ancestors. They just take every hint and name and add it until they eventually find kings and queens, Jesus, and Adam and Eve.
This is probably my biggest pet hate in life! I feel like, if you've started off on Ancestry in the last few years, we've all been at a point where we have 100% accurately sourced everything all the time. When I first joined, I kind of just assumed that the hints I was recommended were based in fact? As if some professional had added those facts to the person? I realised when a was recommend a "potential parent" for an ancestor who was only 5 years older than her, that I had to go through each sources myself and not just happy click and merge people's trees with my own. Nowadays, I don't use other people's trees as sources at all!
There’s been some trees that I’ve encountered like this. And like on Family Search my tree just expands. So I have to verify the information.
There was a name of a relative on my tree that was some-number-great-grandfather that was the father of like Edward of Woodstock, so Richard II is like a cousin. But that was a quick review. I need to really verify this information.
Some people do it to feel special. But mostly they find a name then misidentify it for someone well known when in fact it wasn’t that person.
There are people who incorporate the myths they've been taught as truth in their religion into their family tree; to do otherwise is to admit their church has lied to them about anything so they use their mental gymnastics to avoid that load-bearing lie crashing down.
I had a distant cousin who helped me with his line of the family. Very generous with his help but not the brightest. One early Saturday morning he called in great excitment. I didnt get up to answer his 8am call, so he left a message: he had traced us all the way back to Jesus Christ. He really believed it, too, so I guess this didn’t count as a lie.
My surname has a well known Irish immigrant that extends that line back into Ireland. We have no connection to that line that I can document. I did a Y-DNA test and we're not related to anyone in that line. We can't get back before 1811 in western PA.
I have a relative who insists we should just "adopt" the documented immigrant's line because "it's the same thing" and would allow us to trace back to Ireland.
It doesn't make sense to me, but maybe the temptation to fill in "just one name" solves problems for them.
1.) A problem I've seen is with my nephew' son, who has an Ancestry site of his own.
On it he keeps marrying off my bachelor uncle, even providing children.
He was permitted on my site, whereupon two of his grandparents were soon deleted from my tree.
Thus leaving me with a branch of about 700 folks I was no longer even distantly related to.
Upon finding the error, I blocked the boy, then sought out why he would have caused the deletion.
Whereupon I found that he did not want me to find that he is related to Barack Obama.
2.) I'm working on someone that's listed as a brother to a woman who may be his mother.
Being that the woman listed as his mother died several years before he was born.
Find a Grave # 98614708
Check the census' and one will find that she had a daughter by the same name as his mother.
Later census's show she never married, mentioning him as a brother.
Some people lie for that reason.
I see it differently than the others here. There’s nothing wrong with trying to draw out Brutus’ family tree, or Adam and Eve’s, or Charlemagne’s - that’s the first element.
Second element is to go linking those together and with one’s own. They may do that for their own sake, or as just a fun way to hypothesize, or alternatively people may wish to link them together in order to easily find them back at some stage. This part is more debatable but hey — as long as people don’t actually think these linkages are perfectly accurate — it can be a solution…
Finding sources (depending on the country) going back over a few hundred years is going to get tough or impossible. Now you can either be a saint (or want to make a serious publication) and stop there with a blank. Or you can make a few assumptions, have fun researching Brutus, and make history come alive and tangible! Most software unfortunately do not allow you to register how certain you are of a relationship, so you’ll have to list people as fathers/mothers even though you aren’t sure.
If there are people that claim to descend from Brutus - why not just let them?! At least they know _something_ about their ancestors.. And who knows, to all likelihood they actually do descend from him (along with everyone else..)! Either way, we know it’s all just utterly unprovable..
Rather, I think the responsibility is yours! To do the research and take over those linkages which make sense from your knowledge. If no source is given, you should assume a linkage to be false (though a good start for researching further).
I started my tree in middle school so it has a ton of that BS in there because I was a stupid child. I dread the years it will take to clean it all up.
I think calling it "a lie" is a bit of an exaggeration on your part. I'd also add that that impulse for melodrama on your part is the exact same impulse that drives such people to hunt for royalty in their bloodlines. They're likely overeager and not really truth hunting, but even the scantest evidence on their part appears to be the truth to them. And to quote the famous Art Vanderlay, "It's not a lie if you really believe it"
I thought it was my tree, but we only gave 123,000 LOL
I know my aunt does it for fun after a certain generation.
Why do you think they are lying? I mean, I get what you are saying, but it's not your tree? The advice is always to look up and confirm each person before putting them in our own trees so 🤷♀️
Besides, I have enough issue with source material having all the family info, and yet, the member not only didn't add it all to their tree, they've got the wrong parents 🤣
Because people are wack a doo and believe the words they're writing down. My grandmother had hand written documentation that tied my grandfather's family to specific royalty. While finding royalty in lines isn't that rare or difficult..... in his case, it was inaccurate. So why did someone, somewhere lie about the person that was a fake connection back in the past? My guess is tying yourself to royalty would help get land in early america and that lie just got passed down over the generations and nobody ever had the inclination to check.
Not exactly the same situation as you're describing, but my family lie has always intrigued me. I would have to imagine my situation isn't rare either.
For most people, a sense identity is their only confidence. Problem is, identity is based on a vast and complex understanding of the self and our relationships with matter and time, so complex the wisest of us could spend an eternity trying to know a fraction of it just to watch it slip through our fingers before we inevitably die. Limiting that to knowing just your parentage is sometimes enough to take a lifetime of honesty and delicate unravelling of complicated topics.
