Kidnapping the ancestors of others from the Internet

A friend, and fellow genealogist, has discussed many times what she calls "people who kidnapped my ancestors." I guess I should explain. There are many researching their genealogy online, hopefully novice genealogists, but I fear not always, who, upon seeing a familiar name, will add the information to their family tree. These people do not verify that the family(ies) belong in their tree. They just see a familiar name and add the person, and their kin, to their family tree.

This has also happened to me a few times. A few years ago, when searching on ancestry.com, I happened upon one of my ancestors in the tree of another researcher. When I clicked on the person's tree, I saw all of my information in that person's tree. I then noticed a lot of other names of people I knew were not related to my ancestors, many of them German. When I contacted the owner of the tree, she informed me that "she was helping a friend get started on her family tree." She saw a familiar name and simply added that name (and all the people connected to my ancestor) to her friend's tree.

Verify, verify, verify! Document, document, document! We all have missing information and unintended errors in our family trees. This is compounded by people who post trees without first verifying the information is correct (to the best of their knowledge and efforts) and documenting their sources.


Blessings, 

T