Disproven Existence notice: Cooke line 1025-1425 of South and East England.

Question

The Cook(e) family of Essex / London / Suffolk, England (with forays into Leicestershire and Lincolnshire) runs in an unbroken line from Sir William Daniel Cook born 1025 in Pre-Conquest London to Sir Norman Cooke of Lavenham, Suffolk born c.1360. This line of 30 people is on this FSP here, and all 30 are the subject of this Disproven Existence notice. This post follows on from this G2G post where we asked for evidence for the existence of the given forebears of Robert Cooke of Lavenham who was a real person. 

The England Project Managed Profiles team has not found any evidence for the existence of the Cook(e) family members listed. The forenames are too modern for this period (Garry, Larnie, Stacie) and people did not have middle names at that time. None of the Knighthoods attributed to the men can be verified. A common source given on these profiles is the unsourced "LeGrande Family Tree"  on Rootweb (the whole Rootsweb site will be closed down by Ancestry on 15 April 2023). A similar and more extensive tree on Geni has been labelled Fictional and this was not disputed on the discussion page from 2019  

Proposal:

1. All the Cook(e) line profiles named in the FSP are labelled Uncertain Existence.

2. People have another full week to provide evidence for these profiles named in the FSP, after which they will be adopted by the Disproven Existence Project, and their profiles amended to reflect their Disproven status.

3. Robert Cooke-147, (the earliest real person in the line) will be adopted and PPP'd by the England Project to prevent another version of this Cook(e) fabrication from being created and attached back to a real person.

Jo, England Project Managed Profiles Team coordinator

 

Answer 1

Well done!  Too many Cookes spoil the genealogy!

Answer 2

The one week grace period has now expired. Nobody has come forward with any evidence for the existence of the 30 people in the Cooke Tree. I will create a category under the "Frauds and Fabrications" heading to group all these profiles and the explanatory FSP. 

If they are taken into the care of the Disproven Existence Project, it would be preferable to keep the lineage structure to show the comparison with the similar trees on other genealogy sites.

Edit 30 March 2023: This category is here

Comments

I would strongly recommend that the lineage structure of the fraud be kept intact on the free-space profile attached to the category, rather than in the data field.  Then that free-space profile can be referenced in all the affected profiles in addition to being available to anyone who follows the trail from disproven profile to category to free-space profile.  What is problematic to me is to retain the lineage structure in the data field, because persons who never existed cannot have parents, spouses and children.  Material presented in the data field needs to be supported by documentation in the narrative showing that the material in the data field is true -- which in the case of disproven people is by definition impossible!

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I hear what you are saying Jack, but this removes the easily viewable frame of reference. And by extension, if their relationships are not worth keeping, then their dates and locations aren't either. Or names. Because nothing about these people is real.

If the fabricated tree remains intact, the person who is coming to WikiTree to look for "their Cooke ancestors" will see that everyone in the constructed tree is labelled Disproven Existence which I think makes a more powerful impression than finding isolated profiles.

I have to say that working my way from profile to profile on Geni on the supposed family tree (all labelled Fictional) made hunting down all the affected profiles on WikiTree so much easier.

If the Disproven Existence Project really is pushing for all of these profiles to be disconnected from each other, I suppose a link could be added back to their equivalent Geni profile to show how the tree was meant to look.