The term "fact checking" has been much in the news over the last few years. The main issue is whether the information presented from an online source can be substantiated by reference to a reliable source. Historically, genealogy has been particularly susceptible to false relationship claims. Unless you have specifically spent time exploring the history of genealogy as opposed to family history or actually doing genealogical research, you may be unaware of the less than honorable history of genealogy. Here is one of the few books that explains this often ignored history of genealogy.
Weil, François. 2013. Family Trees: A History of Genealogy in America. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
One thing this book does is to document the extensive genealogical fraud that existed in the latter half of the 19th Century and well into the 20th Century. The existence of this almost wholesale fraud is one of the reasons why genealogists have had such a hard time establishing themselves as serious historians and why so few colleges and universities offer degrees in genealogy.
How does this affect us today? Well, there is still a sizable reservoir of "false" genealogical information that originates during these early times that is readily available from current genealogical sources. Although the accuracy of some of this information is due to ignorance and negligence, unfortunately, some of it can be traced back to publications connected to the rampant fraud. Because of this unreliable history, current genealogists need to be especially careful when their U.S. research crosses into the 1800s and earlier and make sure the information they copy is substantiated and supported by valid historical documents.
One excellent example of the proliferation of unreliable genealogical information focuses on the passengers on the Mayflower. It is true that a significant percentage of the people in the United States are decedents of one or more Mayflower passengers and the effect of this is that many people can claim them as ancestors. In the FamilySearch Family Tree, this means that the records inherited by a huge number of people potentially contains unreliable information about the lines extending back to these few people.
Realistically, the identity of the passengers and their families has been extensively researched and documented and is not subject to any controversy. All of the sources and documentation are readily available in a series of books published by the General Society of Mayflower Descendants. Despite these readily available references that include exhaustive documentation about every surviving passenger and up to 5 generations of their descendants, the individual entries in the Family Tree for the passengers and their descendants are subject to constant change with inaccurate information.
Here is one example of the results of all of this misinformation concerning the Mayflower passengers and their families. This is an example of a list of some of the 73 changes and corrections made to one Mayflower passenger during the past 19 days from the date of this post.
If you multiply the time wasted on this one person, where accurate, settled information is abundantly available, by all of the 53 surviving passengers, you will likely have a measurable percentage of all the work being done on the Family Tree each month. Every one of those changes was unnecessary and forced someone who was interested to constantly follow these individuals and constantly correct the entries. This has gone on month after month, day after day except for a brief time when Family Search made all of the entries read only during the pandemic and during the 400th anniversary of the sailing of the Mayflower.
Tragically, this is only one of many such people and groups of people on the Family Tree that I call revolving door ancestors. This is also one of main reasons why many genealogists refuse to seriously consider the Family Tree as a viable alternative to their own family trees in other programs.
What is interesting is that my Great-grandfather who is not at all subject to extensive changes or controversy has been made read-only in the Family Tree. Not only is he read-only, but so is his wife, my Great-grandmother and her children, including my own Grandfather and then my Grandfather's daughter, my aunt, who recently died. In short, three generations of this one family are read-only when there are few, if any changes going on, while the Mayflower passengers and many other similar ancestors are a free-for-all mess. Strangely, my own mother who is also dead and the sister of the read-only aunt, is not read-only. So even when the simple expedient of making someone who is being constantly changed read-only is available, the process is being applied inconsistently and without any stated reason.
I have been writing about this issue for years and I and many others, have made suggested solutions. Although the presently constituted Family Tree is remarkably better than it was just a few years ago, it still has this one overriding issue left to be resolved.
Until the free-for-all changes that occur to people like the Mayflower descendants, there will always be a complete lack of confidence in the reliability of the Family Tree. As a family, we spend an inordinate amount of time merely correcting unsubstantiated and unsourced changes. Isn't it about time this last frontier of reliability is seriously addressed?
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