The Genealogy of Jesus

Because it can't be repeated often enough...

Rule #4: The Bible is not a source for your family tree.

A few months ago someone made this comment on my Facebook page, "If you believe the Biblical accounts, once you got back to Joseph, the rest is done for you, back to Adam." As always I will not address religious beliefs so we'll skip over the "If you believe" part.
At the time that comment was posted I was listening to a book I read years ago. When I read it I had not yet been bitten by the genealogy bug. As I went through it this time I had a completely different perspective.

"Of all the many thousands of accidental mistakes made in our manuscripts, probably the most bizarre is one that occurs in a minuscule manuscript of the four Gospels officially numbered 109, which was produced in the fourteenth century. Its peculiar error occurs in Luke, chapter 3, in the account of Jesus's genealogy. The scribe was evidently copying a manuscript that gave the genealogy in two columns. For some reason, he did not copy one column at a time, but copied across the two columns. As a result, the names of the genealogy are thrown out of whack, with most people being called the sons of the wrong father. Worse still, the second column of the text the scribe was copying did not have as many lines as the first, so that now, in the copy he made, the father of the human race (i.e., the last one mentioned) is not God but an Israelite named Phares; and God himself is said to be the son of a man named Aram!"

Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart D. Ehrman

The printing press wasn't invented until the 15th century. That's a few thousand years of transcriptions and translations. To use The Bible as a source you would be trusting a transcription of a transcription of a transcription of a translation of a transcription of a...you get the idea. Most were done by scribes, many of whom were copying things they could not actually read. Those who could read might add or leave out a word if they didn't agree with something.
Of course none of that matters because you cannot get "back to Joseph."
"But..." Nope.
"I saw a tree..." No!
It is just not possible to have a documented line from a living person to anyone in The Bible so please stop.


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High Cheekbones and Straight Black Hair

For many years a colleague of mine thought I was half Hungarian, half Japanese. Why? Because I resemble another friend of hers who is half Hungarian, half Japanese. You can see from my family's DNA results that there is no way I am half Hungarian or half Japanese.
Some of you seem to think certain physical traits can be assigned to a specific ethnicity. Like everyone with high cheekbones and/or straight black hair has Native American ancestry. That photo of your ancestor is not definitive proof that he/she was Native American.
Does this person "look Indian" to you?

Behind the scenes on Cecil B. DeMille's Unconquered, 1947. [Tumblr]

That is William Henry Pratt, a.k.a. Boris Karloff. He was born in London, England and is of Anglo-Indian descent, not Native American.
What about the iconic "Crying Indian"?

That is Espera Oscar de Corti, a.k.a. Iron Eyes Cody. He was born in Louisiana to Sicilian immigrants. He has no Native American ancestry whatsoever.
Your family photo is proof of nothing. Stop making assumptions based on looks. You just look foolish and sound racist.

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I Just Can't Wait to Be King

“Trust me, Wilbur. People are very gullible. They'll believe anything they see in print.”
― E.B. White, Charlotte's Web

From surname books that have little to nothing to do with genealogy to flat out lies like "family coats of arms" there will always be people trying to make a quick buck from genealogy. There always have been. The easiest prey are those who want fame, a royal connection.
Royal wannabes can buy fake coats of arms (most sites are not as upfront about the fake part as that one), their own royal portrait or their own royal title. I can't believe how many people have fallen for the latter one. They are easy to find because once someone is titled they need a website and/or a Facebook fan page to tout their importance and communicate with the little people.
The entire front page of the Royal Titles site focuses on impressing those who are, obviously, beneath you, and giving you a sense of self-importance.

"Sense of Grandeur and Historical Belonging, Social Status and Prestige, Instantly Perceived Glamour, Power and sense of difference and Privilege, Preferential treatment Everywhere, An incredible Source of Joy, Happiness and Amusement." 

The capitalization of random words really emphasizes the professionalism and trustworthiness of the site. (My kingdom for a sarcasm font!)

"We can offer a number of Royal Titles to choose." 

Because everyone knows if the King/Queen wants to knight you you can say, "Um, I'd rather be a Baron." Check out their disclaimer page. The site "does not sell noble titles." Yet a "Single Royal and Noble Title and Royal Medal is EUR €199." If you want to see what that gets you click here.
There are free sites that feed the royal wannabes need for these things. Most of the information on these sites has been copied to numerous Ancestry Member Trees (AMTs). At least Ancestry does its part to keep information on living people private. These other sites usually have no privacy boundaries but like a majority of AMTs, they have no credible sources. This one has profiles copied from a handful of books. From the "sources" section of the FAQ page:

"About half way through this exercise, I acquired a copy of S&N’s Royalty database, and merged this with my own database. Given I already had around 20,000 quite detailed records at this point, and the S&N was around 106,6000 separate records (with little detail given and absolutely no sources), this merging process took me a considerable period of time." 

