Ancestry Trees Allow Marriage Dates Before an Approximate Date of Birth

Warning flags are one way Ancestry.com tries to help users reduce the number of errors their files. Apparently the parameters are not set too closely when the date of birth is approximate. I was able to enter a 1780 marriage for an individual born about 1845 without any warning flags or error prompts appearing. When the year of birth was changed to exactly 1845, there was a warning and I had to acknowledge the inconsistency of what I was trying to enter. It would seem that there should be a warning when a marriage year of 1780 is entered for someone born in approximately 1845. This screen capture was made on 8 March 2016.

See our followup on what does happen if the year of birth is not approximate.

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6 thoughts on “Ancestry Trees Allow Marriage Dates Before an Approximate Date of Birth

  1. caith culbertson says:

    There are many very bad trees at Ancestry. I went through a tree yesterday of one of my dna matches. It had 140, 000 people in it and it was the worst tree I have seen regarding the date lines. Too many bad date lines, generation to generation 100 years apart, and too many sons who marry their mothers!! We should be able report these trees and they should be banned from being public.

  2. I wasn’t even aware Ancestry had started incorporating warnings into its website. Did this come with the new Ancestry layout?

  3. Charlotte Wilson says:

    Showing us what you did in a video is a great idea. However, this one would have been even better if you had then gone on to show what happens when the birth date is exact and the marriage is before it.

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