The Danger of Cherry Picking Information from the Web

One of the dangers of internet genealogy is that there is so much information available, and if you don't know the dangers you can build a family tree which is full of errors. Things get difficult with non-conformists before 1837, while parish registers often have large gaps at the time of the Civil War. The problem may be that there are no relevant birth records for your ancestor - and a common mistake is to select the record of someone with the "right name" who is actually the "wrong body". 

    In answering questions on this site I don't want to waste time answering questions where it appears that the basis of the question is unreliable. In ADAM or MADAM, Harpenden, 17th century I explain why I feel that a baptism that took place in 1652 is very likely the wrong one - and also supply pages which everyone should read if they are to avoid similar difficulties in future.

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 ...