Should "Fictional Genealogy" be extended?

Maven, can you please elaborate on why you feel that profile is fictional? Can you provide sources confirming that?

Because not one single datum in that profile can be confirmed, because at least some of it is fictional or misleading (e.g. a "Shane O'Neil" who has nothing in common with the famous one), and because a completely different profile exists for her which *has* been confirmed and verified: Grace Robins

"Grace O'Neil" is a romantic fiction. Grace Neale is the person.

The Grace O'Neill, [FICTITIOUS] profile has seven sources (including pages from published books) citing all data fields and 23 users backing it as managers/curator. The profile you've made has one source, a PAF sheet.

If you're going to dispute the veracity of the Grace O'Neill, [FICTITIOUS] profile, that's an absolutely good and welcome thing to do. Critical thinking is key on collaborative websites like Geni. But I think you're going to have to be a lot more specific in saying which facts and wrong, and why you are more trustworthy than all of those other sources on a profile 23 users have agreed to.

Oh really. Check out the Miles Files http://espl-genealogy.org/MilesFiles/index.htm for "Grace Neale" and notice how far back her ancestry goes and how little it has to do with "Grace O'Neil".

I've had problems with some people who will throw up anything they find in the way of documentation, without bothering to check whether it is primary, secondary, tertiary, or bogus.

Whoever tossed up the "Pendarvis-Bedon Genealogy" never took the time to tag any of the profiles with any facts - and as far as I can tell it has some huge inaccuracies (wrong birth date for Edward Waters, wrong emigration date of Edward AND Grace, etc.). It supports absolutely nothing of the romantic fiction of her "background".

The "Genealogical History" reports the romantic fiction with absolutely no attempt at documenting it - it may even have added some more unverified embellishments.

"Daughters of the American Colonists" is so full of errors it's laughable. It's the kind of puff-piece that gets thrown together for the local newspaper based on whatever tertiary sources the writer has immediately to hand, no attempt at fact-checking, no time to verify, just get it in print ASAP. Note that it comes out of ALABAMA, which is far removed in both space and time from the actual events.

To get to specifics: no verification of the identity, date of birth, or anything else, of "Arthur O'Neil". Explicit impossibility of his being a son of "THE" Shane O'Neil. No verification of the identity, date of birth, or anything else, of "Grace O'Hara". No verification of any of their ancestors. Flat impossibility of the "Shane O'Neil" listed being THE "Shane O'Neil" - wrong parents, wrong birth date, wrong everything.

Some people would rather believe the legend, because it's so much more colorful and interesting than the truth. Movie director John Ford knew that all too well.

PS: yes, it's personal. She was, at least, my 10th great aunt with a distinct chance of turning out to be a 10th great grandmother. And I'd rather know who she *was* than who she wasn't.

I have today sourced a couple of references for the Neale / Neyll / Neylle line. None of the references listed parentage for Grace the wife of Edward Waters & Obedience Robins.

The reference 'Adventurers of Purse and Person Virginia 1607-1624/5: Families G-p - edited by John Frederick Dorman' though does not list her parents it states John Neale of Maryland wrote to "Cousin Robins" referring to her husband and son, the latter being identified as William Waters in an accompanying letter, from John Pernell "Cousin [James] Neale".

This cousin of Grace's was the father of James (m. Elizabeth Calvert) and Henrietta Maria (m. Richard Bennett, Philemon Lloyd) Neale.

These profiles are entered on Geni and are in the line that Maven has for her entry of Grace Neale. I cannot say that Edmond is the father of Grace O'Neil/Neal but considering the lineage listed in the references 'Adventurers of Purse and Person Virginia 1607-1624/5: Families G-p - edited by John Frederick Dorman' & 'The visitations of Bedfordshire, annis domini 1566, 1582, and 1634', I tend to believe this to be more accurate then the parents Arthur O'Neil and Grace O'Hara of which there are no references at all.