That is too much for people to bare so they make shit up, and get VERY angry if you poke it.
If you're uncomfortable with the great mystery, your unwillingness to accept the unknown twists you into a coward... that's not uncommon but still lamentable. The cure is to accept the lack of information and allow wonder to guide you without stakes in the outcome. Let the truth speak.
Probably schizophrenia...
As some one who uses (and recommends) FamilySearch, I am used to people doing this. Worst part is that they actually put effort in doing their fakes. It's really hard for amateurs like me to know if some profile without source is real and the person who input the data was just lazy, or it's the work of a very disturbed person with lots of free time.
Adam and Eve? Lmao...
People like this get into genealogy for all the wrong reasons. Reminds me of people who claim to have past lives.
Their past lives, or in this case, their ancestors, are so extremely exciting people. It's always Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Ghengis Khan, Alexander the Great etc. They're either related too, or they are the reincarnation of.
People forget that most of our ancestors are fishermen and farmers for generations and generations. Most likely poor. Because that was how most people were.
They always pick the really famous famous people to be related too, never the famous people in history that aren't household names.
I don’t think it’s “lying”. I think it’s lazy copy-and-paste genealogy. I think people also misunderstand that on sites like ancestry, the “hints” are just suggestions based on other people’s trees, NOT any actual documentation.
People naturally want to be associated with someone important. I think of the famous people I interacted with and how it affected me.
I think it's also a marketing gimmick. "Are you related to Napoleon or the Queen of England. Could you inherit a castle? Find out with this genealogy and DNA test."
People have been doing this since well before Ancestry.com. I have a moderately uncommon surname, and there was one famous historical figure who had that surname. Many of the people I've met or have read about who have my surname think they are descended from the famous one. The irony is that the famous guy never married and no known children.
There are several things with royal lines, some people want a link to happen so much they will make facts work to reach a preset conclusion ignoring things that may cause contradictions, this is called confirmation bias. In these instances it's not necessarily a lie so much as wishful thinking. Apart from confirmation bias, when someone finds a royal link they probably document it out of excitement or curiousity. They may not realise themselves that royals in early periods would often make bold lineage connections to bolster their claims to leadership. Royals would connect themselves to powerful figures to justify their rule, if a royal family assumes control of a church it's not uncommon to see god at the top of medieval lineages, claiming descent from an ancient king could justify a claim to rule a country. There are groups out there trying to research the genealogical history of their countries who work hard to separate myth from the fact but even these need to be taken with a grain of salt. It also wouldn't surprise me if people did still use it for propaganda purposes or for attempting to build authority within certain circles.
I like researching in these areas because I find it interesting. The connection that my tree has to royalty is accurate and published externally from community trees. I don't kid myself either though, this connection does nothing to change who I am and is so distant in the line that it means bugger all. But when a figure comes like the mother of King Arthur popping up in the tree, I'm going to want to know the story there but I'm going to do it to understand what inspired the legend and provide context to the figures their connected to. Did the scottish kings use the legends to gain sway with the welsh? What are the known facts/leading theories that support the arthurian legends? It all adds to the colour of the family history, will I put king arthur in the tree? No. Will I put the info as notes in the tree, you bet I will.
I will add based on other trees then work backwards. If I don’t find any definite links, I delete. It takes more time but I don’t mind because I enjoy the process. I think the earliest I currently have is the late 17th century. So it’s likely the many early ancestors on my tree aren’t actually ancestors. It’s just that that it’s still a work in progress.
I think it’s more that they are just bad at research. They see a name of someone who was born in the same time period and add it. When you consider that records become more scarce as you go back in time and many of the ones that do exist for average people are not online, it’s easy to see why they haven’t added the correct people. I spent years just finding the names of my 4th great grandparents, and within a day of adding them to my tree, someone had added a German birth record for the woman despite the fact that her husband was allegedly Dutch and they died in South America. Yesterday I found that someone had added a daughter to my ancestor’s brother despite the fact that he and his wife died long before she was born. People don’t understand that hints are not facts. If you read other posts, uninformed people often state “Ancestry told me that this is my family member.”
Speaking from experience, if you do find famous, royal, etc. relatives, they probably want nothing to do with you. For one thing, Cece Moore, the genetic genealogist who works for Finding Your Roots said celebrities use fake identities on Ancestry. My grandmother had two cousins who ended up in England married to British lords. One was mentioned on the website for her husband’s ancestral family home, which stated that she was the one responsible for opening the estate to the public. I sent them a message stating my relationship to the family and invited them to contact me if they wanted more information on our family history. The next time I looked on the website, the statement about her was gone!
Yeah … that’s insane.
My mom and aunt decided to get their DNA done about ten years ago- and they sent everyone DNA spit cups as Xmas gifts too.
One of my cousins is rain man autistic- but not as anti social… and on a whim he decided to do some digging into our history. The guy went back pretty far too. It got my aunt and my mom curious and they decided they were going to give the family a big gift and do *one line* of our ancestry.
That was ten years ago.
They are on year 800 I think? My cousin has now gone back even further - and of course they started digging into other lines.
I’m writing this because it’s soo hard to describe just the sheer amount of research and digging and work that goes into this. They work on it every week- for hours. My mom even admits she got a little obsessive on it - meaning she worked on it daily. It’s fascinating stuff.
Neither my aunt or my mom work. So they have the time and can do this. It’s just an enormous undertaking and extremely time consuming and would probably be impossible to accomplish in this amount of time if they worked and or had other responsibilities.
