Genealogy from the perspective of a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon, LDS)

Sunday, March 25, 2018

Mistakes and Inaccuracy: How Accurate is the FamilySearch Family Tree?


This image of a bullseye target is a metaphor for the accuracy of the entries in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. A great many of them are dead-on center, but there are a significant number that wander off the target and of course, you can't see the shots that missed the target altogether. But the fundamental questions about the Family Tree involve its present and ultimate accuracy. In addition, the accuracy of the Family Tree is inseparably connected to the overall limitations on the accuracy of any historical research. This is a serious concern because people contrive family traditions and become emotionally attached to an ancestral legacy no matter how historically accurate it might actually be.

Historical research and writing have traditionally focused on broad-brush accounts of nations with an emphasis on wars and other international conflicts sprinkled here and there with tales of a few notable individuals. In the last hundred years or so, the emphasis has begun to change and begun to focus on less prominent individuals and their place in history. Genealogy, on the other hand, has always been the story of families. It is important to realize, however, that genealogy per se has had a checkered past and it is still struggling to find acceptance as a valid historical pursuit. This lack of acceptance of genealogy as a valid academic pursuit lies squarely on its history of inaccuracy wrapped up in myth and legend.

The FamilySearch.org Family Tree is a recent innovation in the longstanding process of bringing family history out of the mists of myth and legend into a semblance of believability. Only recently, as I have noted many times in previous posts, has there been a concerted movement towards documenting family history and traditions in any meaningful way. My own inherited genealogical information is a prime example of a total disregard for accuracy in many respects with whole books published with only a modicum of acknowledgment of contemporary historical sources. Some of our most treasured family traditions have proved to have only a very tenuous connection to the actual historical records that are available and almost every one of my ancestral lines ultimately moves from believability to fantasy.

It is overly simplistic to blame this lack of accuracy on the "availability of records." Some of the information in my own family line appears to be intentionally inaccurate. This occurs when the "researcher" decided to choose a prominent or wealthy family line over one that was more obscure and decidedly impoverished. This phenomenon is also prominent among those claiming royal or noble European ancestors.

A recent comment to one of my blog posts also points out the reality of "confirmation bias." This is the tendency people have to believe what is repeated or appears to have the endorsement of authority. For example, there is a popular inspirational story about one of my ancestors that has been told and retold so many times that it has assumed the level of an undisputed historical fact. When, in reality, it was a story told by a descendant who never knew or talked to the original participant.

Is there really any hope that the information in the Family Tree can become accurate? The answer to this question is a qualified yes. The reliability of the information in the Family Tree is increasing at a rapid rate for recent generations, say within the last 100 to 150 years. Before that time, the accuracy is in a state of chaos. The main reason for this chaos is the lack of systematic genealogical research into the contemporary documents and records. A good example of this problem is the absolute shambles of the information about the original Mayflower passengers and their history in America. There is almost no controversy about the identity and descendants of the original surviving Mayflower passengers and yet this is one area where activity on the Family Tree has become rampant. Accurate and complete research on each of the passengers is readily available, but changes to individual passengers are in a state of complete disarray. Every week when I receive a report from FamilySearch of the changes to my watched people, my ancestor Francis Cooke, a Mayflower passenger, has dozens of unsupported and totally inaccurate changes. There is no rationally defensible reason why this person's history should have any controversy.

It would be easy to dismiss the Family Tree as a failure if you focus on what remains to be supported by sources and made consistent with historical records. Of course, historical records can disagree and people can disagree over the interpretation of those records, but the instances where this occurs are not as common as those instances when the only available records are clear to the extent they are complete.

There are some things we will never know in this life. Much of the information about our families has been lost or reported inaccurately. We just have to live with this measure of uncertainty. But to the extent that historical sources are carefully reviewed and added to the Family Tree, the accumulated information becomes more and more "accurate" in the sense that it agrees with the available historical records. Cleaning up the Family Tree is not just busy work, it is the basic activity of doing genealogy or family history. We may be surprised or even appalled at the loss of some of our cherished family stories or traditions, but ultimately the Family Tree is the solution, not the problem. We can no more expect that mistakes and inaccurate information will disappear from the Family Tree than we can expect a garden to stay weed free or our houses to stay automatically clean.

