Mark Cole 1693-1705

Question

Mark Cole born 1693-1705 in Wales, Ireland, England, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island almost all the son of Elizabeth Temple and Stephen William Cole and died in North and South Carolina Oct 12 1769! Not really a question but an interesting puzzle. I was using MRCA in Gedmatch and found our GEDcoms did not agree. Somehow I pulled up all the Mark Coles' and was a little suprised at the differences in the information.

Answer 1

Bogus and conflicting information is rampant. A void leads to more of it. So when a time and place has poor documentation, or hard-to-view records, people use loose thinking or even invent garbage to fill the void. I find, for instance, that I find more garbage online about my colonial southern ancestors than about my colonial New England ancestors, because New England has better and more accessible records from that period. 

Sometimes, there are even multiple  conflicting pieces of garbage, as you seem to have found. And sometimes, in a few very fun cases, when you learn the source of the garbage, it is funny. Here is such an example posted just a couple of days ago:

https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1129302/third-husband-of-margaret-coffin-coffin-295