The Chlorophyll Family "Tree"
Last night, I finally got around to searching the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints's genealogy website. Naturally, the first name I sought was "Chlorophyll", since it is, to my knowledge, unique to my family. I was surprised to see oodles of references to people that aren't in my widespread family. Did I miss a connection somewhere in my roots? Did someone else have the same idea of making up the name, as my grandfather did? Or, since the information about known ancestors wasn't always accurate (including incorrect birth years or locations), maybe all these strangers I'm allegedly related to are mistakes from whomever created the data that made it onto the website. (Lord knows that "Chlorophyll" has been misspelled and/or mispronounced enough times in my life.) I also wonder why I found references to myself and my brothers but only some of my cousins. Where are the others which I know I'm related to?
I then looked up my father's birth name, since it wasn't until between my second uncle's and my aunt's birth that my grandfather Americanized it. (Note that I didn't say "Anglicized". My mom once referred to my dad as an "Anglo", and he pitched a fit because his family was Polish, not English.) The 1940 census data was accurate; it listed my grandparents and their three sons. (My aunt hadn't been born yet.) Other data also listed my father's aunts, but this is horribly incorrect. Not only were they children of my great-grandmother's second husband (so their last names would be different than that of their older siblings), they were on my grandmother's side, so they never would've had that great-grandfather's name in the first place. (Or maybe Loretta and Adeline were popular names back in the 1910's.)
I found enough inaccurate information (I'm even taking for granted that so many name changes were the fault of Ellis Island) that I wonder how useful the website actually is. What's the point of using it, if you need to know everything about your family already before you log on?
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