Tree Deletion

I received an email today from someone who says they found me through my blog, and a family tree I posted at Ancestry. I was glad to help them, and did so primarily by redirecting them to a cousin who knew the branch of the the family they were interested in better than me.

But I was thankful for their email in reminding me of the tree I posted on Ancestry the first few weeks after I discovered the website. It was pretty early in my research - the information was full of errors - and on some entries missing something very crucial in any family tree posted to Ancestry - birth and death dates. Ancestry assumes people without dates are dead.

I had a little difficulty deleting it though, because when I first discovered Ancestry it took me awhile to decide whether or not I was going to subscribe. So I signed up several times under their 2-week trial period. This isn't difficult to do, as all one needs is a new email address, and since I own several domains, it's easy for me to create email addresses. John@domain1.org John23@domain2.org etc. I could get Ancestry free for life, but registering with a new email address every 2 weeks would be annoying. It's just easier (and more honest) to pay.

I had to sign in to my current account to send an email to my old account so that I could find out what email address that account had used. Then I had to tell Ancestry that the owner of that email address had forgotten their password, because he had. They sent me to a page where I could pick a new one. Then I signed in, went to My Ancestry, and deleted the tree.

It's now gone. I might create it again, but if I do, it will be more accurate, have dates, and locations, and probably won't include any living people.