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Post date: Apr 10, 2015 10:43:19 PM
I cannot stress this often or emphatically enough. Information contained in the myriad publicly available trees is very frequently incorrect. I have previously written about an example where literally thousands of genealogies repeated precisely the same incorrect information (see: You Cannot Believe Everything That You Read). The persistent repetition of of the incorrect information seemed to add validity to the wrong information, encouraging others to continue adopting the false information into their own respective trees. Thus, in spite of the fact that accurate and correct information does exist, it is still more difficult to find than all of the incorrect genealogies.
These online trees are just a more modern version of the "biographicals" and "histories" that have been published in print (on actual paper) for centuries. It is therefore important to keep in mind that, just because you see it in writing, or just because it was published, it isn't necessarily true or accurate.
The following is yet another article highlighting the dangers of blindly accepting information published in so many online trees. As easy as it is to copy information contained in a tree that someone else already published, it is equally easy to end up with a tree filled with incorrect information. In other words, you may end up with a tre filled with people who have nothing to do with you.
The case in point in the following article relates to Hillary Clinton's family tree.
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