The video

I don't know how to continue from here.

I was going to post a link to the video, but after thinking about it, I just can't do that. I don't have it in me to supply my audience, small as it may be, with pictures and a name of a genealogist who willingly or not is being discussed in some genealogical circles. I wish I could say that everyone was impressed. Well, we are, but not in a positive way.

However, I don't know how much of what the news station decided to show is actually how this man believes. How much editing was done? I don't know. Giving this man the benefit of the doubt, I hope that it was the studio who makes this man's research look non existant and not the man himself who doesn't know what is proof in genealogical circles and what is wishful thinking.

I hope he knows the difference, because he's been doing genealogy for 30 years. Not as a professional, but even as a non professional, there are standards one should pick up along the way.

Such as undocumented maybes can't be presented as true statements. There are exceptions, but it would take a very long post to explain those exceptions. The short version, you may not have a document stating that Henry Jones is the son of David Jones. However, you do have someone of Henry Jones' age living in the household of David Jones for the first twenty years of Henry's life. Then you have David deeding Henry 100 acres. All the documents show a very close family tie between David and Henry. Upon David's death his will states that his first born son already has his share, so the rest is divided among his remaining children, who are listed. Henry is never listed as a son, but his age is that of the first born son. Also, Henry is listed as the executor of the estate. There is no known document that states Henry as David's son, but there is so much supporting documentation that shows Henry is treated like a first son during that period of history that you can safely state the Henry is the eldest son of David Jones.

When you make comments that you clicked on a hint on ancestry.com and saw that you're direct descendant of Charles the Great, Cleopatra, etc., etc., etc., it gets a lot of rolling eyeballs from those of us who spend a ton of time on ancestry.com and know how unreliable those hints really are. Yeah, some are spot on. A lot of them are dead wrong. Like the one that suggests an aunt of mine went on a little trip to England in between giving birth to her second and third child. Someone by the same name went to England. I haven't asked my cousins if their mother took a little trip to England. Maybe I will one of these days, but if she did it will shock me.

I've had some of those hints show a woman by one name marry in 1857, a woman with a name close to that name goes on a voyage in 1862, and yet another woman by a name very close to the name of the other two is living in New York City, single and I've seen people attach all the records to the married woman. Well, the woman getting married in 1857 is twenty something, the single woman, three years later, is 16 and who knows how old the woman on the voyage is? Doesn't matter they attach it because the names are almost alike.

Going back to the man in the video. He states on the video, which is run on a local news program, that the stuff on ancestry.com is reliable. The documents, more than likely. The hints, NO. The trees, HELL NO. Most of the trees are put up during the persons two week free membership and then abandoned when it comes time to pay up. They're left there for others to copy and spread the sloppy work.

There was a comment the reporter stated that gives me hope for this genealogist. She did state that he gets records from various places. Some of those places are not places where the Internet genealogist would go to find them because it requires getting off your butt and sorting through dusty documents in person.

I do believe the station made him look stupid with their editing. They don't know anything about genealogy, so they don't know that cutting this and that will make their "feature" genealogist look stupid and like a hack.

So out of all those involved in the production of the video, I can see where the gentleman is presented in a way that those of us who do this, too, will roll our eyes. I can see where the editor in the studio won't know that cutting the the five minutes of conversation after he clicked on the ancestry.com hint that suggests he's a direct descendant of Charles the Great and going straight to the part where he says it's undocumented won't mean much to him, but will make this man look like a laughing stock in genealogy circles.

My biggest concern lies with ancestry.com. The link was posted on their facebook page by ancestry.com. No disclaimer about how important research is, or how important documentation is to creating accurate family trees. It was more or less, gee isn't this great, this guy found his 35X great grandfather who happens to be Charles the Great.

Come on Ancestry.com, you are supposed to be the professionals. I know you have several professional genealogists on your staff. I know this is NOT how they do their work. I know this is NOT how they present how to conduct research.

Don't you know that a lot of us who follow you on facebook take our work seriously? Don't you know that we get frustrated with the ever so popular sloppy, undocumented trees? Don't you know that your professional genealogist who give workshops also bemoan those trees?

Don't you think posting this video with an atta boy is a little irresponsible on your part? I do.