Spoiler Alert!
If you are going to hear Viv's talk you may not want to read on as it may spoil the 'surprise'?
Viv Carter's talk A Case of Mistaken Identity? gave us an absorbing, thoroughly-researched detective story when looking into her grandmother’s history. Viv knew that her great- grandmother was Emma Portway who had married William Ketley in November 1877; both were born in Pleshey, Essex. Already they were past the first flush of youth; William was 39 and Emma, 38, on their wedding day. Their daughter, Emma Ketley, was born in 1883 but shortly after the birth, William’s wife had died of blood loss during a difficult delivery and her death was registered during the 2nd Q 1883.
Originally, Viv’s cousin had started investigating the family history so Viv went on to re-check all her cousin’s work. After verifying the story so far, she looked at family trees on ‘Ancestry’ to see if anyone was researching the same family, only to discover that ‘her’ family appeared to have two very different Emma Ketleys in online trees. It turned out that two Emma Ketleys were born in the first half of 1883 in the same registration district of Chelmsford but which one was Viv’s grandmother?
In the end, Viv had to research two family trees to make sure she was on solid ground, one difficulty being inaccurate transcriptions on ‘Ancestry’, so Ketley appeared as 7 different spelling variants. She bought a subscription to Essex parish registers which provided her with unequivocal proof of her antecedents but left her with the problem of what to do about inaccurate and misleading information on Ancestry trees. Viv used the messaging system on the website to contact other tree owners and some were very helpful whilst others insisted their information was correct as ‘they had copied it from another researcher and that had been up there some time, so it must be right!’
Viv had some take-home messages for those of us researching our family trees. Free online resources can only take you so far so it pays, in the long run, to invest in some local records such as parish registers and birth/marriage/death certificates. ‘Ancestry’ doesn’t differentiate between birth and baptism so the age of your relative can be drastically incorrect if their baptism occurred later in life or as a ‘job lot’ with siblings. The website also produces its own storyline from your information under the heading ‘LifeStory’ – the informant has no control over that storyline so beware!
Be aware that information on ‘official’ sites may not be reliable.
Always check someone else’s research as far as you can.
Double check your own research before putting it ‘out there’.
So, happy hunting and don’t let this put you off. You may discover a genuine far-flung branch of your family tree and possibly other distant relatives who have pictures of your nearest and dearest that you didn’t even know existed.
Report by Lesley Smith, Deal & District Branch Secretary