North Carolina Genealogy

I saw this neat article at Random Genealogy. Of course, you may already be familiar with the Wikipedia, a global, publicly collaberated encyclopedia. I find it a useful source for many of the detailed historical references here and if I had a comfortable way to just sit and read for hours, I would. Anyway, along those lines, The wikitree seeks to create an online collaberated genealogy of everyone…. from their site…

“One of the main aims of the WikiTree Project is to provide a central place on the Internet for kin information about all people we know ever lived, automatically construct bloodline trees, and watch the gradual emergence of global family forest of humanity. It might seem a huge undertaking, but in fact it is not. There is very little information that needs to be entered about any person – just name, names of his/her children, plus birth and death data; everything else can be inferred!”

Now, one of the concerns I see about this is…. I’ve seen online data from some sources and seen people claiming with a straightface that their great-great-great-granny was born in 1722 and died in 1899. Hopefully, the fact that it’s publicly collaborated will refine the information and prevent those sorts of obvious inaccuracies. Maybe it can help prevent some of the unobvious ones as well? It’s certainly an interesting idea and I’m curious to see it take shape.