15 comments:

  1. Thanks James. Constant weeding and fertilizing of the tree will win and make it a record where all genealogists will go for the best facts and easiest to understand data. I know I do, and I update and prune when needed. (Some pruning jobs are easier than others)

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  2. Very well written James, but I disagree on one point. People are prone to expolit and alter truth to the vanity of their own fantastic history. The application without any chosing, only opening preconceived information lead my lineage back to Mary Magdalene and Jesus by way of French royalty. My family does date back to English wealth as far as the 1700's, but prior to that the click through to history seems to be pure fantasy. That said I don't believe the accuracy of this application will ever be consistent with imperical information until it's governed and cleaned by an unbiased and perfect source.

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  3. I only expect DIRECT relationships from FANILYSEARCH, yet they think they are doing me a favor by telling me I am related to a direct family member's cousin. This is NOT DIRECT
    to me.

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    1. Why would you only expect "direct" line family members from FamilySearch? I don't understand that at all.

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  4. I am done with family search. So many inaccuracies. Wrong spellings. Wrong dates. I will just use our family tree researched from our own family records.

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    1. Too bad, that's your loss and the loss of all your relatives.

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  5. Yes, I agree- well written. When you have one line of nobility and perhaps a vague royal connection seems reasonable but I began to wonder when one of my lines was a twisted mess of kings, queens, knights, bishops and princesses, seemed more like 52 pick up and someone threw in a couple jokers in there, too! I knew my family had come from nobility and had royal connections but what I found was over the top. I wasn’t about to pack my bags to the holy land when I saw I’m in the lineage to King David and Bathsheba.
    It does help to have the sources. Sweden and Norway have many professional researchers who post end of the line family research and strictly state do not change the information provided without contacting them first. They also have their ancestral websites that are linked to the sources which is helpful.
    Family Search is not all that bad but you have to read the sources, think honestly and do your homework.

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  6. Same here Anna. I expected to find some ancestors on the high end, but more in the middle or bottom to be honest. So, researched with info that came up; from one name to their parents and so on. Until my mind was so boggled that I quit. WE ARE ALL RELATED! Especially if you believe in creation. I appreciate the site L.D.S. but to rely on the accuracy and validity of a group whose very existence is based on fable is ridiculous.

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  7. Misspelling well sweetheart over the course of time things change one side of my family originated in the Netherlands “ Buiji then Buys then Boice finally Boyce we thought we were Irish , yes name spelling changes because we spell it the way it was pronounced and with an accent it would sound different to everyone. So more than likely your last name is mispelled from the original..... think about it, also the church was at one time the only records keepers and the poor didn’t go to church like the elite.

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    1. As someone who has been doing a lot of digging in The Netherlands: the Dutch Protestant records are generally quite reliable, and certainly more so that family search stuff of that time, if one is able to guess different ways of spelling, and some changes such as different date systems under Napoleon followers in the French occupation time. This is because contrary to traditions elsewhere, baptism records etc. would include mothers and their maiden names. What i have found though, is quite a few instances where people did not look up the source, and got thrown by things that were not picked up, such as a record in owe own, but with a small extra addition like "original record in town xxx of date yyy". Also, in Holland and Zeeland, just about everybody went to church - much more so than to city hall. It was the civil marriages that were for the elite. See for instance this useful resource: openarch.nl

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  8. I too thought the same thing, but I decided to go to the library in hopes it would help in un-confusing things. Several history books state that royalty stayed within the families. It might show a different family line, but if you go back a couple of generations, you’ll find the same family name. Gross if you ask me, but whatever. Certain states kept extremely good records (Virginia for example), I’m able to actually cross-reference many different records, which helps to add validity to anyone’s family tree. I didn’t get as far back as you, but I’m quite happy with the results I’ve gotten so far. By the way, there are “Thompson’s” on my family tree, one never knows.

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  9. Just started to find my roots. Imagine my excitement when names such as King Arthur, St.Joseph and finally Adam and Eve show up. That's when I knew someone was pulling my leg!

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    1. Same here...I would really like to believe what I see but it's just too crazy. I can go back to 125 A.D ? Come on...but I'd like to believe. Just wish I had the time, money or were famous so I could really dig into my ancestry

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  10. I've really enjoyed researching my family tree and yes I cross reference also, Thank you it has helped fill in lots of gaps and its lovely to know who I really am at last and where I came from

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