What can be done if managed but under-sourced profiles contain serious error, ref. Rickard-201 & Harber-98?

+6 votes
269 views
I am not the manager of Rickard-201 or Harber-98, but the errors contained in their profiles affect profiles I do manage. These errors are: (1) that Rickard-201 married Harber-98 in 1842 in Buckinghamshire (I can show that this marriage did not occur); and (2) that Rickard-201 and Harber-98 were the parents of Rickard-200 (born in 1823), Rickard-199 (b. 1829 ), Rickard-198 (b. 1831), Rickard-197 (b. 1832), Rickard-196 (b. 1835) and Rickard-195 (b. 1840). Note that all these children were born before the alleged marriage in 1842, over approximately a 20-year period. I can show who the actual parents were. If these profiles were thereby orphaned, it would permit merges with profiles I manage, and the duplication of two large families over several generations could be avoided or rectified.

So, what is the evidence? Rickard-201 is unsourced. Harber-98 gives two sources: (1) for the date and place she was baptised, which is not in dispute, and (2) a link to a numbered repository on Ancestry UK, which leads to a private tree of 2,968 people, accessible only to persons granted permission by the owner of the tree, who is also the manager of the above WikiTree profiles, and who has ignored email requests for specific information on sources regarding the alleged marriage and parentage. Ann Harber (Harber-98) was born in Banstead, Surrey, in 1800 and died in Worth, Sussex, in 1871. There is no evidence that she was ever in Buckinghamshire. There is evidence that the second wife of Rickard-201 was Ann Harbour, born in Whitchurch, Buckinghamshire, about 1796 or 1797, but no evidence that either Harber-98 or Ann Harbour of Whitchurch gave birth to any children, before or after 1842. My claims are based on the evidence of the England and Wales censuses of 1841-1991 for Buckinghamshire, specifically relating to Whitchurch (where Rickard-201 lived) and Wingrave (where the children subject of the dispute lived).   

Evidence of the marriage of Ann Harbour of Whitchurch to Rickard-201:   
In 1841 there were two houses in Whitchurch containing persons named Harbour: one occupied by Sarah Denchfield (65), Ann Harbour (40) and Ann Bull (30), all born in Buckinghamshire; the other occupied by Mary Bull (50), Ann Harbour (70), Sarah Harbour (30) & Jane Adams (70), all born in Buckinghamshire. There were no men and no children in either house. There was no person named Ann Harber in Whitchurch.   
In 1851 there was no person named Ann Harber or Ann Harbour anywhere in Whitchurch, but in Church Lane, Joseph Rickard (69) bricklayer & parish clerk, born in Whitchurch, resided with his new wife Ann Rickard (55), born in Whitchurch. There were no other occupants.   
In 1861 Joseph, now aged 80, and his wife Ann (64) had two lodgers: Ann Bull (52) and Sarah Harbour (52), both unmarried and both born Whitchurch. (Remember that in 1841, Ann Bull was living with Ann Harbour (40), and Sarah Harbour was living with Ann Harbour (70), although we can’t place much reliance on ages in the 1841 census.)   
In 1871 Joseph, now a widower aged 87, was sharing the house in Church Lane with Sarah Harbour (62), descrobed as his sister-in-law. THERE is the evidence that Rickard-201 married Ann Harbour of Whitchurch, not Ann Harber of Surrey.   

Evidence that the Rickard children attributed to Rickard-201 and Harber-98, namely Sarah (b.1823, location unknown), George (b.1829, Wingrave), Jane (b.1831, location unknown), Joseph (b.1832, Wingrave), Rhoda (b.1835, Wingrave) and Elizabeth Ann (b.1840, Wingrave) were, in fact, the children of William Rickard, born in Grandborough and residing in Wingrave (Rickard-318):   
In 1841 William Rickard (55) a bricklayer resided at Windmill St, Wingrave, with the following persons: Ann Rickard (42), Sarah Rickard (18), George Rickard (12), Jane Rickard (10), Joseph Rickard (9) Roda Rickard (5) & Elizabeth Rickard (11 mths).   
In 1851 William Rickard (66), born Grandborough, resided at Nap End, Wingrave, with his wife Ann Rickard (57) b.Wingrave; sons George Rickard (22) & Joseph Rickard (18), both bricklayers, b.Wingrave; daughters Rhoda Rickard (16) & Elizabeth (11), both b.Wingrave. No such group of children of these names and corresponding ages could be found in Whitchurch in 1841 or 1851, or thereafter.   
In 1861 Ann Rickard (63) was a widow, living in a cottage in Wingrave, with her daughter Elizabeth (29). Also in Wingrave were George Rickard (35) and Joseph Rickard (28) in separate cottages with their wives and young families.   
In 1871 they were living in adjoining cottages in Mill Place, Aylesbury Rd, Wingrave: Joseph and family; George and family; and their mother Ann (73) with daughter Elizabeth. In 1881 the same people were living in adjoining houses in Little Aston, Wingrave, with Ann aged 82—clear evidence that she was not Harber-98, who died in Sussex in 1871.   