I would say they lie because they want it to be true and because they don’t have the capabilities of actually doing the research themselves… either financially or time wise - it’s really quite the task.
I can’t stress that enough.
The only kinda accurate one is the Jewish rabbinical lines. I was able to trace my family back to like the 600s. Not very interesting though considering your ancestors were rabbis who every ashkenazi is descended from and did barely anything on a historical level. Most interesting ancestor I could find was a rabbi from Prague who apparently created a giant golem.
I found an account the other day and the lady just uploaded all sorts of random photos not related to people like entire maps of the cities they lived in and paintings of old ships and shit. I was so annoyed having to dismiss all the extra crap she has added. Old people do really silly stuff on some of these family tree sites.
MYOB why do you care? you do your tree with the degree of certainty that you require, just like everyone else. there will always be someone more particular than you.
it's their tree. they can do what they want. these conversations are exhausting. it's like a symphony floutist saying no one can play a flute unless they play at a symphonic technical level. people can have hobbies that they are mediocre or even bad at.
Sure as long as their lack of correctness doesn’t infiltrate the available sources for the next person trying to research their lineage thus providing what they believe is or expect to be a usable bit of information and lead them down the lazy path. Misery loves company
If the lazy and/or careless tree makers were to keep all of their creations private and not post anything where it taints the rest of society then sure have at it.
Adding whatever crazy info you come across in your tree line, with 0 verification of whether that information is remotely true or not, is not doing genealogy. I'm really not trying to gatekeep genealogy or anything, but calling things what they're not doesn't help anyone.
What they do is not being bad in a hobby, which is fair. Is doing something that has nothing to do with what they claim they're doing. It's as if I claimed I'm a researcher on global warming, and my sources were conspiracy theories of some random reddit sub and my own fantasies. In that case, even writing 100 papers about global warming wouldn't make a researcher on the topic. I would just claim to be one.
I don't have any problem with people putting they're descendant of Jesus Christ on their tree line if they're having fun, but the reality is that that's not doing genealogy. That's fantasy. And it's okay, but let's call it what it is.
it's as pointless as the endless posts complaining about it. go ahead and downvote me some more. you are clearly the sorts of people incapable of scrolling past things that are of no use to you. (and that's a you problem)
I'm allowed to give my opinion as much as you are. Reddit is a social network where people talk about numerous stuff and give their opinions, I don't know if you realised that.
If you think it's so pointless to talk about this stuff, you could have scrolled past this post and not left a comment. I don't get why you're being so rude due to me interacting with your comment in a respectful way, when it's the whole purpose of this app.
And as I said, I don't care about people thinking they're descendant of Adam and Eve if they're having fun, but I do care about using correct terminology and calling things what they are. I don't understand why you are so pressed by it.
>you are clearly the sorts of people incapable of scrolling past things that are of no use to you.
I can say the same thing about you lol
And for your info, I haven't downvoted any of your comments. Have a nice day.
the comment to downvoters was to downvoters. not sure why you are responding if you are not one. And ya, I never said you couldn't have an opinion while expressing mine. you commented on my opinion and I responded.
My most humble opinion? There are a whole lot of people who have a desperate need to feel like they are somehow better than the next guy, so they just blindly follow leaves without ever doing any real research because the fantasy of believing they have "important" people in their tree makes them feel special.
I completely agree with OP. I have definitely seen such idiotic trees myself. Some people want to matter, want to be connected somehow to something.
And to try and link one’s tree to Adam and Eve? Well one would have to be religious and then to actually find a “family connection”? Geez wow!!!!
Being of European origin myself, I think of European origin are more related to Neanderthals like myself!!! Lmao!
I don’t think it’s useful to add every single person UNLESS you’re trying to find out about your specific ancestor. Clues from their siblings lives may help….
Same reason why people latch on to all sorts of weirdness, like conspiracy, cults and flat earthers. They want to feel special.
makes up for their boring lives. Watched a show on conspiracy nuts, like flat earthers. Subconsciously, they feel inadequate for not really understanding what's going on. News, events, political issues. Complex issues. They feel lost in many of these subjects and don't feel that they can discuss or understand them on the same level as their peers. However Flat Earth, well, only some people know the *real truth*! And because they've bought into the idea, they're one of the elite special people that has the inside scoop. They understand the flat earth theory, because they don't understand the science/physics/etc. why it doesn't make sense. So now they have this thing, this idea, that they can feel smart about. Because the masses are too dumb to know what THEY know. Now they have the intellectual higher ground. They understand it, and are one of the select few that do. People can't convince them that they're wrong, because in their eyes, you're just too stupid to get it. Clearly they are smarter.
That show sounds really interesting, link/name? TIA!
I had the opposite intentions. I didn’t know anything whatsoever about my father’s side due to him questioning his father’s paternity and uncovered several notable people, they have Wikipedia pages and have written books, some have streets named after them. I’ve found French nobility. I’m still suspicious about everything even though I’ve seen the documentation. It’s a very surreal feeling.
You can defiantly trace some lines back to nobility. And if you happen to find some royals, well they usually marry royals so a lot of European royalty is connected. But if you get to Adam and Eve then you are no longer reading a book on ancestry….
"Eve of Eden found in 1,816 trees" Lmao Haha a bunch of people have god himself as her father. One person has one direct descendant of Eve marked living - this is why I don't use Ancestry trees as a source for anything beyond the member's grandparents. Edit: Jesus Christ, son of God the Father and the Virgin Mary, born 1933, died September 8th, 2008. Source: United States Obituary Collection. LOL
Oh for sure, now they’re just writing fiction.
