This was the query on a genealogy list paraphrased slightly and shortened.
Ancestry.com... How accurate is this site? … I was able to trace my roots back to King Arthur…I’m confused…Is King A my 46th Great Uncle?
Now folks, be nice, don’t laugh. Here is my response which I think was rather good.
How accurate is what sort of Ancestry info? People post family trees on Ancestry and they are as accurate as people are. So far, I've never seen a posted or printed family history without errors, sometimes egregious ones. OTOH, Ancestry does have a lot of DOCUMENTS of a legal sort (census, vital records from varius states, etc) or of a personal sort (Bibles, gravestones, etc.) or from organizations or institutions (churches, various military organizations, fraternal organizations, etc.). Genealogy is a specialized kind of research and although any reasonably intelligent person can learn to do it, there is a learning curve. I keep telling Ancestry that their advertising is misleading and does them a disservice, but I'm just a short, fat, old lady and nobody listens to me.
The standard for genealogy is "a reasonably exhaustive search" which does not mean that you search until you are exhausted. It means you collect ALL available documents, that is, all documents available to anyone wherever they are. This means documents online and documents off line. You start with yourself and you move backward, documenting each generation in each line. As far back as each sort of record exists, you get census records, vital or BMD (birth, marriage and death), will/probate records, deed/land records, court records, family Bibles, diaries, letters, military records (service files, rolls, pensions, etc), church records, and any other mention of your person in any sort of formal or informal record. You especially look for information recorded at the time of an event. What someone writes years after the fact will depend on the person's memory and we all know how faulty memories can be. The details recorded at the time tend to be more accurate. Still, it all depends on the source of the info, whether or not that person knew what s/he was talking about, whether or not that person was lying. So, we need ALL of the records so we can evaluate them against each other to see where the facts are, or probably where they are. Lots and lots of things were never recorded and other records have been lost because of fire, flood, theft or general human incompetence. A family tree may look as though it is a factual document but all serious genealogists know that new information can change some or all of it. Most of us can get a few generations back without problems but in the US, back beyond 1800 gets trickier and trickier.
As for King A, personally I wouldn't believe it. I once found my possible connection to Alfred the Great and privately figured that if I did more research I'd find it was Alf the Insignificant instead. Actually, what I found is that even Alf was unlikely as I couldn't document anything anywhere near that far back. That said, I wouldn't blame Ancestry except that they allow undocumented trees to be posted. Of course, every other site does the same. User/subscriber/member submitted trees on any site must be taken as possible clues, probably bad clues. Every true and experienced genealogist I've encountered in 20 years of doing this (and trying to find good brains to pick) says the same thing, "Do your own research." If you just want something to brag about and don't actually care if it is accurate, go ahead and claim King A. If you want to know about your real ancestors, start with yourself and your parents and go back one generation at a time and document each person. I bet you'll discover these folks are interesting in their own way. My folks were mostly farmers with a sprinkling of carpenters and one or two possible others back as far as I have found them. Some I have found quite far back, others I am stuck on. It seems my ancestors were not rich or famous or exciting. They didn't write or paint any masterpieces, they didn't create or invent anything spectacular, they weren't unusually heroic, they were ordinary folks putting one foot in front of the other and managing to get by. I'm happy with them, even some who seemed to have believed some things I consider nonsense.
If you want to learn how to do genealogy....
There is so much information out there, so much more than when I started. I
bought a book which helped me a lot. Later on, I bought other books. In fact, I
just recently bought a couple more and a handful of CDs with JPGs of documents.
If you go to your local library, the odds are there will be a number of books
you can check out. They will likely also know about the local
genealogy/historical societies and can direct you to them. There may be
classes, often free, you can take. There may be reasonably priced fairs and
conferences. If you go to Cyndislist.com, you can scour the Beginners, How To
and How To Tutorial categories for online tuition. Other categories will also
have How To sections. Cyndislist.com has over 300,000 genealogy links and a
large number of them point to free sites and free info. Ancestry.com and
FamilySearch.org (the LDS site) both offer free educational tutorials, guides,
webinars and such. At Geneabloggers.com, you can search for blogs which share
your interests. At GeneaWebinars.com, you can find upcoming webinars, most of
which are free. Also, most presenters of these record them and offer them
online for free for a period of time. Even YouTube.com has a bunch of
genealogical videos. There are organizations on the state and national level
and for certain ethnic groups which offer conferences that feature excellent
speakers. GeneaPress.com is a good place to find announcements of upcoming
events. Dick Eastman's blog (http://blog.eogn.com/)
is an excellent source of genealogical news. The point is that if you want to
learn to do genealogy and if you search for educational opportunities, you will
find a lot of them. Many I have not mentioned will pop up in your searches. You
will have to use some common sense to determine which are the better ones.
Doing genealogy does require some common sense and a serious effort at paying attention to the info being presented and where it comes from. My father always told me, "Don't believe anything someone says just because the person said it, no matter who the person is." It is always necessary in life to gather info from several sources and evaluate that info against what you find elsewhere and what you already knew. People lie, people say what they believe incorrectly to be true, people make mistakes, people often don't know what they are talking about. Don't believe me either. Check everything I say against the wisest people you know and against your own experience and against all of the other info you find in your research. Maybe you'll find I am wrong and there is actual documentation that King A was your 46th Great Uncle. However, I'm not going to hold my breath on this!! -------Jo
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