Mystery Data

From whence came the data in this collection which alleges:

1. Bea Elizabeth was born in Missouri? (All other references, including U.S. federal censuses and her sons' death certificates, say she was born in Texas – sources Bill Dalton wasn't able to influence).
2. Bea Elizabeth married an unknown man named HARRISON?
3. Bea Elizabeth HARRISON had a daughter who died young in a fire?
4. Bea Elizabeth married Tom Phillips in Texas?

Read on, all shall be revealed.

Here are the things that have to be overcome in order for Bea Elizabeth Phillips to be accepted as a member of the Lewis and Adeline Dalton family:

• She must be born in Missouri because that's where the family was when she is said to have been born.
• There has to be an explanation for the two different sons whose death certificates and social security applications give her maiden name as HARRIS or HARRISON. It is said it was an accidental reference to her previous married name, so the fraudster had the Oklahoma death certificate amended, but he couldn't change the California one.
• There needs to be an explanation for the absence of HARRISON (none given).
• There needs to be an explanation of why she was in Texas (none given, but there is a nonsensical explanation provided by the fraudster).
• There needs to be some record of her being with the Dalton family (none given).

The source for this fraudulent data may be a gedcom submitted to FamilySearch by someone using the initials "bdphillips2701652". Is it possible that "bdphillips" is the hoaxster who uses the false name of "Bill Dalton Phillips"? Reference Ancestral File Number 30HF-Q58.

The U.S. & International Marriage Records has taken care of the birth place (Missouri) and the HARRISON name and the residence in Texas. The fraudster will resolve other problems by altering or forging documents and replacing tombstones, etc.

The Resource that became a Source

How did we get here? An honest attempt to benefit the genealogical community can be a burden instead. Genealogist Bill Yates amassed a large collection of data and sought to share it with other researchers. He intended it to be a resource, information to provide clues and to help people connect with other researchers working on the same lines. But it has become, to many genealogists, a source rather than a resource. Probably because it is available to subscribers to ancestry.com, people assume it is trustworthy, when that is not true. Unfortunately, it is unreliable at best as much of it is unsourced and yet many genealogists use it without realizing there is no guarantee of its accuracy or that there may be no sources to support the information. That is what has happened with the Bea Elizabeth Dalton Hoax – someone gave two researchers information and they gave it to Bill Yates of Yates Publishing who, in turn, gave it to ancestry.com who incorporated this misleading data into their product offering. There is no source for the data, the two researchers do not remember where they got the information, determined it was not reliable and they discarded it from their data, but it lives on at ancestry.com.

To quote from ancestry.com:

This database contains marriage record information for approximately 1,400,000 individuals from across all 50 United States and 32 different countries around the world between 1560 and 1900. These records, which include information on over 500 years of marriages, were extracted from family group sheets, electronic databases, biographies, wills, and other sources. Compiled over thirty-four years by professional genealogist Bill Yates, these marriage records are unique because they were taken from a wide array of sources and stand to provide a great deal of information about entire families.

Source materials for these marriage records include family group sheets, pedigree charts, family history articles, queries, letters, Bible records, wills, and manuscript genealogies....

In other words – be very careful when using this resource – verify, verify, verify

As you read the information below – and if you have researched this family – you will see things you recognize. There are respectable authors and genealogists who have published information using this erroneous information.

This researcher does not blame the people who submitted the data. They subsequently realized it was bad and removed it from their data. Unfortunately, it stayed in the ancestry.com "U.S. and International Marriage Records, 1560-1900" collection and is still being used and accepted as true today.

Specifically: the only place where the birthplace of Bea Elizabeth is Missouri and where she marrries a HARRISON and has a daughter who dies in a fire comes from this "resource". It is also the only source for any dates for her marriages. There are no source references for any of this data.

Consider the implications. An unknown source offers this information to respectable researchers who share it with others. The information turns out to be unsubstantiated and they discard it. But it remains on the largest genealogy web site, ancestry.com. If this was "planted" intentionally, it has been extremely effective. Without this data, we would not have a way of explaining why Bea's maiden name was given as HARRISON and we couldn't explain why the other documents list her as being born in Texas when she would need to be born in Missouri to be a member of this Dalton family.