Genealogy magazines and hoax articles

[SusanEW]

Has anyone had the experience of coming across an interesting 'reader submitted' story in a magazine and then realised that it is a hoax - a complete fabrication? I read this type of family story occasionally and assume that I am being told the truth: that some fellow family historian has gone to a great deal of trouble assembling and presenting their material in order to inform and entertain the readership. Perhaps this is not always the case!

I came across an old (2011) magazine with an article based on a reader's family heirloom - a diary written by an ancestor in the 1830s. The author told the story of an English family moving to Wales and detailed some of the events in their lives over a couple of generations. The article included images of the front of the diary and a double page spread with the actual words (supposedly) of his 3x great grandmother. I was very interested in this story as the family had moved to the same town as one of my families, worked in the same industry and were probably neighbours of my ancestors. Always eager for background information, I wondered if I could contact the author and find out more about the contents of this wonderful document.

I read on and was surprised at some the details given as they didn't fit in with my general knowledge the social history of the period. There were a number of anomalies, but I thought I must be wrong - after all, there it was in black and white in this document of 'primary evidence'. I started searching for the family on findmypast.co.uk, and then did a little work on Ancestry.co.uk. These people didn't exist! Or, giving the author the benefit of the doubt, perhaps he had changed the names? Well, I tracked down the real family tree of this author on Ancestry (he has even posted a photograph of himself) and the details given in the magazine article just don't match his actual ancestors. I am now certain it was a fake diary and that explained why so many of the details just didn't make sense. I took a magnifying glass to the image of the diary page as reproduced in the magazine which allowed me to read the rather small text. More anomalies and unlikely 'facts'!

I know it must be difficult for magazine editors to verify everything they publish. It took me some time to research this one article and I can imagine publishers just don't have the staff time available to check out all items submitted to them. They are looking for copy every month to fill pages and they have to rely on the honesty of their readers. It has taught me a lesson and I will look more closely at some of the material presented to me as 'family history'.

 

[CarolB08]

Yes I always believed what I read in family history magazines, however in the future I might look more closely into the facts before I take them as gospel

 

[Alexander Bisset]

Yes I always believed what I read in family history magazines, however in the future I might look more closely into the facts before I take them as gospel

If I took such stories as gospel then I'd know for sure they were made up stories!!

 

[patzy]

Every now and then Ancestry tells me that someone is working on one of my ancestors. I go to look at the relevant tree and it's one where the owner has accepted and added to the tree every hint offered by the Ancestry hint generator.... Imagine how true a story from such a tree would be.

Then there was that spate of book The Story of Smith, or Jones or whatever, that came out some years ago. They were all the same text with the surnames changed to suit the gullible buyer.

It takes time, but it always pays to check the data for yourself.

 

[peter]

Sometimes the author of an article will write as if it's their family even though it isn't - for example, the person concerned may have given permission for the article to be written on the understanding that they won't be mentioned.

From the point of view of the average reader, why would it matter? However, I'd like to think that the Editor of the magazine did know the truth.

 

[CarolB08]

Every now and then Ancestry tells me that someone is working on one of my ancestors. I go to look at the relevant tree and it's one where the owner has accepted and added to the tree every hint offered by the Ancestry hint generator...

I very rarely add any of the hints that Ancestry give me, unless I am sure it is right or it confirms what I know or suspect anyway. And I never link to any ones tree either.

 

[SusanEW]

Sometimes the author of an article will write as if it's their family even though it isn't - for example, the person concerned may have given permission for the article to be written on the understanding that they won't be mentioned.

From the point of view of the average reader, why would it matter? However, I'd like to think that the Editor of the magazine did know the truth.

Thank you everyone for your responses. The editor did not know the truth in this instance and was quite shocked by the deceit. The magazine's resident genealogist was asked to investigate and came to pretty much the same conclusion regarding the details on this supposed family - it had been 'made up'. I know that the author was contacted but I think the editor did not want to make a direct accusation. He certainly didn't admit that he had created a fake diary page, photographed it and submitted the image as a genuine 19th century artefact. He invented people, events and circumstances and presented it all as real family history. A few days later I noted that his online tree on Ancestry had been switched from 'public' to 'private' - he knew he had been caught out and clearly didn't want people to be able to compare the real and the false.

I admit that the 'average reader' would probably not mind if details of names, exact dates etc were altered, but this article went much further. The historical inaccuracies were very misleading if you read the piece as a bit of social history - it would have given you a distorted view of the lives of working people in that place during the early Victorian period. The editor was not happy about it as, to quote from one of the emails I received "the assumption is that items accepted for publication in ....... reflect ‘real’ family history, and not purposeful fabrication or fiction" and "so that our journals provide a useful research aid, and don’t mislead people and waste others’ time."