General Chat

Dear Genes Connected Members I have been doing family research now for about a year. I signed up for Genes Connected (Now Genes Reunited) in April 2004. I had Previously done my initial family research with the help of immediate living relatives. Prior to joining the ranks of Genes Reunited Members I had only got back as far as Great Grandparents on one side of my family. It wasn't long after joining Genes Reunited that I received my first email from another member who's was researching family history. To my surprise the email was from someone in New Zealand. Before long I had made connection with a cousin I never knew existed. You can imagine my excitement as documentary evidence was supplied which confirmed that the link was genuine. Then during my own research using Genes Reunited I found another more distant relative on another side of the family tree and before long I had succesfully found a common ancestor with the help of this distant relative. My head was really beginning to spin when I found I could trace ancestry right back to the 14th century. Since then little by little I have filled many missing gaps and various branches of my tree and have even managed to push the boundaries back to the 13th century. My research has found relatives either alive or dead from Canada, New Zealand and Australia as well as The far flung parts of the British Isles. Most of my success have been down my mother's side of the family tree and lot of her ancestry has been located in the Suffolk area. As a result of my many hours of research I have now built up almost 1000 names on the Genes Reunited Website. I thought I was doing quite until I started to discover other members who were much further advanced than me, some with as many as 5000 names and more. (I thought to myself, WOW!!). But today I have uncovered something which I find a little sinister and a bit worrying. I have used the LDS Website (via Genes Reunited) as a tool on many occassions in order to track lines of enquiry and to verify information passed to me by other members. Then this evening whilst investigating one of my family lines on the LDS Website I managed to trace my lineage all the way back to 2 people whose names will be known to many. GUESS WHO THEY WERE ???- yes you guessed it ADAM & EVE. I have to say -- I smell a RAT. Someone within the LDS organisation is either a phenominal Family Tree Expert or a hoaxer.. I think you can hazzard a guess at which option I suspect. I appreciate that everything we reasearch on LDS should be checked and verified with reference to other sources but I have to say that after my recent findings I have to ask the question .. Just how reliable is the site and can it be trusted at all? I feel quite frustrated and annoyed , even duped. (Call me a cynic - Or can someone out there come up with a copy of Adam & Eve's Marraige Certificate? - I don't think so!! ) My warning to all Genes Reunited Members is "Take Care and check it out !!!!!!!. Are all those members out there with 1000's of Names on their family tree really sure that they are all bona fide?? I would be interested to hear what the Genes Reunited PR Team have to say about all this. Regards Melvyn Cox

Hi, It's a lesson to all of us NEVER to trust what we see on the IGI or in BVRI - or any transcriptions (like the 1881 census) Always check the original records, as you said. Gwynne

Similar thing ahppened to me about a year ago. Sitting with my cousin at her computer we traced an ancestor thorugh the LDS site. From Yorkshire, through Europe and Russia and yes right down to Adam & Eve! It gave us a good laugh but we also thought who on earth is allowed to send this information never mind who thinks of putting it on their site. Never trust all you read and always try and establish a link in as many reliable ways as possible. Jane

Hi Melvyn i'm pleased to see your research is going so well, i'm in the process of cross referencing bmd/census etc. I must be ok at the moment as it all checks out. I don't have any connection with adam & eve at the moment, so maybe i'm from another planet.!!! [ alot of people would say so] lol sandra

Thanks Melvyn. I made the mistake of accepting information from someone researching the same line as mine. Got all excited as it took me back another 200 years.....only to find that when I checked it out I realised that they had made a lot of assumptions and random links. Had to do a lot of tree surgery to set it all straight again!! I'd been lulled into a false sense of security by the amazing help I've had from other people who are 100% accurate in their research. So I agree with you that ANY information needs to be checked out very carefully.

Oh dear! Every time I post a reply on these boards it's like the kiss of death, and the topic instantly drops back about four pages!

I think I may know who the guilty person is..lets just say a relative of mine was so incensed at the tripe a certain person had posted on the LDS (30,000 names!) which appeared just to be a gathering up of any name that might fit, had huge 200 year gaps, leading back to all the crowned heads of Europe and Genghis Khan amongst others and a woman in 809 from Norway! This relative of mine had wasted many months before thinking to do some basic checks on this info and so furious at the waste of time, he and a friend sat down and composed a mythical family tree which went back to Adam and Eve. They posted this on LDS site without the slightest trouble, which kind of took them aback a bit, but assumed that anyone reading it would realise it was a joke. Lo and behold, a few weeks later, this mythical tree appeared, tacked onto the original Offenders tree. It gave us a good laugh, serves him right, but sorry anyone who took it seriously. I have ranted on a different thread about the lack of basic checks before stuff is posted on the LDS, suffice it to say I never believe a word of anything on there until I have checked it, from source documents myself.

Melvyn A salutary tale. I hope many will read and take heed. One point we should all do well to remember. The IGI exists for the saving of souls to the Church of the Latter Day Saints. The fact that genealogists uses it as a family history tool is incidental. After years of family history research I have a healthy scepticism of those that claim to go back further than the normal British Records of 1500+. Very few will get back to 1500's, never mind further back. The sad reality is that unless you have more than a working knowledge of Latin that very few of us are ever going to get back beyond 1500 with any certainty and unless you have PROOF and certainty of your lineage you have not got a lineage!! IGI is not proof! Success in Family History is proving one's ANCESTRY and watching the lists of those people that keep growing and growing on Ancestry, Rootsweb, Genes Reunited and other sites, my cynicism is ever growing. The IGI is full of errors and duplications and wrong routes to "families". Many are not even on the IGI because some church authorities refused to give permission to the LDS to have access. The IGI is an INDEX not a GOSPEL for family history. It can be a good aid used correctly but should NEVER be the first line for those starting Family History. First line should ALWAYS be certificates backwards from yourself to Grandparents, Great Grandparents etc. The IGI can be a good aid when used correctly and yes it can be open to be spoofed as a previous speaker has said. I do not think the IGI was ever meant to be used by people to add thousands of names to their trees, repeating and regurgitating errors Ad Infinitum. This practice is just name collecting. It is NOT Family History or Genealogy. The internet is also a good medium used correctly but sadly the internet is also helping to fuel the many errors at an even faster rate than previous. I know that many Family Historians/ Genealogists are very worried by the BAD PRACTICES in use at the present day. Each one of you doing family history/genealogy has a responsibility to complete family trees ACCURATELY. This means it is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to CHECK. The only real way to check is to foot slog around the various RECORD OFFICES and SOURCE CHECK. We are all busy and find this difficult, but Family History is not a race. This is precisely the reason why I have been doing Family History for so many years. It really is a hobby for life. Anybody asking me for family history information on my family tree will be asked to produce evidence to me to prove that they have the right tree before they are allowed any info from me. If we all took the same stance then "Trees" would become much more accurate and revered, instead of being villified, as they are in danger of being so at the present time. Janet

Very well put, Janet. GC should put this on their getting started page. I've had several people contact me thinking there is a connection and all they have is the IGI information. A lot of the information submitted to the IGI on my families is incorrect and poorly researched. Apparently, for example, my gt gt grandfather was fathering children for some years after he died. Census show that his widow had no more children but the wrong info is on the IGI for all to see. Gwynne