Taylor, I hope you teach them to pay attention to dates and locations. I just found a tree at ancestry that has my ggf, Levi Jester, b. 1850 Union County Arkansas m. to Rosannah Frazier, b. 1765. Rosannah's husband was Levi Jester. but he was born 1760 and died in GA in 1840s. This tree also has Levi of 1760 children who were b. bet 1790-1820 as the children of Levi b. 1850. Yep, Time traveling Gramps who had children older then himself.
The name Levi has a special place in Jester genealogy, usually the son named Levi is named for an uncle. We (Jester researchers) have recorded 6 instances of this occuring and only a couple of instances where Levi has a son Levi. My Levi 1850 had an Uncle Levi, who also had an Uncle Levi. AND it usually runs with a James and Thomas.
3rd GGM Mary Ann White Holmes Jester c. 1775-1852 ... in reality she was married 2ce as the full name suggests, had 4 daughters by her first husband, and 2 daughters and 5 sons by her 2nd, in South Carolina. Numerous ancestry trees has her married to a 3rd husband in Indiana, having children by this 3rd husband simultanously with the other two husbands. I found this because someone put the Indiana Mary Ann up as a daughter of Burgess White here. I already had my Mary Ann up. Tell me, how can a woman have two children in two different states the same year? AND this is repeated on several trees. 22 children in 2 states.
3rd GGM Elizabeth E. Ward. b.a 1813 England. I added her but another person here had her married to a Stephen Norton. He even had her dying in 1889 in Grant Co AR. Which mine did. He even had her parents. But I knew that my Elizabeth didn't marry Norton. I found a tree on ancestry that had her married to both Morton and Norton. And having children by both husbands, not only in the US, but in England at the same time. This person even put her up at FamilySearch Trees under the Elizabeth Ward I had entered worked on. So I went digging. I found the marriage to Stephen, the only marriage that came close to the time frame. Elizabeth would have been 11. And there was another tree at FST who had her married to Stephen and it was sourced with the same marriage record I had found. That Elizabeth was a few years older, making her about 16 at the time of the marriage. Stephen had been married before. AND there was the 1851 census. My Elizabeth was in Cherokee County, Texas in 1850. and Lafayette County, AR in 1860.
And now my latest find. Mary Ann Hay Jester and her sister Sarah J. Hay Jester, "orphan daughters of John Hay," as stated on a land sale document from Henry County, GA. 38 years of being one of my brick walls. The land doc was from the 1830s. The girls married brothers, Burgess and William Jester. I have their marriages, and the land sale. The only thing I have found that comes close is a marriage record that occurs about the time of the girls birth of John T G Hay to Mary Fry 23 December 1811, Wilkes County, GA. And a Jane Hay is on the lottery in Wilkes county. And that she is getting a draw and not John, probably means she is a widow. The girls were b. about 1810, twins? I have documents relating to their guardianship by a man named Boyenton. And William appying to have Sarah removed from the guardian. The girls are married and have children. I haven't found anything on Burgess and Mary and guardianship. BUT!!! a couple of trees have Mary Ann as the daughter of John who d. in 1847. No doubt because of the land sale that Mary and Sarah are the daughters of John, but if they are declared orphans in the 1830s, then he wasn't alive in 1847.
Is Mary and Jane of the marriage and land lottery the same person? Who knows at this point. Or if they are even the parents of Mary and Sarah.
I try to stay away from ancestry trees. My blood pressure has a tendency to go to near stroke levels.