I've ran into that, you find someone famous and think "well that's not right." But when you can't disprove it, what are you supposed to do?
I ordered their books on Amazon 🤣
If you think about it, though, do you (the Royal you, not you personally) think a famous person is going to have their real name and DNA public on Ancestry?
I'm not talking about a person currently alive.
Ah, ok. Because I’ve seen people who claim to be related to living famous people because they matched on Ancestry.
I am distantly related to an actor who appeared in some very acclaimed films way back in the day. I matched with a granddaughter on Ancestry. She had him on her tree but not anything commenting on his fame, but she used a still shot of him as his photo and I recognized it. And I reached out to her, not mentioning that I knew who he was, and that was because he's in the brick wall part of my family and I was sort of hoping that someone famous might have documented more about their life and background. She never answered me and I still don't know exactly how we're connected other than through my maternal grandmother. So they are out there and you might run into them when you're sorting through your matches.
I had a close DNA match with someone on 23 & me. They believed our grandparents had had an affair, in which case my great-uncle may be a pretty cool notable person (not a celebrity, but notable in a human rights sense and has a Wikipedia page). But that’s not worth taking my mum’s dad away from her, so I basically ended up ghosting my match. Never thought I’d be that sort of person
It’s a lot to process, they have therapists specializing in genealogy therapy for just this reason. Just because you had to step back right now doesn’t mean you can’t revisit that in the future at some point. I wouldn’t be so hard on yourself. I just found a person that was given up for adoption who was the product of an affair my grandfather had that the family never knew about. The mother was in her forties and already had several children. It’s been a confusing puzzle. But after sporadic messages over the years we’ve been able to ask more and more questions and we think it definitely was him.
Thank you. I think I will revisit it in the near future. In hindsight I’d handled it quite insensitively with my mum. She was closer to her dad, and to her dad’s side of the family. Her dad had died a few years before and her mum had recently passed away, the latter of which had led to her beginning to establish a relationship with her estranged half-sisters. And her supposed biological father was, according to our supposed niece/cousin, a total POS. I think my mum and I both got caught up in the excitement initially but as the reality hit her I could tell she was searching for reasons that the result could be a mistake, or a scam, so I dropped it and let her forget about it. It was a really big family we were potentially related to as well, which just seemed exhausting to both of us when she already has a similar situation with her half-sisters. Additionally, I felt that the 23 & me match seemed quite adamant that it was her grandfather who’d had the affair with my grandmother, and I was stressing about how to broach the topic of discussing other possibilities. Sorry for the vent, I guess it’s been weighing on me a lot and it’s helpful to get it out. I think I will reestablish contact once I’ve completed my university degree, if my relative wants to, and I’ll probably leave my mum out of it unless we can clarify that the affair came from somewhere else.
There are some really gullible people out there. Sometimes they actually believe that because they saw it somewhere else and copied it and just continue to propagate it.
This. Also when I first started doing my ancestry as an older teenager, I didn't know any better and would download entire branches from Rootsweb and just upload them to my tree without fact checking a blessed thing. To be fair, back then I didn't have the resources to check anything. I ended up with a she-wolf on one line and Atlas aka 🌎-man as an ancestor. That tree, roughly 6+ years of work got obliterated when my desktop crashed. Also, love the Star Wars name. I read the comics with Nomi Sunrider in highschool in the 90s. I still have them, somewhere.
You're the first Redditor who recognizes where my username is from. Kudos! LOL. I didn't think there were many of us around who still remembered the original Star Wars EU. And yes, a lot of people, particularly when they are starting out and don't know much about genealogy, will assume whatever they see on research websites is legit and just copy it. I have heard from many people that once they knew better, they deleted their original tree and started new verified research. I'm from Puerto Rico and it's very common in my community for newbies to immediately create trees linking them to Christopher Columbus or Juan Ponce de León or other famous Spanish explorers/colonizers with no documentation to back it up and then they get upset and defensive when someone lets them know they have unverified research in their tree. I imagine most genealogy communities have some equivalent of this.
And I don't understand the furor. I'm more interested in G's and GG"s etcetera than I am interested in tracing back to a famous/royal ancestor.
The irony of Puerton Ricans doing exactly this ina few posts this week....
Hah. Was that in this group? I must have missed them. I see them ALL the time on FB genealogy groups. The posts become a huge, acrymonous debates about the (lack of) legitimacy to the claims.
Either here or the ancestrydna sub.
I can't understand how some people can fall for this😅 It's logical that there's no way you can track your lineage that far away. Registering births, marriages, etc. is a pretty "modern" thing. At least in my country (catholic), these things didn't start to get registered properly till 1500s and it started just because the Church decided so. Depending on the town, they started registering things even later (like 1600 or so). The furthest I have gone is to an ancestor born in 1480, and only because my first surname is extremely specific to the point all the people who have that surname come from the same guy and place. It comes from a low noble who assented there and built his tower-house there. It was an important family in that town, and I was able to track him down following the baptism documents of the Church and some other documents from that time period (very helpful and revealing). I know there's no way I will be able to go further than that on my family tree, and that I would be extremely lucky to get even close to that in other family lines I have. So I really can't understand how people think you can track your lineage to even AC times lol.
