52 Ancestors Week 49: Oops

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 49's theme is "Oops." Everyone has made mistakes -- including our ancestors. This week, think about a mistake an ancestor made or perhaps a mistake that you've made in your research.

You can almost hear the glass shatter!

    December seems to be the time of year where we reflect on mistakes we've made over the course of a year. My friend and fellow Youtuber, Lewis "Linkara" Lovhaug has made it a point to address the mistakes he made on his webshow called "Atop the Fourth Wall". At the end of a year, he'd create an episode listing the top fifteen mistakes he made that year and his show has been running nonstop since 2008! I've never gotten the chance to do that for my show even though I've produced over fifty episodes from 2011 to 2019. That isn't to say I've never made mistakes. I have and I've owned up to them.

    Then we come to the genealogy front where, yes, I have made mistakes from marking myself as dead on WikiTree to even putting information on my tree that was totally and completely WRONG! Look, we're all human. We've made mistakes. It's cool. Back in September of last year, I wrote a blog about one of the many mistakes I've made over the course of my genealogical adventure. Today, let's talk about another one of my "greatest hits".

    

Yeah. No Magna Carta for you, Chris!

     This time around we're going to back to about two months ago. In June 2019, I posted a blog where I talked about my so-called Magna Carta ancestors. The blog's topic was about your oldest ancestor. At the time, I believed them to be surety barons who signed the Magna Carta in 1215 AD. Others see that as a feather in their cap. I've always been a bit ambivalent about my link to them because in reality millions of people are descended from those guys.

    A couple of months ago WikiTree had a stream on YouTube where they discussed the Magna Carta project. Every week or so they discuss projects. If you want to see the videos, please check out the YouTube channel here. They had a fun discussion and the host thought it would be a cool idea to check to see if I had Magna Carta links.

    I was expecting some discussion and there were some talk about the barons and gateway ancestors. However, it turned out that my connection to the surety barons was disconnected! OH, NO! Naturally, I took it in stride. I didn't overreact. I was a little concerned because I thought I had a solid connection proved by various documents. They all said that Anne Derehaugh was a gateway ancestor. And she was. The error as it turned out was a bit more current than her.  

    My friend and fellow WikiTreer, Traci, offered to help me figure things out. I followed the path down to where the link was severed and it happened on the profile of John Low, my tenth great-grandfather. It turned out that the New England Genealogical Historical Society released an article by a man named Edward Steele and in it he discussed the genealogy of Thomas Low of Ipswich. While a Low WAS married to Anne's daughter, it was a different John Low. In fact, it was his nephew with the same name.

Johnny, you got the right 'rents now. (I hope.)

    I was annoyed. But, I wasn't about to argue with the pros. Other people were concerned about the connection being lost and again I don't really care. It happens. You dust yourself off and you deal with it. It is not the end of the world. 

    I did end up asking the fine folks at geni to correct the error as they had that mistake, too. It was fixed over at FamilySearch already. People seem to work fast on the Internet. There was still the small matter of cleaning up my tree on Ancestry. That didn't take as long as I thought it would.

    In the end, I understand the mistake. Was it mine? Probably not. John Low is a common name and anyone could have conflated him for his uncle. Families back then kept names in the family. I can't tell you how many "Silas Sargents" I've found in my travels. That's just how genealogy is. No one is to blame. It's just a very old conflation that stuck around for years until someone did some research and found proof about a family.

     I've found that when you work with genealogy in the 1600s, you're going to need solid evidence for births, marriages, deaths and other documents. You never know when it's going to change. If something has to be changed on a world tree like WikiTree, then it should be fine as long as there is a body of proof backing up the claim. Luckily, there was. The NEGHS is pretty tough when it comes to sources. Are they wrong? I don't know. But, I am sure they have gone over everything with a fine tooth comb, crossed all the ts and dotted all the is.

    As for me? I still might have a Magna Carta ancestor. I just don't know at this point. It seems unlikely. I've combed through my English side and found some brick walls in the 1600s. Perhaps the connection is lost to time? Who knows? I'm not in any real rush to find out if I have a connection to them. This isn't me playing it safe. No, no. This is just being smart and examining the proof as it comes in. 

Pre-1600 genealogy will still give me trust issues, though!

See ya next time!