When I think of genealogical frauds I usually think about those quirky amateur genealogies published in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Lofty connections with little or no evidence. Lots of oral history. Then too, I think of the defenders of this old material. Generally people who fulfilled the requirements for a high school diploma some time in the ancient past, but never again gave a thought to...
I wonder sometimes. Genealogists are supposed to use the earliest attested name. The rule is often glossed as requiring genealogists to use the “birth name“. We had a debate on Geni.com a while back about the name of Jesus. I still don’t feel comfortable with the result. The Messianic Jews argued stridently in favor of Hebraicizing his name. The Christians argued just as...
Our world is shifting. Once upon a time we thought humans spread from Africa, eventually reached and spread through Europe, then settled down to several millennia of farming — punctuated by invasions and population movements in historic times that are more or less known. Well, we didn’t exactly think that, but if you didn’t take time to make a study of it you could be...
James Tanner warns us about using GEDCOM. Info stored in a way that it is only portable by GEDCOM might be lost. “Even if you were successful in having someone in your family accept the information in GEDCOM format, it is very likely that much of the value of the information would be lost.“ “The Dangers of Using GEDCOM“, by James Tanner, at Genealogy’s Star (Apr. 13...