No sources? No SOURCES! And you want to merge with it, why?
Then there's this one. Go to one of the indices and click through to a random entry. Chances are the only "source" you'll see is WorldRoots.com, a website that no longer exists. The only way to view it is with the WayBack Machine.
You might be thinking, "Well, no one would take those unsourced profiles as fact." I hate to burst your bubble but I didn't search for these sites. They were posted to Facebook threads by people encouraging others to use them.
What will it take to get these people to search for a record?


ADDITIONAL READING:
Genealogy as a Fraud from Genealogy's Star
Genealogy Scams: What You Need to Know About Generic Surname Histories and Coats of Arms from Price & Associates Genealogical Services
Myths, Hoaxes & Scams from Cyndi's List


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Ye Gods!

Rule #9: The gods do not belong on your family tree.

There are literally thousands of trees on Ancestry.com with profiles for Gaia. Some of you may think, "None of those could possibly connect to living people." That would be the logical assumption anyway, that these are strictly mythological trees. Unfortunately that is not the case. I chose one of the crazier ones to feature here but I, and my wrist (in pain from all the clicking), can attest to the fact that some of these tree owners think they are descended from the gods of Greek mythology.
If you were going to create a tree to help you learn about the gods wouldn't you want it to be correct? If you thought, wrongly of course, you were related to them wouldn't you want your tree to be perfect? I know the relationships between the gods can get a little twisted but this is ridiculous.

Gaia of Greek Mythology Primodial goddess of the Earth

 SPOUSES, no children

 Aether Titan Primordial god of Light
 Aether Titan Primordial god of Light
 Father Sky Uranus
 Greek God Creation PHANES*
 Private
 Tartaros
 Tartarus Primordial god of the Abyss**

 CHILDREN with Unknown Spouse(s)

  ✿ Cleta Cleocharia the Naiad
  ✿ Uranus aka Sky Ouranos 1st Ruler GOD the Universe ***
  ✿ Creusa Naiad

 SPOUSES and children

 Cecrops I Athens
  ✿ Cranaus of Athens
 Draco of the Gods
  ✿ Echion of the Gods
 Oceanus God The Oceans Of Titans
  ✿ Asopus RIVER GOD
  ✿ Clymene Klymene of the Oceanides
  ✿ Creusa Naiad
  ✿ Iepatus God Titan of the West and Mortality
  ✿ Pleione Dione The Oceanide Nymph
 None as Pontus was Sea God First one born
  ✿ Phorcus Phorcys The Old Man of the Sea Titan God of The depths
  ✿ Pontus Primordial god of the Sea ***
 Pontus Primordial god of the Sea
  ✿ Eurybia The "Strong Goddess"
  ✿ Nereus Greek Mythology The Old man of the Sea
  ✿ Thaumas (the awe-striking "wonder" of the Sea, embodiment of the sea's dangerous aspects)
  ✿ Phorcus Phorcys The Old Man of the Sea Titan God of The depths
  ✿ Ceto/Keto Oceanic Deity Theoi Halioi Goddess of Sea Monsters
 Soil Primordial God
  ✿ Cecrops Athens
  ✿ Cranaus Athens
 Tethys Titan
  ✿ Iepatus God Titan of the West and Mortality
  ✿ Pleione Oceanide
 Zeus aka Zeus Jupiter OLYMPUS OLYMPIAN
  ✿ Cleocharia NAIAD
  ✿ Tethys Goddess The Ocean Of Titans
 Uranus aka Sky Ouranos 1st Ruler GOD the Universe
  ✿ Asopus RIVER GOD
  ✿ Briares Hundred Handed One, Hekatonkheiree
  ✿ Cecrops Athens
  ✿ Cecrops I Athens ***
  ✿ Ceto/Keto Oceanic Deity Theoi Halioi Goddess of Sea Monsters
  ✿ Cleocharia II the Naiad
  ✿ Clymene Klymene of the Oceanides
  ✿ Cottus Hundred Handed One, Hekatokheire
  ✿ Cranaus Athens
  ✿ Crius Krious The Ram the Titans
  ✿ Dione
  ✿ Doris The
  ✿ Eurybia
  ✿ Eurynome
  ✿ Goddess the Underworld Styx
  ✿ Gyges Hundred Handed One, Hekatonkheire
  ✿ Hiperión περίων Hyperíôn Dios de la Observación TITAN Titan of the East and Light
  ✿ Hyperion Elder God of the Titan of the East and Ligh
  ✿ Iepatus God Titan of the West and Mortality
  ✿ Koios Coeus Titan of the North and Intellec
  ✿ Kronos Cronos King of the Titans, Titan of Time and Agriculture
  ✿ Mnemosyne Titaness of Memory and Remembrance
  ✿ Oceanus God The Oceans Of Titans
  ✿ Okeanides Nymphs Springs Fountains
  ✿ Phoebe Phoibe "radiant, bright, prophetic" Titaness of Darkness and Mysteries
  ✿ Phorcus The Titan
  ✿ Pleione Dione The Oceanide Nymph
  ✿ Poyomoi River Gods
  ✿ Rhea (Rheia) the Titan Titaness of Family and Nature
  ✿ Scamander Xantus TEUCRI
  ✿ Simöeis Troy
  ✿ Theia Euryphaëssa (Theia, Aethra) Θεία Ευρυφάεσσα "Wide Shining" Titan Goddess of Sight
  ✿ Themis Titaness of Justice and Law
  ✿ Tethys Goddess The Ocean Of Titans
  ✿ Uranus stRuler God Universe

* Also Gaia's step-mother
** Also Gaia's sibling
*** Also Gaia's spouse

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The Rules

Rule #3: Your family tree cannot connect living people to persons who lived during Biblical times.
"But The Bible..." No.
"But once you hit royalty..." No.
"But [whatever other reason lacking common sense you can come up with]..." No!

