Babcock family of Rhode Island

Question

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Babcock-1662

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Babcock-1295

In my delightful discovery of my error list, a couple of Babcocks showed up needing some correction. Okay. I'm good with it and adopted them but they are a mess. I haven't done anything with Babcocks before (I'm still waiting for others to approve merges on Yoakum/Yocum, etc.) but these profiles are a mess. I found one earlier profile that was beautifully done, but most are unsourced with unbelievable errors like children born after the mother is dead or she's over 100 when they're born! I can't research them right now, so what is the correct way to let folks know that the profiles are bad? Thanks, Cari

Comments

I'm working on my Babcock line and I'm finding that this family is like, a giant jumbled mess, lol. I think it's due to the fact that there was a lot (a LOT) of distant cousins marrying distant cousins, all with the same names! I'm diving into the genealogy books and am planning on taking a trip to the local Family History center to do some lookups next week. Hopefully, this crazy line will be figured out at some point! :)

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Love the tag "hideous_messes"...

Answer 1

Add this [[Category:Serious Data Problems]] Also leave a note at the top of the profile mentioning some of the errors.

Comments

Thank you, Anne B.!

Answer 2

I have one recommendation of what not to do: Don't post a comment on the profile, nor send a PM to the profile manager, that insults the profile manager or accuses them of incompetence. It's far too easy to write comments that offend the recipient  (I know this because I fear that I do it almost daily without hardly trying). And it's likely that the profile manager is another good-hearted volunteer who adopted a pathetic profile, just as you did...

Comments

That's especially good advice for me. Tactless is my middle name!

Thanks, Ellen.

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I have, in fact, adopted a couple of other pathetic profiles for this same family, and I have some Babcock ancestors.

The Babcocks arrived in New England too late to be covered by The Great Migration series of books, and I've not found much in the way of online records for 17th-century southern Rhode Island.  I have seen some interesting stories (likely a mixture of truth and fantasy, and of course not supported by sources) about the earliest Babcocks of Rhode Island. The early 20th-century genealogy book at https://archive.org/stream/genealogicalreco1909brow is an introduction to the family lore, with some genealogy that may be good. There was an article entitled "Early settlers of Westerly, Rhode Island" in the NEHGR in 1860 that outlines data in wills, etc., and likely was used as a basis for that book that I linked to.

The lineages in WikiTree don't necessarily match what I've seen in these other documents.

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Thank you, Ellen. I wasn't finding much primary material online either. Okay, I'm off to unscramble Babcocks!  Cari

Uh, ps. None of the Wikitree lineages for Babcock are in agreement from what I can see.

Answer 3

I have a copy of Babcock Genealogy by Steven Babcock and would be glad to do lookups for you. Judy Bramlage

Answer 4

This was a request made originally in 2016. I've added a bio and source for Joseph Babcock https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Badcock-149

Comments

We are in a time warp! But I see Sara has really cleaned this up since the first posting!

Answer 5

A request made originally in 2016, I've cleaned the profile of James Babcock https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Babcock-97

Comments

Another awesome clean-up job. Thank you sara!