A recent Canada’s History magazine column about genealogy fraud — in this century, the last century, and even Biblical times — has been making the rounds on social media.
Written by retired publisher and genealogist Paul Jones in his bi-monthly Roots column, the latest, Family Frauds, begins with a 1927 story about Gustave Anjou who authored at least 300 “genealogical” works, incorporating false information about as many as 2,000 different surnames.
Image courtesy Stuart Miles on FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
Mr. Anjou was not the only fraudster, and he certainly wasn’t the first — or the last.
In the mid-19th century, con men produced false family trees for a profit. Others embellished family history to satisfy their clients. According to Mr. Jones, even Burke’s Peerage has been known to publish false information about the origins of the aristocracy. As for the Bible and its suspect lineages, I’ll let you decide.
Mr. Jones writes that the problem of producing incorrect family trees continues today as people scour the internet for names, creating what he calls Frankentrees. “Spot tests by one researcher have found that more than half of online family trees are incorrect.
“Today the deceptions and the errors are self-imposed. Original records are available, but many prefer to delude themselves rather than to seek the facts.”
Don’t be one of those whose family tree is a Frankentree.
Look for other columns about genealogy written by Mr. Jones. A search on Canada’s History for “Paul Jones” resulted in 21 Roots columns.