 Don Consobrina Verch Mathonwy
 Birth 100 BC in Arimathaea, Ramathaim Zophim, now, Israel
 Death 80 BC in Ely, Cambridgeshire, England

 PARENTS
 Joseph Saint James Armimathea
 Anna Verch Eleazor

If you have a profile to suggest please email the link to buwt(at)gmail(dot)com. Thanks!

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Bizarro Genealogy World

One thing that really sets me off is getting facts wrong. You can ask any of my friends. If anything they post on Facebook is urban legend or just a flat out lie I'm there with the link to the Snopes.com article.
Sadly last Monday's episode of Genealogy Roadshow (PBS) continued the spread of a common genealogical myth. You can view the episode here. The following starts at about the 32:30 mark.

D. Joshua Taylor, Roadshow genealogist, speaking:
This is something, as a genealogist, we get asked all the time. People say, "My name was changed at Ellis Island." That's partially true. It wasn't necessarily a case of you saying, "My name is Abraham Blechmann" [pronouncing it as Bleekman] and we say, "Okay your new name is John Smith." Didn't exactly happen like that. When you arrived you were basically taken to a room and they asked you what your name was. The person sitting behind the table might not speak German. Might not speak Russian, or Italian or whichever country they are dealing with. They are literally processing thousands of immigrants. They would spell the name how they heard it. So in this case we don't know how Abraham pronounced his name. What we know is that the person who wrote down the name spelled it b-l-e-c-h-m-a-n-n.

If you aren't familiar with this particular myth here is an explanation from Megan Smolenyak's book Who Do You Think You Are? The Essential Guide to Tracing Your Family History.

Our name was changed at Ellis Island. No, it wasn't. Your ancestor changed it after the fact, probably Americanizing it by lopping off a couple of syllables (Villapiano becomes Villa), translating (Weiss becomes White), dropping accents or "extra" letters (Smolenyak used to begin with Szm), picking an Anglo-sounding version (Lewinsky becomes Lewis), and so forth. Ellis Island was staffed with people who spoke dozens of languages and were mostly checking names against lists generated at the port of departure. In spite of what you might have seen in The Godfather, they didn't substitute village names for surnames or arbitrarily assign "more American" names to immigrants.

Is it possible someone changed their name before getting on the boat? Yes, but whatever name they gave for the ship's manifest before it set sail was the name they had when they left Ellis Island. 
To Mr. Taylor's credit he published a correction on his blog on Tuesday. Unfortunately the average viewer isn't going to ask, "Is that really true?" They saw it on television, on PBS even, so it must be true and so the myth will live on. A great opportunity to dispel the myth and it's gone.
This episode had another genealogical Bizarro World moment. Not only did Ellis Island intake agents just write down what they heard but census enumerators were completely accurate. Josh Taylor again:

It isn't until the 1910 census he delivers his name as Blackman. [Census image is shown on the screen.]

Really? So that's it? The census shows "Blackman" so their name is Blackman? Census takers rarely asked for the spelling of someone's name. They really did just write down what they heard. My ancestors are on two censuses as Galespy and Gilaspie. That doesn't make either of those the definitive spelling of my surname.
On Monday I'm hoping to just sit back and enjoy the show. We'll see.


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RELATED POSTS: 
Your Ancestor's Immigration Experience and the Ellis Island Myth from the Genealogy Insider Blog
Why Your Family Name Was Not Changed at Ellis Island (and one that was) from the New York Public Library Blog

A Must Read Book for 'Newbies'

On St. Patrick's Day I pulled out the WDYTYA? companion book again. Just wanted to read the bit in Chapter 8 about Megan's search for President Obama's Irish ancestors. I decided to read it again from the beginning since I hadn't pulled it out in a while. Is there a way to make this book required reading for anyone who wants to start working on their family tree? In just the first twenty pages she covers a majority of the pitfalls for newbies. In one section of Chapter 1, "Don't Believe Everything You Read or Hear," she succinctly debunks these common genealogical myths:

1. Our name was changed at Ellis Island.
2. We're descended from a Cherokee princess.
3. Three brothers came to America. One went north, one went south, and one went west.
4. Here's your coat of arms!

After the jump is an excerpt from Chapter 1 that I think is spot on for this blog ;-)
Seriously, go get a copy.