Beware - Wrong information can turn up anywhere

Help Desk

One of the most important messages on this site is that you must always be aware of the limitations of the records you use, and the possibility of errors. One of the first pages posted on this web site in 2001, the Dangers of Internet Genealogy, pointed out that one of the biggest problems with online genealogy is it that it makes it very easy for lazy family historians, who never check anything to bulk copy erroneous research. The important thing is to realize that everyone makes mistakes and misunderstandings. No-one is immune. In 1635 a clerk (undoubtedly rather bored with the job) recorded the passengers sailing to America on the "Hopewell". Some came from the Hertfordshire village of Stanstead Abbots - but he didn't hear what was said and wrote down Stanstede Abbey. As a result of a query some 5 years ago I investigated The Myth of Stanstead Abbey - and how hundreds (and possibly by now thousands) of Americans had zombie-like copied other peoples family trees without anyone stopping to think whether such an Abbey existed. Some people went as far as to say their ancestors had been baptized by the Bishop of Stanstead Abbey, not realizing that if the abbey had existed it would be headed by an Abbot and not at Bishop.

Does your family tree contain other people's unchecked errors?

Have you made a New Years Resolution about your Family History Research in 2013? If not read on ...

I decided I needed to blog on this subject when I discovered that the  The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature, published in 2006, records that in writing his major poetical work "The Eve of St. Agnes" Keats was inspired by  a chilly January encounter with the medieval monumentality of Stansted Abbey. I found one later online reference, JOHN KEATS_百度文库, which is a Chinese copy of pages from the encyclopedia.

Four years ago I posted The Myth of Stanstead Abbey so I wondered whether the "medieval monumentality" that inspired Keat's was a figment of his imagination. A little googling showed that shortly before writing the poem Keats had visited Stansted Park, a house on the Sussex/Hampshire border. This house was once a medieval hunting lodge and not an abbey, and the "medieval chapel" that Keats would have seen was built in the Regency period. 

So I decided to see if I could find any more incorrect UK references to Stanstead Abbey that have been added to the web since 2008 - and found three more in Google Books, from 1800, 1827 and 1830 - all of which are quite obviously wrong. Now that the British Newspaper Archive exists I decided to assess the truth of the widely held belief that newspaper articles are full of errors  by looking to see what proportion of references to "Stanste(a)d Abbot(t)(s)" had been recorded as "Stanste(a)d Abbey." 

See if you can guess the percentage errors newspapers made

before you look at The Myth of Stanstead Abbey to find the answer.

The lesson of all this is that errors can, and do, occur at all stages of family history research - including in the original documents. My posting on The Dangers of Internet Genealogy, written in 2001, and the horrific examples of the incompetent family historians copying errors relating to Stanstead Abbey onto their family trees without checking, should remind everyone that  it is always important to check your data in 2013

So how about making a New Years Resolution 

*** >>> Now <<< ***

No excuses...

So your ancestor went to America in the 17th Century

I have just had a query (through the Tring Local History Society) about John Lake, born Tring around 1616, who went to America in about 1640. Usually when I get such a query I inwardly groan but in this case my answer was eased by the fact that the person asking the question was aware that there was much misinformation surrounding her ancestor's origins.

     The problem I face with such queries is that there are many published family histories and family trees which lead back to the first settlers in America - and most of these effectively start with the arrival of the first settlers. In most cases there seems to have been few, if any, records linking them to their origins in England - and there has been an enormous amount of guesswork which has become "proven facts" by being repeatedly retold - nowadays over the internet - see The Dangers of Internet Genealogy and The Myth of Stanstead Abbey

     Americans who have no experience of researching original 17th century American documents first hand, and even less about English documents and history of the period discover a published family tree going back to the very early days of settlement. They accept what is on the tree as being true and write to me thinking it is easy to match the possibly very unreliable information on the family tree with contemporary Hertfordshire records. They assume that because there was only one person with that name in 17th century America there was only one person with the name born in England - and assume that person must be their ancestor. In the case of the current query it turns out that there are there were four John Lake christenings in Tring in a two year period so Right Name, Wrong Body becomes very relevant.

     In most cases I can do little more than direct them to My Ancestors emigrated from Hertfordshire and ask them to let me know what the possibly relevant information is available from American sources. The result is often that I don't hear from them again ...