Agreed. I teach a genealogy class at the library that focuses on the PROPER use of the internet. The web has been a double edged sword. It has saved alot of time for many, but on the otherhand, so many mistakes have been pepetuated, that I get more disgusted by the day.
Oh you are right about that one! My hubby has an ancestor named Thomas McSwain. Thomas McSwain had a cousin born within about five years of him and who married a woman named Selena, and moved from the Carolinas to Tennesee. My hubby's Thomas stayed in the area, and married a woman named Frankie (Francis). We have a good paper trail on him and know where they were buried and all. But it's amazing how many times Frankie ends up in Tennessee in people's genealogies, and how one cousin claimes there was a Selena "Frankie", even though the records are pretty clear for those who are really looking.
And I won't talk about one of my family lines who tried to kidnap the line of one of the early Dutch families, but it turns out they are probably from the Orkneys instead. They don't match the Dutch family's dna...but the paper records told me they weren't connected years ago... But the same stuff gets repeated anyway.
I know it. In my family somebody made a mistake years ago and traced our ancestry to a rich, aristocratic family in England, where the castle by the same name still stands. The error was perpetuated on the Internet. Now all the myriad American ancestors think they're descended from nobility and are entitled to display that English family's crest. However, more careful research has shown that we come from a line of horse thieves, whoremongers, and losers. But nobody wants to hear that. I think it's hilarious.
I have been doing genealogy research off and on for about 25 years and it is very easy to make an error if you don't know what you are doing. (Not saying I know what I'm doing, but I've learned a lot.) First someone gets some information wrong, then publishes it (especially since the internet came along),then others pick it up and spread it further. Pretty soon you have umpteen family trees online and they all came from that first incorrect one. Since I found a website that says that I'm related to Francis Scott Key, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ty Cobb (that one is for real), I've gotten more careful about having the sources to back it up.
I recently got a copy of Family Tree Maker and a free year of Ancestry.com came with it. I'm afraid a lot of people will be misled by their new offering. You click a link to "Find Famous Relatives", which is based on a database of users family trees.
My 7th great grandparents are Matthias Chitwood and Mary Key. Between the two of them I am supposedly related to folks from Issac Newton to J.P. Morgan to Henry David Thoreau to Audrey Hepburn. One ancester shows a relation to (gasp!) Hillary Rodham. God forbid.
So, for anyone wanting to do research, get those sources. Oh yeah catfish...I got a couple of brick walls that need a sledgehammer. Maybe you have some ideas for me.