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Not All Tree Sitters Are Related

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By SHARON TATE MOODY

Tribune correspondent

Published: December 21, 2008

How many of you genealogists will admit that you have unproven, undocumented ancestors sitting in your family tree?

How the heck did they get there? Surely they didn't climb the tree of their own accord. Perhaps you found someone with one of your ancestor's names and a similar date of birth out there in another tree? Did you pluck him from that tree and add him to yours?

OK, you don't have to admit it out loud and you don't have to send your confessions to me in e-mail. But, if you want to get the imposters out of the family tree, you must at least admit these genealogy sins to yourself and start the purge.

Unfortunately, this sort of cross-pollination in the forest has wreaked havoc with family histories. Too often sloppy researchers find their ancestors on someone's Web site and copy it into their own records without any effort to validate the information.

After thousands of researchers have done this, the Internet is hopelessly filled with errors. I doubt anyone ever can correct the mess. But let's see how we keep it from getting worse.

A good example of how these things happen is in my Applewhite/Applewhaite line. When I was still wet behind the genealogy ears, I made an online inquiry into this surname and quickly was told by several others to contact a certain person who was "the" Applewhite authority.

I contacted the man, whom I will call Joe, who generously and proudly shared his information with me. Despite my best efforts at diplomacy, he got a little touchy and defensive when I asked where he got his information. It didn't take much effort on my part to find serious errors in his research - when I tried to share my newly found information with him, he discontinued communication with me altogether. How sad that his pride was more important than proving his true ancestry.

Oh, Henry's Not The Same

Much sadder, however, is that many Applewhite descendants have placed information on the Internet with his errors woven into their histories. Here was one of the problems:

The Henry Applewhite family was very prominent in Isle of Wight County, Virginia in the late 1600s and in the 1700s. During this same time frame, another Henry Applewhite family ran a large sugar plantation in Barbados. Initial research quickly offered evidence that the two Henry Applewhites were related, but they were not the same person.

The progenitor of the Virginia line was my ninth great-grandfather. The error that proliferates on the Internet is that Henry's wife was Ester Kingsland and that the two had migrated from Barbados to Virginia, where Henry died about 1704.

In Henry's will, probated on 9 May 1704 in Isle of Wight, he appointed his wife as his executor. As was so common in early wills, he did not give her name. He referred to her simply as "my wife." He did identify his children by name as Henry, Thomas, William, John and Ann.

Documentation on the Barbados Henry is quite good. A 27 November 1684 Barbados marriage license proves that a Henry Applewhite married Hester Kingsland. In 1705, that Henry's will was proven in the Barbados courts. It named his wife, Hester, and their children, Thomas, Margaret, Elizabeth, Frances and a married daughter, Hester Pare.

Common sense says that there were two Henry Applewhites. It is so obvious that the Barbados Henry did not migrate to Virginia. He died in Barbados in 1705 and is buried there - as is his widow.

My Henry's great-granddaughter Amy married a Richardson and named her first son Applewhite Richardson. A few weeks ago, I began planning a 2009 research trip to North Carolina, where I hope to explore the land owned by the Richardsons. While visiting the land, I hope to find the cemeteries in which Applewhite Richardson and his family are buried. In preparation for this trip, I searched the Internet to see what cemeteries have been identified in the general area where he lived.

I was excited to find several sites that stated unequivocably that Applewhite Richardson is buried in the Richardson Family Cemetery in Parker Heights, Johnston County, N.C.

So I sent e-mails to the individuals who had contributed information to several of the sites, asking for the specific location of the cemeteries. In the meantime I Googled and otherwise searched online for a place called Parker Heights. Magnifying glass in hand, I explored a variety of county maps for it. I contacted a history center in Johnston County. By this point I wasn't surprised when puzzled locals told me they had never heard of the Parker Heights area of the county.

Then I got an e-mail from one of the posters who told me he didn't know where the cemetery was and had never visited the area - but he gave me the name of the person from whom he got the information.

Surprise: It was my old friend Joe. Seems he continues to post incomplete information. I did learn from him that Parker Heights actually was an old plantation in the general area where Applewhite Richardson lived.

Then came the "AHA" moment: He told me that he "believes" Applewhite and his family (including his parents) are buried in the old cemetery on this plantation. Time apparently has taken its toll on homemade grave markers, no longer standing, and only one grave has a tombstone.

Despite my continued frustration with Joe and others like him, I do appreciate getting the clues they provide. The problem is that inexperienced and uneducated researchers take the inaccurate or incomplete postings as truth and compound the disinformation problem.

First Stop: State Archives

I know now that the first stop on my North Carolina trip will be to the state archives to locate deeds for the Richardson land. From there I will find all cemeteries on any of their land or in the general area of their land. If I can't find graves for my Richardsons and if I can prove that Applewhite Richardson or a close relative owned the land on which the Parker Heights plantation is identified, THEN I might agree with Joe that Applewhite and his family probably lie under those unmarked graves.

The key is that my research reports will say "probably" and will include an explanation of why I think that. Current posters on the Internet have failed to include this important explanatory step.

Before you climb any higher in your family tree, check out all the ancestors you've put there and make sure you have proof that they belong to you. When you post information online always include those key words like "possibly" or "probably" if you aren't absolutely sure. When someone reads your research, they should be able to follow what you've done and find the documents you used and the cemeteries you've visited - all without contacting you except to say, "Good job on your research."

Sharon Tate Moody is past president of the Association of Professional Genealogists. Send your genealogy questions and event announcements to her in care of Getaway, The Tampa Tribune, 200 S. Parker St., Tampa FL 33606, or wmoody3@tampabay.rr.com. She reg

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