I just received an email from FamilySearch.org that is telling me I am related to Pocohantas. I will tell you that I am not even going to look at how they perceive this connection. Why? Because it is based on their One-World-Tree and we know that tree is not worth anything.
Over the past 5 years or so since they first produced the Relatives Around Me app I have attended numerous conferences and used the web version while attending virtual conferences and in all this time I have had only one confirmed connection. That was to Pamela Boyer Sayre, Certified Genealogist ®.
Is this a fluke? Do I simply not have close relatives who attend such conferences? The answer is no, that is not why. The reason is, I know my 4th great grandfather, Thomas Newbern who married Kizzie Collins [i] Now there is some dispute about whether his daughter Nancy, who married Littleberry Walker, Jr. around circa 1820. Well, Ms. Sayre shares the same Thomas Newbern and Kizzie Collins. She has confirmed that line and I have confirmed my line. So this one we can trust, we are 4th cousins.
All of the other connections come in around 7th to 15th cousins and unless each party has proven via documentation for their line to the Most Common Ancestor (MCA), don’t believe it. You may treat the information as clues, but you must do your own work.
That brings up a dangerous path that some research may be directed to achieve the results we want and not take a truly objective view. Right now, I have set aside working on my Thomas line for a Sons of the American Revolution (SAR) packet and decided to take up my paternal great-grandmother’s line, which is the Carter line. Not the Carter line that might lead to the 98-year-old cousin Jimmy but my other Carter line. Now, that patriot is already approved in both the DAR and SAR however, like my Thomas line, the entrance was decades ago and the research is a bit sketchy. I could do my research such that it aligns with the existing evidence but I won’t. There were at least two William Carters who could be the father to my g-grandmother’s father, Isham Carter, and I want sufficient proof it was the grandson of the patriot.
This is the same approach you need to take in all of your research. Sometimes, the only conclusion we can arrive at is, ‘based on family lore.’ That is the case for one of my clients looking for DAR supplementals where we have a known patriot. In one particular case, there is absolutely no known document existing to show that a woman named, Phaeda, was ever a Yates. It has been told by family members and is in numerous authored books. But without source citation to substantiate the claim.
One possible method for my Carter research is a book, basically, a memoir, written by someone who knew William Carter. Once I get to see that book, I could use it since it would be a first-hand account of the facts and would suffice for proof. Even when written 50 years after the fact.
All of this is to remind you what I have said many times, DO NOT TRUST OTHER PEOPLE’S TREES!
[i] 1820 U. S. Census, Appling County, GA, page 5, line 29, hhld of Thos. Newburn, Ancestry.com (www.Ancestry.com: accessed 13 Mar 2023), citing NARA publication M33, roll 6.