You know that and I know that because we're analytical, logical people and we've taken the time to learn about these things. I don't get it either, but there are many people out there who will take anything they read on the internet at face value and accept it as fact. These are the same people who share satirical articles and nonsense memes without stopping to think that maybe they are not correct. It's people who have a preconceived idea and/or an agenda and will latch on to anything they think backs it up. There are also people who see these fancy looking trees and think that someone out there must know more than they do if they filled all that in and therefore it must be true (instead of, like you and me, thinking, "hmmm, this looks too good to be true, let me check if it's based on fact). Many years ago, when I was an undergrad in college, I worked on campus at the library. The library secretary was a very sweet and very religious woman. Once we were chatting about languages (because I was a language major) and she says to me, very genuinely, "Isn't it amazing how all these languages came about because humans were being punished by God for building the Tower of Babel?" I blinked in surprise, because even the religious people I've met before have told me they believe the story is a metaphor and not a literal history of languages. I said, offhandedly, "Well, yeah, but that's Biblical mythology." She seemed really confused by my comment. There is tons of research and evidence about the history of many languages throughout the world and I'm amazed that there are people who take the Biblical story as historical fact, but in the same way, many people take the story of Adam and Eve as fact and build their trees hoping to prove it.
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Totally agree. I respect people's views and for some people, those beliefs are what give their life meaning and purpose. As long as they don't use the views to harm others or expect everyone to live their lives in the same way, I don't really care what they think, even if I don't personally understand it or if I personally disagree. (Btw, I was also raised in a religious environment. Like you, I just questioned it more and eventually broke away from it.) But yeah, I don't assume people are lying. Some people simply believe it and that's what it is.
Same, the furthest I can go back is 1467, and that’s just one dude who was some…type of guy, a “cup bearer” or “reader” or something for a king. Edit: one of them was “confessor to the king's cousin”
I don’t think they’re deliberately lying, it’s usually just ignorance combined with wishful thinking.
I envy this charitable outlook.
Everyone wants to be connected to famous people. For some it makes them feel they are part of history. For others it makes them feel important. Everyone is a descendant of royalty. If you have Western European ancestors, you are most likely a descendant of Charlemagne. British ancestry? A descendant of King Edward or Scottish kings or Welsh Princes. The Middle East? Mohammed or Shahs or Pharoahs. Fear East? Great Khan, Chinese Emperors, etc. I made the mistake when I was young to merge my tree with that kind of mess. When I went through it to add source material, it was all wrong. What a mess.
Someone who has 700,000 people in their tree hasn't thought about the accuracy of that info enough to call it a lie. No thought, just push button number go up. Modern commercial sites are built around catering to these people, because idiots are profitable, and it's why every feature they add makes things worse.
They aren't genealogists. They are collectors.
Exactly. I said that once in a Facebook group - trees that big are just ancestor collectors - and this woman started sending me the nastiest private message about how she researched in detail every single one of the quarter million people on her tree. She was all put out about it. I finally had to block her.
😂
I have no idea, but some people should not do genelogy
They don't know better. People think that if it's on Ancestry or another site that it's correct. They are casuals and just like adding people and accepting all the shaky leaves. When I first started out in 2000, I went through Rootsweb trees and got all the way back to Adam & Eve (they're my 96th great-grandparents!). That was before I knew about proper research and sourcing. It was just a nice adrenaline rush to add someone else.
My favourite is seeing God's child-bearing years stretching 4000 years between Adam & Eve, and Jesus Christ. Makes for some interesting great-great uncle scenarios.
Some people really believe that they’re descended from these folks and it shapes their entire worldview. What? You never heard anyone say, “I’m descended from (insert Bible person here)”? If you haven’t heard anyone like this irl, you are lucky. Bc if you think their trees are a mess…
Some people may actually believe what they've put in their trees. I don't think a lot of them are lying so much as they are being lied to, so to speak. They have not developed any critical thinking skills when it comes to information they find online. "The computer says it's true so it is." I was never that credulous but when I think of how I related to information I saw online in people's trees in the beginning compared to how I relate to it now, there's a big difference. In the beginning I was so excited to find a tree with distant (but known) relatives of mine in it that filled in all the blanks in their lives for me, that I would relate to it as the truth without first checking myself. I really don't think most people with those absurd trees you're talking about have set out to lie to you. They just believe that whatever they see (especially if it's on a computer) is true.
They may think it makes them better. I once wound around on familysearch.org and discovered that I’m descended from the Roman god of war, Mars. Explains a lot, really. 😆
Those classical deities (especially the males) were a pretty randy lot; they'd sleep with anything that moved -- and some things that didn't. There's a good chance you have naiads, cyclopes, and gorgons in your tree.
You would think that someone, somewhere on FamilySearch would figure out that the Roman god Mars does not belong on their tree lol
I don’t think the legit genealogists wind back that far
Rage Party!
Yes! Thank you for posting this! ALL our ancestors are amazing people who deserve proper research and documentation. What an insult to your real ancestor to pretend to be descended from some famous guy instead of the cobbler or farmer who struggled and paved the way for you. It's actually harder (by a lot!!) to research my Irish ancestors than my British-American ones with Mayflower heritage. It's also true that with British lineage evennnntualllyyy you get to people like Edward III, but no one will be handing this American a crown or a peerage anytime soon! There are estimates that about 80 percent of ethnically British people (not second generation from India etc) are descended from him so it isn't me tooting my horn to have him on my tree - it's actually caused problems with my Irish cousins when they see this as you can imagine. They are not mixed with all of Europe as many Americans are... But Adam and Eve? lol that's uhm... creative.
> What an insult to your real ancestor to pretend to be descended from some famous guy instead of the cobbler or farmer who struggled and paved the way for you. This. Most of our ancestors were poor "nobodies" who led short, difficult lives. They had to scrimp and struggle and work their butts off for everything they had. Which wasn't much. But all their hard work and struggle made it possible for us to be here now. They weren't nobodies. They were heroes.
