Any tree from about 1900 onward could be suspect. Many trees they showed me were just mix and match and had no basis in the reality of the ancestors I've met, records I've documented.

Btw, one of my family lines is descended from John Howland's bro. It was a small world back then.

that was sourced from a second cousin of my grandfather. My grandfather looked up the supposed family in Paris during the war and they were idestitute as WWII ended. He gave them some money. So some good came of that false rumor. I was able to partially prove a story from my grandmother.'s side. There are more questions as I dig into it. We'll probably never know the details but we know the story my grandmother told was all proven.

I'm sure there are loads of errors in the tree I'm building, but it is fun to spend an hour here and there on it.

How do I get started on that? Can you give me some pointers to get me started?

Is to go to ancestry.com and start a family tree. You will be amazed at what shows up. No doubt some distant cousins have already done a great deal of work. You may even see old photos of relatives that you’ve never seen before that others have uploaded. Your local library may have an ancestry membership which would be free to use. It’s great fun and you learn so much with this hobby. Ancestry has periodic sales for their memberships (Black Friday) and at other times as well.

Yes it feels odd, doesn't it?

That the accuracy of those trees depends on none of your ancestors ever cheating on their spouse.

basically, the entire family slept in one big bed, so makes you wonder about incest or how the milkmaid became pregnant...

I have the genetic marker for the famous Irish chieftain Nialls of the Nine Hostages. Nialls was active, as it was reported he had many wives and around 400 children. Some researchers a few years ago were able to determine there are a million to 2 million men worldwide with that marker, so there are a lot of us who can talk about being related to him.

and I've poked away at it a bit but had to put it aside due to work. Some of the suggested connections are crazy - one line goes to Brian Boru and another to Robert the Bruce.

I'm retiring in May and then I'll dive in some more. I'd love to go to the UK to dig.

I did 23Nme years ago and then did Ancestry.com a few years later...
Lets just say there were disparity's... This gets me thinking about the TV ancestry program. Do they ever make stuff up for "programing" sake to make it more interesting?
Just curious..
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