I received an email last night (since this is written at 4:00 AM CST) from a friend who was very upset about seeing George Franklin & Vashti Mercer listed as parents of Mark Franklin (1 Jan 1800 - 23 Sep 1873 Starlington, Butler Co, AL). She had every right to be upset; she's a direct descendant of Mark Franklin! So is my husband.

I did a quick search and saw 60 public member trees listed. Of the 60, 59 (yup, 59) had Mark's parents incorrectly listed as George Franklin & Vashti Mercer. That's an error rate of 98.33% !!!!! Now how dependable would you consider your car to be if it didn't crank 98.33% of the time??? And I won't even bother to comment on the number of them who said that Mark & his wife, Nancy Ann Stapleton, were married in Baldwin Co, GEORGIA!!! Wrong again!! And I haven't even looked at the Ancestry World Tree entries or any of the other trees except the public member trees.

I don't know who has AGAIN started giving out the information that George Franklin & Vashti Mercer were Mark & Edmond Franklin's parents, but that's not accurate. There is full documentation with DAR which shows the children of George & Vashti Franklin and Mark is NOT included! Neither is his brother, Edmond!

Additionally, DNA testing has proven that the family of George & Vashti Franklin is TOTALLY UNRELATED to the family of Mark Franklin of AL.

People, can it get much plainer than that??!!

Just because you see something posted in a tree here at Ancestry.com does NOT make it gospel!! This is the perfect example of that fact! I do so wish that along with acceptance of your membership $, Ancestry would immediately provide a stern disclaimer warning you to be careful of the trees here at the site.

You can't just go along willy-nilly copying stuff people post into your tree and then turning around and posting it yourself; all you're doing is just perpetuating the error.

This line of misinformation was started many years ago by a woman who when contacted by us and asked for the documented sources, stuttered & stammered and admitted that she had absolutely NO proof. There were a few gaps in the births of George & Vashti's children and she'd just put Mark & his brother Edmond into the empty spaces because their ages fit.

Placing them as children of George & Vashti does a disservice both to Mark & Edmond and to the true descendants of George & Vashti's children.

We've been researching Mark & his family for 20+ years and have made many visits across multiple states and spent untold dollars in courthouses & archives across the South. We continue to actively search for Mark's real parents.

Bottom line - You've got to do your own census, marriage, will, land, cemetery, death, etc research. If you don't have documented sources proving connections between people then you don't have anything but a fairy tale!! I think our descendants would wish for more from us than total confusion as to who their ancestors were.

Thanks for letting me sound off. Perhaps someday soon people will automatically run the other way when they see or hear Mark Franklin mentioned together with George Franklin & Vashti Mercer. We can only hope!

Lisa F Franklin
Louisiana