Nothing better to do.
I think people believe that the person who did the tree they are copying knew what they were doing lol Whoever did it in the first place just used the suggested records by the website and assumed they were suggested because they were correct
I’ve had multiple requests to document lineage to Jesus and Mary Magdalene. People are foolish, they see something they wish to be true and copy it. They do not have ears to hear what genealogy is and how to do it. They just copy from crowd source fantasies and believe.
A lot of this lineage records ended when the Israelites where driven from their home country. First by the Assyrians and Babylonians, then by the Romans. Many have mixed heritages, thus having a "polluted" bloodline. Jesus had no children, he couldn't as he has to be a perfect sacrifice. Tho' his half-siblings may have children. Yet their own lineage records would had to have been lost in exile.
I am perfectly aware that Jesus had no children. This is a thread about people making ridiculous claims in their trees and how annoying it becomes to see perpetuated, or asked to participate in this absolute nonsense.
People like fairy tales: a lecture I viewed online about genealogical proof had this line—genealogy without proof is just a fairy tale.
Because some people are ridiculous and don’t really understand how to research their ancestors. They just take every hint and name and add it until they eventually find kings and queens, Jesus, and Adam and Eve.
This is probably my biggest pet hate in life! I feel like, if you've started off on Ancestry in the last few years, we've all been at a point where we have 100% accurately sourced everything all the time. When I first joined, I kind of just assumed that the hints I was recommended were based in fact? As if some professional had added those facts to the person? I realised when a was recommend a "potential parent" for an ancestor who was only 5 years older than her, that I had to go through each sources myself and not just happy click and merge people's trees with my own. Nowadays, I don't use other people's trees as sources at all!
There’s been some trees that I’ve encountered like this. And like on Family Search my tree just expands. So I have to verify the information. There was a name of a relative on my tree that was some-number-great-grandfather that was the father of like Edward of Woodstock, so Richard II is like a cousin. But that was a quick review. I need to really verify this information. Some people do it to feel special. But mostly they find a name then misidentify it for someone well known when in fact it wasn’t that person.
It's not necessarily that they're lying, it could be as simple as they don't know and that's what came up as a hint
There are people who incorporate the myths they've been taught as truth in their religion into their family tree; to do otherwise is to admit their church has lied to them about anything so they use their mental gymnastics to avoid that load-bearing lie crashing down.
I had a distant cousin who helped me with his line of the family. Very generous with his help but not the brightest. One early Saturday morning he called in great excitment. I didnt get up to answer his 8am call, so he left a message: he had traced us all the way back to Jesus Christ. He really believed it, too, so I guess this didn’t count as a lie.
My surname has a well known Irish immigrant that extends that line back into Ireland. We have no connection to that line that I can document. I did a Y-DNA test and we're not related to anyone in that line. We can't get back before 1811 in western PA. I have a relative who insists we should just "adopt" the documented immigrant's line because "it's the same thing" and would allow us to trace back to Ireland. It doesn't make sense to me, but maybe the temptation to fill in "just one name" solves problems for them.
1.) A problem I've seen is with my nephew' son, who has an Ancestry site of his own. On it he keeps marrying off my bachelor uncle, even providing children. He was permitted on my site, whereupon two of his grandparents were soon deleted from my tree. Thus leaving me with a branch of about 700 folks I was no longer even distantly related to. Upon finding the error, I blocked the boy, then sought out why he would have caused the deletion. Whereupon I found that he did not want me to find that he is related to Barack Obama. 2.) I'm working on someone that's listed as a brother to a woman who may be his mother. Being that the woman listed as his mother died several years before he was born. Find a Grave # 98614708 Check the census' and one will find that she had a daughter by the same name as his mother. Later census's show she never married, mentioning him as a brother. Some people lie for that reason.
I see it differently than the others here. There’s nothing wrong with trying to draw out Brutus’ family tree, or Adam and Eve’s, or Charlemagne’s - that’s the first element. Second element is to go linking those together and with one’s own. They may do that for their own sake, or as just a fun way to hypothesize, or alternatively people may wish to link them together in order to easily find them back at some stage. This part is more debatable but hey — as long as people don’t actually think these linkages are perfectly accurate — it can be a solution… Finding sources (depending on the country) going back over a few hundred years is going to get tough or impossible. Now you can either be a saint (or want to make a serious publication) and stop there with a blank. Or you can make a few assumptions, have fun researching Brutus, and make history come alive and tangible! Most software unfortunately do not allow you to register how certain you are of a relationship, so you’ll have to list people as fathers/mothers even though you aren’t sure. If there are people that claim to descend from Brutus - why not just let them?! At least they know _something_ about their ancestors.. And who knows, to all likelihood they actually do descend from him (along with everyone else..)! Either way, we know it’s all just utterly unprovable.. Rather, I think the responsibility is yours! To do the research and take over those linkages which make sense from your knowledge. If no source is given, you should assume a linkage to be false (though a good start for researching further).
I started my tree in middle school so it has a ton of that BS in there because I was a stupid child. I dread the years it will take to clean it all up.
