Wednesday, December 26, 2018

ARGH! Ancestry's new feature is disappointing...

I just discovered THIS:  http://apv.ancestry.com/50558183%3A9009%3A66/overview?treeid=54485674&personid=13681670623

It has the "life story" of Célina Boulé!    Marvelous, you say!  Mystery solved.

Um, not so much.   Here it is:

When Célina Marie Boulé dit Laliberté was born on March 18, 1840, in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada, her father, Célestin, was 47, and her mother, Marie, was 44. She married ALEXANDRE GUIMOND and they had nine children together. She also had one son and three daughters from another relationship. She died on April 18, 1928, in Lotbinière, Quebec, Canada, at the age of 88, and was buried in Lotbinière, Quebec, Canada.
Here are the problems with that:

  1. We don't know when or where she was born.   It was AROUND 1840 based on her death record.   No one has ever been able to find anything that conclusively proves the March 18 date; it just gets passed around from Ancestry tree to tree.
  2. "Her father Célestin" - except that he's not her father.   People have mixed up two different Célinas; ours has no birth record, and her marriage record does not list her parents.
  3. "She also had one son and three daughters from another relationship".  No - she didn't.  That's the OTHER Célina.
This REALLY PISSES ME OFF, because it's being touted as a new "feature" of Ancestry, WITHOUT disclaimers that the data presented might entirely incorrect.

So that means that people who are doing research and don't know to dig under the surface might just "accept" it as fact. 

This completely goes against ALL the principles of genealogy.   Ancestry is being sloppy for the sake of marketing a new "feature" that has no checks and balances.

No comments:

Post a Comment