A plea to those who perpetuate bad limbs on their family trees

There are many in the genealogy world who copy erroneous information to their family trees, picking the rotten limbs off other trees and passing them on and on. This blog is created in a hope of helping to end some of this. It does no one any good to pass on misinformation and blatantly fraudulent branches on your tree. Put some effort into your work and produce a tree your family can be proud of, accurate and reliable.

Monday, January 31, 2011

Tidd/Todd; Oh my God!

I've found many errors over the years, some already published, many not. This one is particulary aggravating as it (1) involves my family and (2)I had already explained to another researcher years ago that the Tidd family had nothing to do with the Todd family. This erroneous connection, included on a number of trees on the web now involves John Tidd of Woburn Massachusetts. I don't know how this came about but someone, unable to locate the English connection to their Massachusetts immigrant decided somehow to latch onto someone elses and others, unwilling to check the information themselves have perpetuated it. One of the bad things about the internet is once these things happen, it seems to grow, like a weed. Anyway, John Tidd settled in Woburn and a John Tidd is later found in Groton in 1676, present when the Indians attacked and burned the town. Someone decided that he was the son of William Todd of Pontefract England. NO! He's not! John Todd of Rowley Massachusetts(lived and died there and was never in Woburn), cousin to Christopher Todd, was son of Christopher's uncle John Todd, brother to William II of Pontefract. William I was the father of John and William and was married to Isabel Rogerson. And, by the way, he is listed as a husbandman in English records, not a miller.
In any case, in the sixteen years I have researched the Todds, I have never seen the name confused with that of Tidd, except by people who want to latch onto someone else's tree because they can't find their own.
If you read this and have this error in your tree (unfortunately there are either no email contact information for many of these trees or no one wants to respond), please remove it. It's wrong. Wishing it were so, doesn't make it legitimate. Do your own research, find your real family, if you can. But if you can't, it's not right to take someone elses and pretend its yours.

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