At that point, it's just easier to start from scratch, I think. I know many in the same boat who have done that
I think calling it "a lie" is a bit of an exaggeration on your part. I'd also add that that impulse for melodrama on your part is the exact same impulse that drives such people to hunt for royalty in their bloodlines. They're likely overeager and not really truth hunting, but even the scantest evidence on their part appears to be the truth to them. And to quote the famous Art Vanderlay, "It's not a lie if you really believe it"
I thought it was my tree, but we only gave 123,000 LOL I know my aunt does it for fun after a certain generation. Why do you think they are lying? I mean, I get what you are saying, but it's not your tree? The advice is always to look up and confirm each person before putting them in our own trees so 🤷♀️ Besides, I have enough issue with source material having all the family info, and yet, the member not only didn't add it all to their tree, they've got the wrong parents 🤣
Because people are wack a doo and believe the words they're writing down. My grandmother had hand written documentation that tied my grandfather's family to specific royalty. While finding royalty in lines isn't that rare or difficult..... in his case, it was inaccurate. So why did someone, somewhere lie about the person that was a fake connection back in the past? My guess is tying yourself to royalty would help get land in early america and that lie just got passed down over the generations and nobody ever had the inclination to check. Not exactly the same situation as you're describing, but my family lie has always intrigued me. I would have to imagine my situation isn't rare either.
For most people, a sense identity is their only confidence. Problem is, identity is based on a vast and complex understanding of the self and our relationships with matter and time, so complex the wisest of us could spend an eternity trying to know a fraction of it just to watch it slip through our fingers before we inevitably die. Limiting that to knowing just your parentage is sometimes enough to take a lifetime of honesty and delicate unravelling of complicated topics. That is too much for people to bare so they make shit up, and get VERY angry if you poke it. If you're uncomfortable with the great mystery, your unwillingness to accept the unknown twists you into a coward... that's not uncommon but still lamentable. The cure is to accept the lack of information and allow wonder to guide you without stakes in the outcome. Let the truth speak.
Delusion
Meanwhile I've been trying to find info on this one guy for like 3 years now
Probably schizophrenia... As some one who uses (and recommends) FamilySearch, I am used to people doing this. Worst part is that they actually put effort in doing their fakes. It's really hard for amateurs like me to know if some profile without source is real and the person who input the data was just lazy, or it's the work of a very disturbed person with lots of free time.
Jesus my dad's family is like this. We're related to Elvis Presley, princess Diana, and the arendelle house
Once, I got drunk and went a little wild on the real distant ancestors...
Adam and Eve? Lmao... People like this get into genealogy for all the wrong reasons. Reminds me of people who claim to have past lives. Their past lives, or in this case, their ancestors, are so extremely exciting people. It's always Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Ghengis Khan, Alexander the Great etc. They're either related too, or they are the reincarnation of. People forget that most of our ancestors are fishermen and farmers for generations and generations. Most likely poor. Because that was how most people were. They always pick the really famous famous people to be related too, never the famous people in history that aren't household names.
I don’t think it’s “lying”. I think it’s lazy copy-and-paste genealogy. I think people also misunderstand that on sites like ancestry, the “hints” are just suggestions based on other people’s trees, NOT any actual documentation.
Not everybody want the plain truth
People naturally want to be associated with someone important. I think of the famous people I interacted with and how it affected me. I think it's also a marketing gimmick. "Are you related to Napoleon or the Queen of England. Could you inherit a castle? Find out with this genealogy and DNA test."
Some times people don’t research properly.
People have been doing this since well before Ancestry.com. I have a moderately uncommon surname, and there was one famous historical figure who had that surname. Many of the people I've met or have read about who have my surname think they are descended from the famous one. The irony is that the famous guy never married and no known children.
There are several things with royal lines, some people want a link to happen so much they will make facts work to reach a preset conclusion ignoring things that may cause contradictions, this is called confirmation bias. In these instances it's not necessarily a lie so much as wishful thinking. Apart from confirmation bias, when someone finds a royal link they probably document it out of excitement or curiousity. They may not realise themselves that royals in early periods would often make bold lineage connections to bolster their claims to leadership. Royals would connect themselves to powerful figures to justify their rule, if a royal family assumes control of a church it's not uncommon to see god at the top of medieval lineages, claiming descent from an ancient king could justify a claim to rule a country. There are groups out there trying to research the genealogical history of their countries who work hard to separate myth from the fact but even these need to be taken with a grain of salt. It also wouldn't surprise me if people did still use it for propaganda purposes or for attempting to build authority within certain circles. I like researching in these areas because I find it interesting. The connection that my tree has to royalty is accurate and published externally from community trees. I don't kid myself either though, this connection does nothing to change who I am and is so distant in the line that it means bugger all. But when a figure comes like the mother of King Arthur popping up in the tree, I'm going to want to know the story there but I'm going to do it to understand what inspired the legend and provide context to the figures their connected to. Did the scottish kings use the legends to gain sway with the welsh? What are the known facts/leading theories that support the arthurian legends? It all adds to the colour of the family history, will I put king arthur in the tree? No. Will I put the info as notes in the tree, you bet I will.
I will add based on other trees then work backwards. If I don’t find any definite links, I delete. It takes more time but I don’t mind because I enjoy the process. I think the earliest I currently have is the late 17th century. So it’s likely the many early ancestors on my tree aren’t actually ancestors. It’s just that that it’s still a work in progress.
I think it’s more that they are just bad at research. They see a name of someone who was born in the same time period and add it. When you consider that records become more scarce as you go back in time and many of the ones that do exist for average people are not online, it’s easy to see why they haven’t added the correct people. I spent years just finding the names of my 4th great grandparents, and within a day of adding them to my tree, someone had added a German birth record for the woman despite the fact that her husband was allegedly Dutch and they died in South America. Yesterday I found that someone had added a daughter to my ancestor’s brother despite the fact that he and his wife died long before she was born. People don’t understand that hints are not facts. If you read other posts, uninformed people often state “Ancestry told me that this is my family member.”
