Absolutely, Gale, but this burden falls on the FINDER--not the submitter of the tree being "used." Trees you find on the Internet whether sourced or not are a starting point and not and end all and be all for your research. But that is also true for books. When I was doing a one name study many years ago I was contacted by a researcher who only had a tombstone inscription for his ancestor in a county in Western PA. Based upon the name and dates I tried to locate the person in my records and found a suspiciously close baptismal record in a book of early PA Births for Berks County in Eastern PA. But the records didn't match EXACTLY...so I suggested the researcher obtain the original baptismal record for the church in Berks County. She did and copied several of the handwritten pages from the records for me to study. When I examined the pages carefully I realized that the PA Birth book transcription/abstract of the record was incorrect --- although I could easily see how (without all the information I had to go on) the transcriber/author arrived at his conclusions. The minister had written "Jani" as the abbreviation for January and "Juni" as an abbreviation for June. On every page the two month abbreviations looked just about identical. The proof that the birth date he'd listed in the book as June was incorrect is the fact that the baptism for the child had taken place in April. Although it would have been possible for the baptism to have taken place the FOLLOWING April (not the same year as the birth) a close examination of all the records on the copied pages showed that the minister was VERY consistent in showing the YEAR with the date of baptism but ONLY if the year of birth and baptism differed. He NEVER included the YEAR if the birth and baptism took place in the SAME year. The record in question had no year listed. Therefore, the birth date on the baptism when interpreted as January (instead of June as listed in the birth book) agreed to the very day with the tombstone the researcher had found in Western PA proving conclusively that we'd found the connection to her ancestor's birth and his parents--and ancestors on back to the immigrant ancestor. Not only did our "find" prove an error in interpretation for this birth/baptism but also for several others on the copied pages where the baptism and birth took place in the same year and the months June and January included the misleading abbreviations. When I contacted the author about this -- he agreed with my conclusions and was very gracious -- and reminded me that books like his birth books were not intended to be an END in our research...they are a starting point and it is completely intended that researchers follow through as we did and obtain the original record to examine -- especially if there is any doubt in the info contained in the books. The important point to take away from this is that WE (the finders of any information online, in books, or in ANY record) are responsible for our conclusions and our examination of the evidence. Joan In a message dated 4/15/2012 4:15:56 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, gale_gorman@me.com writes: I skipped church, again, but this was a good sermon. People who find a tree on the internet may be doing their version of "research" so they may feel righteous about it. I thoroughly agree the source needs to be re-visited.

Joan, A very well written explanation and conclusion. Emery -----Original Message----- From: roots-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:roots-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of JYoung6180@aol.com Sent: Sunday, April 15, 2012 4:41 PM To: gale_gorman@me.com; Kith-n-Kin@cox.net Cc: kendallcaminiti@gmail.com; roots@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [ROOTS-L] "piracy" or "ignorance" Absolutely, Gale, but this burden falls on the FINDER--not the submitter of the tree being "used." Trees you find on the Internet whether sourced or not are a starting point and not and end all and be all for your research. But that is also true for books. When I was doing a one name study many years ago I was contacted by a researcher who only had a tombstone inscription for his ancestor in a county in Western PA. Based upon the name and dates I tried to locate the person in my records and found a suspiciously close baptismal record in a book of early PA Births for Berks County in Eastern PA. But the records didn't match EXACTLY...so I suggested the researcher obtain the original baptismal record for the church in Berks County. She did and copied several of the handwritten pages from the records for me to study. When I examined the pages carefully I realized that the PA Birth book transcription/abstract of the record was incorrect --- although I could easily see how (without all the information I had to go on) the transcriber/author arrived at his conclusions. The minister had written "Jani" as the abbreviation for January and "Juni" as an abbreviation for June. On every page the two month abbreviations looked just about identical. The proof that the birth date he'd listed in the book as June was incorrect is the fact that the baptism for the child had taken place in April. Although it would have been possible for the baptism to have taken place the FOLLOWING April (not the same year as the birth) a close examination of all the records on the copied pages showed that the minister was VERY consistent in showing the YEAR with the date of baptism but ONLY if the year of birth and baptism differed. He NEVER included the YEAR if the birth and baptism took place in the SAME year. The record in question had no year listed. Therefore, the birth date on the baptism when interpreted as January (instead of June as listed in the birth book) agreed to the very day with the tombstone the researcher had found in Western PA proving conclusively that we'd found the connection to her ancestor's birth and his parents--and ancestors on back to the immigrant ancestor. Not only did our "find" prove an error in interpretation for this birth/baptism but also for several others on the copied pages where the baptism and birth took place in the same year and the months June and January included the misleading abbreviations. When I contacted the author about this -- he agreed with my conclusions and was very gracious -- and reminded me that books like his birth books were not intended to be an END in our research...they are a starting point and it is completely intended that researchers follow through as we did and obtain the original record to examine -- especially if there is any doubt in the info contained in the books. The important point to take away from this is that WE (the finders of any information online, in books, or in ANY record) are responsible for our conclusions and our examination of the evidence. Joan In a message dated 4/15/2012 4:15:56 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, gale_gorman@me.com writes: I skipped church, again, but this was a good sermon. People who find a tree on the internet may be doing their version of "research" so they may feel righteous about it. I thoroughly agree the source needs to be re-visited. ===== If you would prefer digest mode to mail mode, drop a note to roots-admin@rootsweb.com and ask for the digest... ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to ROOTS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message