52 Ancestors Week 26: Conflict

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Conflict seems to be part of the human experience. How did it affect your ancestors? It could be through war, legal conflicts, or bad relationships. You could also think about having to resolve conflicting evidence in your research.

I would love to have a Starbolts fighting game. Art by Faeore.

    Whether you want it to happen or not, conflicts happen every day. It is indeed part of the human experience. But, conflicts can occur in your research, too. How do you find it? How do you fix it? What can you do about it? So many questions, so little time. Let's break 'em down one by one shall we? 

Alfred Hamel, not a Rough Rider

    First, you'll need to know how to spot them! When I was growing up, I was told that my great-grandfather, Alfred Hamel was a rough rider working with none other than President Theodore Roosevelt himself. He helped Teddy charge up San Juan Hill and fought valiantly by his side during the Spanish-American War! We had the pictures to prove it and everything! No issues here, right? RIGHT?!

    There's just one TINY little problem. The Rough Riders was a Calvary regiment founded in 1898. Alfred here was born in February of 1896, long before he ever fought anyone. I know two year olds can be a handful, but I don't think Alfred's terrible twos involved the ancestor of machine guns.

    The first step to identifying a potential conflict like this in your tree is to do some research. Look up when a conflict took place or various other events and compare it with how your your ancestor was at the time.

   

    As it turns out, Alfred WAS at the Mexican border. It just wasn't for the Spanish-American War. He was there for the Mexican Border War from 1910 to 1919 before being drafted to fight in the first World War. That part is accurate. I doubt he ever met Teddy Roosevelt. (As played by Robin Williams.)

It's the "Not so" Rough Riders!

    Now that we've found an obvious glitch in the family history, what do we do about it? After you've finished cursing at the screen and sighing incredulously, pick yourself up and just fix the data in your tree of choice. You can make a note about it on WikiTree as you are encouraged to make biographies there! You could even add a link to the Wikipedia article of the conflict if you so desire. Over on Ancestry, you can add a custom event if you'd like. Spread the word and make sure that juicy bit of information is never lost again.  Shout it from the rooftops and even tell your family the truth. Here's hoping they actually listen and aren't too upset with the face of the truth. At least this appeared to be an easy conflict to fix with just a little research.

    This is just a small example of the kind of data conflicts you can find in your tree. Alfred Hamel being a Rough Rider never really made sense to me because I knew he was born in 1896 and I remembered my history from school. When data conflicts like this, you need to think logically and ask yourself several questions. Is it possible? If it seems a little impossible, then you simply owe it to yourself to do the work.

    Conflicts are bound to turn up every once in a while in your research. It's your job as a researcher to figure out of something makes sense or not. This doesn't only apply to genealogy of course. You can apply this to practically anything and use your own brain to sort out the truth of an issue.

    Now, what if you find a data conflict in someone else's tree? What do you do?  I'm not going to lie. Part of me always wants to reach through the Internet and help whoever made the mistake on the tree and hope for the best. For example, I've been doing a deep dive into the friends and family of my great-grandmother, Maria Tedesco. I've been researching who all attended her funeral in 1943 and I found that someone put one of the attendees' death in the 1920s. That struck me as odd because the same person appeared in the list of people who attended the funeral. It wasn't a case of a name being similar. I did some research and found that he was the only person in the Haverhill area with that name. So, it had to be him! I decided to be a nice guy and had a friend message the owner of the tree as I can only message DNA matches. To date, there has been no response. So, the moral here is that if you try to fix someone else's tree, do so carefully and hope for the best. Don't drop a truth train on them. Yet. Wait for them to become belligerent. ;)

 

   Since Alfred didn't turn out to be a Rough Rider after all of that research, my family was pretty cool with it once I presented them with the factual evidence. He even has dated discharge papers from Mexican border conflict as proof. I still wonder a few things. How did the error of him being a Rough Rider even get started? Why? Was he hitting the terrible twos so hard that he might as well have been in the Calvary? Only his parents, Eugene and Celanise know for sure. Give a toddler enough sugar and they'd be rough alright. I'm just saying!

    Data conflicts like the ones I described are minimal at best. Big ones can have you tear down a tree branch considerably. You just have to be mindful of errors in dates because sometimes you could inadvertently cause a temporal paradox which could wipe out life in the universe. Granted that's the worst case scenario. It could just be merely located in our galaxy. Great Scott! Anyway, do yourself a favor and research if something seems a little fishy to you. You owe it to yourself and the health of the tree! And don't worry about other peoples' trees as long as you show your work!

See ya next time!