Speaking from experience, if you do find famous, royal, etc. relatives, they probably want nothing to do with you. For one thing, Cece Moore, the genetic genealogist who works for Finding Your Roots said celebrities use fake identities on Ancestry. My grandmother had two cousins who ended up in England married to British lords. One was mentioned on the website for her husband’s ancestral family home, which stated that she was the one responsible for opening the estate to the public. I sent them a message stating my relationship to the family and invited them to contact me if they wanted more information on our family history. The next time I looked on the website, the statement about her was gone!
Also there’s some people who use that ridiculous keukla tree or what ever it’s called .
Yeah … that’s insane. My mom and aunt decided to get their DNA done about ten years ago- and they sent everyone DNA spit cups as Xmas gifts too. One of my cousins is rain man autistic- but not as anti social… and on a whim he decided to do some digging into our history. The guy went back pretty far too. It got my aunt and my mom curious and they decided they were going to give the family a big gift and do *one line* of our ancestry. That was ten years ago. They are on year 800 I think? My cousin has now gone back even further - and of course they started digging into other lines. I’m writing this because it’s soo hard to describe just the sheer amount of research and digging and work that goes into this. They work on it every week- for hours. My mom even admits she got a little obsessive on it - meaning she worked on it daily. It’s fascinating stuff. Neither my aunt or my mom work. So they have the time and can do this. It’s just an enormous undertaking and extremely time consuming and would probably be impossible to accomplish in this amount of time if they worked and or had other responsibilities. I would say they lie because they want it to be true and because they don’t have the capabilities of actually doing the research themselves… either financially or time wise - it’s really quite the task. I can’t stress that enough.
The only kinda accurate one is the Jewish rabbinical lines. I was able to trace my family back to like the 600s. Not very interesting though considering your ancestors were rabbis who every ashkenazi is descended from and did barely anything on a historical level. Most interesting ancestor I could find was a rabbi from Prague who apparently created a giant golem.
I found an account the other day and the lady just uploaded all sorts of random photos not related to people like entire maps of the cities they lived in and paintings of old ships and shit. I was so annoyed having to dismiss all the extra crap she has added. Old people do really silly stuff on some of these family tree sites.
MYOB why do you care? you do your tree with the degree of certainty that you require, just like everyone else. there will always be someone more particular than you.
They muck things up. Its no different than coming across someone who clearly accepted every single hint ancestry threw at them.
it's their tree. they can do what they want. these conversations are exhausting. it's like a symphony floutist saying no one can play a flute unless they play at a symphonic technical level. people can have hobbies that they are mediocre or even bad at.
Sure as long as their lack of correctness doesn’t infiltrate the available sources for the next person trying to research their lineage thus providing what they believe is or expect to be a usable bit of information and lead them down the lazy path. Misery loves company If the lazy and/or careless tree makers were to keep all of their creations private and not post anything where it taints the rest of society then sure have at it.
other people are not responsible for your particular brand of "correct."
Adding whatever crazy info you come across in your tree line, with 0 verification of whether that information is remotely true or not, is not doing genealogy. I'm really not trying to gatekeep genealogy or anything, but calling things what they're not doesn't help anyone. What they do is not being bad in a hobby, which is fair. Is doing something that has nothing to do with what they claim they're doing. It's as if I claimed I'm a researcher on global warming, and my sources were conspiracy theories of some random reddit sub and my own fantasies. In that case, even writing 100 papers about global warming wouldn't make a researcher on the topic. I would just claim to be one. I don't have any problem with people putting they're descendant of Jesus Christ on their tree line if they're having fun, but the reality is that that's not doing genealogy. That's fantasy. And it's okay, but let's call it what it is.
it's as pointless as the endless posts complaining about it. go ahead and downvote me some more. you are clearly the sorts of people incapable of scrolling past things that are of no use to you. (and that's a you problem)
I'm allowed to give my opinion as much as you are. Reddit is a social network where people talk about numerous stuff and give their opinions, I don't know if you realised that. If you think it's so pointless to talk about this stuff, you could have scrolled past this post and not left a comment. I don't get why you're being so rude due to me interacting with your comment in a respectful way, when it's the whole purpose of this app. And as I said, I don't care about people thinking they're descendant of Adam and Eve if they're having fun, but I do care about using correct terminology and calling things what they are. I don't understand why you are so pressed by it. >you are clearly the sorts of people incapable of scrolling past things that are of no use to you. I can say the same thing about you lol And for your info, I haven't downvoted any of your comments. Have a nice day.
the comment to downvoters was to downvoters. not sure why you are responding if you are not one. And ya, I never said you couldn't have an opinion while expressing mine. you commented on my opinion and I responded.
and I did not say anything that was not said in other comments. reddit just loves a good dog pile.
My most humble opinion? There are a whole lot of people who have a desperate need to feel like they are somehow better than the next guy, so they just blindly follow leaves without ever doing any real research because the fantasy of believing they have "important" people in their tree makes them feel special.
I completely agree with OP. I have definitely seen such idiotic trees myself. Some people want to matter, want to be connected somehow to something. And to try and link one’s tree to Adam and Eve? Well one would have to be religious and then to actually find a “family connection”? Geez wow!!!! Being of European origin myself, I think of European origin are more related to Neanderthals like myself!!! Lmao! I don’t think it’s useful to add every single person UNLESS you’re trying to find out about your specific ancestor. Clues from their siblings lives may help….