I decided to look for some clues for one of my ancestors online in the user family trees on Ancestry.com. I don’t use those trees often since the quality is questionable, but I admit have found some trees had my dead-end lines filled in correctly. Not that I would just believe an unsourced tree, but the original records that I then dug into helped prove it. I know it was helpful since I wouldn’t have necessarily found my dead-ends in those records without the hints that the trees gave.
Anyway, I thought I’d work on a different dead-end today. We have multiple records (census, death, etc.) indicating that she was born about 1854 in Massachusetts. Tree after tree on Ancestry indicated that her mother and her father were both born and both died in England. I suppose her monther could have come to America, had her and then went back to England to die, but I find this pretty unrealistic. Should I fill in England for the locations on my tree as so many others did on the site? I think not (at least not at this time).
I hate how undocumented lineages are repeated over and over on Ancestry as if they’re accurate. I guess I’m on my own in solving this one.