Last month I discussed two of three types of common errors that can happen in family anecdotal histories. In this column I’ll discuss the third type of error – fraud. In many cases the fraud is not necessarily something that was done by a family member. It may have been done by someone hired to do genealogical research. Consider Gustave Anjou, who put together genealogies in the early part of the 20th century. Anjou was not a genealogist, he was a forger of genealogical records. Many of his wealthy clients, unaware of Anjou’s background, paid big dollars to find out who they might be related to (usually royalty) in order to increase their social status. Anjou always delivered what the client wanted. Unfortunately Anjou’s work still permeates many family trees to this day. For more information about Anjou’s frauds go to www.linkline.com/personal/xymox/fraud/fraud.htm In my own family I had information showing a connection to a general in Napoleon’s army. After some research, I found information showing this person quietly farming land on Jersey while he was supposedly doing battle in Russia. A researcher on Jersey suggested that it might be a “Payne job”. James Bertrand Payne published a book in the 19th century containing a number of highly dubious family "histories", taking eminent namesakes and claiming them as relatives to plump the family pride. The Internet, which has been a huge boon to genealogy, has also helped the spread of genealogical errors and fraud. The Internet has made it very easy for people to grab huge numbers of names to incorporate into their family trees. A basic rule of genealogy, to properly source information, applies especially to data collected from the Internet. Before you incorporate new data taken from the Internet, verify the source of the information. Contact the person who posted the data. Have them provide the sources for each piece of data. Try to locate a first generation source document (i.e. baptismal, marriage, death or military record). If your family tree shows that you are related to royalty, a possible way of verifying this is to look at the various royal genealogies that are posted to the Internet. A search for the words “royal genealogy” in your favourite search engine will produce dozens of websites devoted to listing genealogies of various royal families. Even if you are not related, some of these make interesting reading. For a few more frauds and dubious genealogies, have a look at the International Blacksheep Society’s genealogy hall of shame website which is located at: blacksheep.rootsweb.com/shame/ This column and other resource material, including a link to my own genealogy pages, can be found on the Internet at "www.rideau-info.com/genealogy/". I can be contacted by email at kwatson@kos.net. |