Family Research

So I've been doing some family tree research lately. I'm becoming a fan of myheritage.com. It could be utilized as like a facebook for family. I haven't introduced it to my family as such, but the feature is there.

So things that I knew already but have manifested themselves.

• I love data.


• I love data the relates to other data.


• I love statistics.


• I'm a nerd.

Things I learned that I didn't know before.

• I never knew how much I cared about people's birthday's and anniversaries and dates in general


• My Grandmother is a Thornton.


• The Thornton's have quite a history


• My Great Uncle, Dan Thornton, was Governor of Colorado.


• He knew and possibly campaigned for President Eisenhower


• Someone has written a biography about him.


• He is the namesake for Thornton, CO


• The Thornton family is the namesake for Thornton, TX


• The Thornton's come from England


• The first Thornton to come to the United States was William Thornton between 1620 and 1640


• I am descendant of a Lord of England. Lord Robert Thornton of East Newton. Different sources give different generations of the Robert Thornton's as the/a Lord, so I'm not sure which one actually was.


• When you are related to one Lord...you are potentially related to a bunch since...well...they all just marry each other.


• I am potentially a descendant of King Edward I of England


• I am seemingly a descendant of King William I of France

Granted my lineage from the Lord is ~18 generations and from King Edward is like 30 generations, and it's only "supposedly". There is a ~17 great grandmother whom two different sources state that she is a 10th descendant of King Edward. This brings me to the problem I've had while doing this research. You would think multiple sources would mean more confidence. But really...since most of my sources are all individuals who have done their own "research", I can't help but think that they did the same thing I'm doing and that one source is likely the source for the other source. Now granted one of them had to be the "original", but if it's wrong, then everything that bases their information on it is also wrong. With myheritage.com it will create these "smart matches" which match people with people from different family trees. And it can combine some of the information and tell you how many people say someone's birth year is some value, while how many think it's some other value. So I'm always tempted to pick the value that most other people have picked. But I begin to think, I'm now part of that statistic. Someone else is going to match against them someday and think that 10 other people all thought someone was born a certain day. When in reality, someone put it in first, and then people probably started matching off of it. So it just turns into this mob mentality, so the more people match with someone without any of their own research, the more a wrong value can propagate through the system. I suppose this is a somewhat cynical view. But it makes me wonder how accurate some of the early stuff is.

Anyway, I've enjoyed my research so far. Have definitely found things I never thought I would find. Have spent most of my time on the Thornton line, but would be interested in some of my other lines of descent. My Grandmother just seemed the most eager to help and most knowledgeable about her roots.