REPORTING MISTAKES MADE IN GENEALOGY

  MISTAKES SHOULD BE REPORTED!

We all make mistakes - because we are human. The first mistake a person makes is in thinking that they don't make any and that they won't make one. If we try and be careful with our record keeping we can cut down the number of mistakes that we make.

  Mistakes, Mistakes, Mistakes

I once wrote to a lady and told her about some mistakes in the data that she had posted on her web page. After I'd notified her about this problem several times, I became alarmed that she did not answer my mail. It was concerning lineages and dates that she had posted incorrectly. 


Finally she wrote back and told me that she did not want me to tell her about the mistakes she'd made and to please reframe from using her site. She said that she had no time to correct these things that were incorrect and did not want to know about them. I thought that it was interesting that she had plenty of time to post new material but no time to correct her mistakes.


It's unfortunate that some people can't see that a person has to be born before they can die and that a marriage is not likely to have happened a hundred years after a birth.


Another case of almost the same issue came up with a man who changes the birth, marriage, and death dates of our ancestors. I believe that this is a serious situation, and that names and dates should not be changed to something that we think that they might be or want them to be.


On the date changes, this person changes all the dates to read June 1st of whatever year he chooses to use.


It's too bad that people like that are allowed to do genealogy. Yes, yes, I am personally angered by people who change our ancestor's names and dates that the rest of work so hard to keep straight and work so hard at keeping records correct.


The only thing that I know to do is to keep on telling these people that their kind of genealogy simply doesn't work. I know most of you are going to say that you don't want to be on the wrong end of an angry message. But I think that we should keep on talking and trying so that someday we'll get a higher level of genealogy represented in the research that is out there now.


Let's hope that a few of the ones we talk to will hear what we are trying to get across to them.