I’m working on a man I’ll call Bubba Bartels who was born in the later 18th century in Massachusetts, spent most of his adult life in Vermont, and may have lived in a few other locations.

Bubba’s in the big tree at FamilySearcch. That tree indicates that this Bubba died in Upcounty County, New York, in 1841. There are some other online trees that state the same information but there is no other source besides a circle of tree references. Repetition of the same details is not an indication that they are right. It only means the information has been repeated.

My Bubba Bartels is fairly well documented in one Vermont county from about 1806 through 1840 through land transactions, census records, a warning out, and birth records of his children. It’s possible that he moved to Upcounty County, New York, after the 1840 census enumeration since there are no other records of him in Vermont after 1840. It’s possible that he died in Upcounty in 1841 as the online tree indicates.

But the Bubba Bartels who supposedly died in Upcounty? So far I have been unable to locate any item mentioning his death there other than online tree references to other online trees. But there’s another problem bigger than the online trees circular references. Bubba appears in the 1840 census in Upcounty and a smattering of other records in Upcounty while my known Bubba was in Vermont. It’s starting to look like there’s more than one Bubba Bartels.

That’s always the possibility when there’s a match to your ancestor that requires your ancestor to move from point A to point B that the person in point B was living there when your person already had himself parked in Point A the entire time.

One of the ways to eliminate a potential match is to trace that person in earlier records in the same location.