So, what can be done to put things right?
WikiTree profile: Joseph Rickard
in Policy and Style by Tony Pope G2G1 (1.6k points)
recategorized by Jillaine Smith

2 Answers

+6 votes
Hi Tony

The first thing to do is to try and contact the other profile manager and give her the info and sources that you have.

I noticed that she is not very active but might respond to a private message. It is an open profile and therefore if she does not respond to you in a week or two you can improve and add your sources to reflect the correct information.
by Esmé van der Westhuizen G2G6 Pilot (147k points)

One other piece of evidence which you may have missed is for Rickard-195.

The source on the profile is tbe GRO index.

The index published by the GRO and on their site also has the mothers maiden name which in this case is Bates. (sorry I can't paste the entry here using a phone so added it to the comments on the profile) .

Some of the Wingrave Baptisms for  children of Ann and William are on Freereg

Family search has indexed the marriage of William Rickard and Ann Bates (Dec 2nd 1827 at Wingrave)

Edit .I came across this which appears to be your William (Rickard-1132 )b 1857  https://wingrave-rowsham-heritage.org.uk/people/rickard-william-2/ 

There are a few other Rickards in the people section.

Thank you, Esmé, for your prompt response to my question. I did contact the other profile manager. I wrote to her on 16 November 2017, addressing the problem from a slightly different perspective. I wrote:
“If you compare your Rickard-199 with Rickard-1011 (my great-grandfather), you will see many similarities, perhaps sufficient to convince you they are the same person, EXCEPT that they have different fathers, and probably different mothers. I don't know the quality of your evidence that George was the son of Joseph Rickard; it's not clear from the source supplied. My reason for the belief that George's father was William Rickard is on display in George's biography. What do you think?"
She replied promptly: “I haven’t been on WikiTree for some time. Give me a bit of time and I’ll look into it."
I thanked her and waited.
In the meantime, I examined the problem more closely. I  realised that many of the profiles I had recently created were duplicates of profiles managed by her, and that none of them could be merged until the identity of the parents of the children wrongly attributed to Rickard-201 and Harber-98 had been corrected. I identified 12 key profiles in “my” Rickard tree which need to be merged with (earlier) profiles she managed, and I marked them all as unmerged matches. They were my great-grandfather George (Rickard-1011), his wife, his four full siblings, and six of his eight children, including my grandfather.
Then, having not heard from her in seven weeks, I wrote again on 11 Jan 2018. This time I outlined the position in much the same terms as in the question I posed to G2G. There has been no response to the email or to the proposed merges.
So, Esmé, what would you advise as the next step?
Tony
Thank you for the suggestion, Dennis. I may have to do that, but it still leaves me handicapped in entering my ancestors on WikiTree. We are left with a whole bunch of duplicate profiles which cannot be merged until Rickard-201 and Harber-98 are amended. And it will be difficult to develop “my” Rickard ancestry further without creating more duplicates (shudder!) or patching into profiles which reflect the erroneous ancestry.
Thank you, Helen, for your very useful research.
I was fairly certain that William’s second wife was Ann Bates but, since I hadn’t seen a copy of any original document with her birth surname, I was obliged to create her profile as Ann (Unknown) Rickard. I hope to rectify that shortly.
I tried to follow up on your information about Rickard-195, and visited the GRO site. I could not find an Index, only an opportunity to spend money and purchase a copy of a birth certificate. <s> What did I miss?
Tony tightwad
0 votes
you might consider adding a "Research Notes" section to the profile, or create a Free Space page with the info and add a link to that.

that way anyone can follow up on your notes and make the necessary changes as time permits.
by Dennis Wheeler G2G6 Pilot (566k points)

Related questions

+2 votes
0 answers
+4 votes
0 answers
+3 votes
2 answers
+4 votes
1 answer
+6 votes
1 answer

WikiTree  ~  About  ~  Help Help  ~  Search Person Search  ~  Surname:

disclaimer - terms - copyright

...