Bogus_Genealogies
Fake News has nothing on fake genealogy. Over the coming years, I will document some of the more pernicious cases I've encountered. Although genetic genealogy will not always be a component in these stories, it will often be featured.

ARTICLE 7: 07/31/2024 (Bennett)
"...And the Child Now in My Wife's Womb"
The genealogy for Richard Bennett (1608-1676), the first commonwealth governor of Virginia during the English Civil Wars, began gelling in the 1930s. Scholarly writers such as Archibald Bennett, John ...


ARTICLE 6: 11/05/2023 (Bennett)
Evaluations Concerning Published Statements Asserting that Richard Bennett Sr of Blackwater, Virginia married Anne Barham of Kent County, England
I have long suggested that conflation is the original sin of genealogy. The amalgamation of two or three individuals into one can be enormously difficult to untangle, and it can send generations of fa...


ARTICLE 5: 07/17/2023 (Bennett)
The Mysterious Origins of Robert Bennett of Wiveliscombe, Somerset, England
Robert Bennett was a successful 16th-century tanner in Wiveliscombe, Somerset, England, and the immediate forebear of a consequential Jamestown family. His youngest son was Edward, a wealthy London me...


ARTICLE 4: 01/20/2023 (donkeytail)
The Donkey Tail Method of Doing Genealogy
A genealogy club I was associated with several years ago needed a home for about a thousand volumes of good genealogical material, including many of the standard and often famous genealogical volumes....


ARTICLE 3: 08/15/2021 (Curry)
Robert Curry: Conflation or Not?
Strictly speaking, this brief article would not go into the Bogus Genealogies blog. It certainly doesn't fit the genetic genealogy blog, although well-placed Y-DNA testing might resolve the probl...


ARTICLE 2: 10/22/2019 (maryann)
A Case Study in Ancestor Abuse: Mary Ann Utie Bennett
Describing, weighing, and interpreting data constitutes the majority of a historian's work. Unfortunately, that data is often tweaked to forward an agenda. The cliches are familiar: "History...


ARTICLE 1: 08/20/2019 (Cooley)
The Cult of the Bogus Dutch Cooleys
Lura Coolley Hamil died of a heart attack in Lincoln, Illinois at the beginning of January 1933. She'd spent the previous several months looking for a publisher for her book, A Story of Pioneerin...