>>213657274
You have to be careful with the online services and definitely verify the information among them. I remember in the early 2000s my mother had a big tree set up on Ancestry.com and one day it was edited with a big new branch added off a previous "dead end" great-great uncle.
Turns out her cousin (a burgeoning amateur genealogist herself) had become good friends with a woman in a local family of the same last name, and found out old Great-Grandpa SoAndSo Samename had the same name, in the same area, and same general age range as was known to match Great-uncle DeadEnd. So Cousin went and started filling a bunch of shit in on her tree, and my mom's open tree on Ancestry (as it was set up to be open for cousins and whatnot to contribute and add to it). Cousin and her friend were tickled pink about being third cousins or whatever.
My mother was unimpressed and a stickler for documentation of any figure or relationship in her tree (something I will attest to as I was tasked many times to search ledger, microfilm and microfiche, for birth, death, and marriage certificates in many a county courthouse or archive). So a big fight ensues with cousin and cousin's main evidence is there was never any doubling of that name in availible censuses; so nothing directly contradicting the connection either (and lack of documentation of DeadEnd in general didn't help and Samename family didn't know of much). So my mother sends out feelers on forums, BBS, and IRC genealogy channels.
Some distant aunt of Samename family catches wind of it checks the tree and immediately calls bullshit on the connection and pulls out Grandpa Samename's documented story that does not line up with Great-uncle Deadend in the least. Unfortunately never found concrete fate of Deadend, but Aunt Samename became good friends with my mother, firstly over the net but then in person when my mom could still travel; they were both genealogists and sticklers for doing things properly.
