There seems to be one type of 'genealogist' (and I use the term lightly), that measure success by the number of names they have in their files.... we've all met them....they act like there is a prize for the person with the largest # of names, and I imagine these are the folks who merge God only knows what , willy nilly, into their files, so they can 'brag' that they have 20, 000 names. Personally, I doubt if you'll EVER find an honest to goodness, researching genealogist who has counted the names they have....what would be the reason? None that I can think of...but, then, we're also the folks who document everyone we have, and many times even have a hard copy OF that documentation. For us, 'size' isn't important..... accuracy is! I decided, once upon a time, to try to correct the huge number of provable errors in my own family lines, in the Ancestral files of the LDS, and they made it REALLY hard to do so. Finally, I thought, my family errors aren't even a drop in the bucket of Ancestral file errors and gave it up for a bad job. (To my mind, it would be far better to be harder to submit data (how about documentation?) and easier to remove the errors!) But, that's never going to happen, after all these years. I was SO thrilled when I was new and green and visited the LDS, but quickly figured out that their real value was not to be found in the Ancestral files but in their filmed documents. Plus, the first advice my genealogical mentor gave me many years ago was to not believe ANYTHING unless I had the proof IN MY HAND. I've never had reason to doubt the wisdom of this advice and always tell gen. students the same thing. Sometimes I think if we could just start people out better, they wouldn't be so sloppy later! For me, I wanted to know who my own family were, and without documentation how could I possibly know? Thus, I knew careful documentation was a necessary part of the process.....and, while involved IN this process we all read a ton of material, adding to our general knowledge of an area, a religion, a time that allow us to 'see' our ancestors as people, rather than just names and dates. That, I think, to most of us, is what it's all about. Who cares about just names and dates or how many we have? DNA is going to be the wave of the future in genealogy, and it's pretty fascinating to think about. A couple years ago I took part in a study program started by BYU...I had to send at least 5 generations with the documentation (I sent 11), and a cheek swab. This won't, of course, be of any help to me, but future generations of folks may be able to find their ancestors with the help of my documentation and DNA! In a odd sort of way, it's a kind of immortality, and it pleases me to think about it. S. "......spent her retirement years (she is nearly 100 years old now) in the libraries searching for the family of origin of my Carrel ancestor. She failed because the LDS data base she worked with had him born in Massachusetts in 1805 when in reality he was born in western Pennsylvania in 1806. The submitter of the false data to LDS had simply assumed he was born in the same place and at the same time as his wife. NOT! Poor Ann had wasted thirty years of research in Massachusetts. That false data still indelibly exists in the LDS data base - the one that is submitted by individuals, not the microfilmed documents...." Point is that when personally researched family trees are posted on the Internet, appropriated by Ancestry.com, etc., and burned into CDs for sale they become as if sacred writings, even if full of errors, without the possibility of correction as new data is discovered. Folks who willy-nilly merge undocumented family trees into their GEDCOM files are guilty not only of plagiarism but of unknowingly propagating errors. Now believe it or not, we have the opposite problem in the new world of Y-DNA testing for genealogy - genetic genealogy. There are surname projects such as for surname Carroll. Participation consists of submitting a DNA sample to a lab, and then posting the results in a data base along with your lineage. But what seems to be happening is that folks submit their DNA results but not their lineage. That subverts the whole concept of finding lost relatives through genetic genealogy. I say input your family tree to the Internet, but don't download others with tenuous connections to yours, just to make your tree seem bigger than it actually is. ...." -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.407 / Virus Database: 268.12.9/458 - Release Date: 9/27/2006