To put my two cents in I would be inclined to agree to remove the parents Arthur O'Neil and Grace O'Hara from Grace O'Neil and merge Grace's profile with Maven's profile for Grace Neale or even remove her as the wife of Edward Waters & Obedience Robins.

I believe I'm going to disconnect the romanticized Grace O'Neill to the Geni ether to amuse future researchers. Have the children been moved over yet to the real Grace Neale?

Am I correct in thinking "Adventures in Purse and Person" best of breed for this time and place?

I would not consider the Miles Files http://espl-genealogy.org/MilesFiles/index.htm better then any of the other references for Grace O'Neil / Neale.

It's source listed 'Adventurers of Purse and Person Virginia 1607-1624/5: Families G-p' does not list her parentage except mentioning her cousin. The other 'Ancestors of Thomas Hearn Fooks V, 9 Oct 2011' I was not able to find at all online (even a book for sale) and suspect it could be a private unpublished book of a personal tree generated by a genealogical program such as Family Tree Maker.

At least the Miles Files does follow mostly what is in the visitation and 'Adventurers of Purse and Person Virginia 1607-1624/5 with the connection of James Neale her cousin's family.

It is a wonder they did not list any information about Edmund Neale on the visitation, even if his children went to America they were born in England, and it seems he stayed in England, even no mention of his wife?

Yes all the children had been moved to Grace Neale.

I will transfer over the sources that are tagged to Grace O'Neil to Maven's copy.

And the other managers of Grace should request management of Grace Neale if they wish, so maybe a message should be sent.

As I think I pointed out, Visitations were conducted at intervals - sometimes LONG intervals. Edmund apparently grew up, got married, had his children and died (and they left the country) during a long interval.

There are some scratch-notes from 1618, but they only pick up a few persons' details and don't go near Edmund. And at that point he was certainly dead, his wife was probably dead, and John and Grace were either in, or on their way to, Virginia.

This problem crops up OFTEN during the early phase of the Migration Generation - the children leave home, the heralds lose track of them, and only the records in the colonies - few and spotty as they are, due to various circumstances - testify to their (further) existence.

I spent some time querying Ancestry.com this afternoon. There is a consensus that Grace Neale was the granddaughter of John Neale and Grace Butler - but disagreement over whether she and John were the only children of Edmund Neale, or two of the numerous brood of John Neale and Elizabeth Conquest.

With the Visitations you run into the same problem either way: no further records in England, so they (or Edmund) were declared "d.s.p.".

About the time the College of Heralds started to get a clue that they were losing track of people overseas, William & Mary shut the Visitations down due to protests from the rising middle class.

This feels highly speculative, doesn't it? "Oh, he had children but they just put d.s.p because they didn't know." ??

And, polling an amateur site like Ancestry.com to find the most popular answer ??

Shouldn't we perhaps stick to documented facts? What am I missing?

What we're missing is that there just isn't a lot of documentation to speak of. There was a Grace Neale, she had a brother John, they came from England, she married Lt. Edward Waters and then Obedience Robins - there is documentary evidence of that much in the Virginia records. But there is nothing in England.

There is also evidence that she was a relative of James Neale, who actually did manage to get documented on both sides of the Atlantic. He wrote to Obedience Robins addressing him as "Cousin Robins" and inquiring about his (Robins') wife and her son by Lt. Waters.

The romantic myth remakes James Neale as "Lady Grace's cousin, Admiral James O'Neil". It is likely that they were in fact cousins and that's one of the few grains of fact at the bottom of the whole elaborate myth.

There have been other cases where it was suspected, or proven, that the Visitations had failed to find evidence of offspring that later researchers were able to trace back to a person they wrote off as "d.s.p." Not to mention failing to list additional offspring, marriages, etc., and a woeful lack of regard for anyone who wasn't in the direct line and for any women who married into the line they were studying.

One of the early editors of the Visitations calls out the College of Heralds for exactly this, as I recall. If I can remember which of the Harleian publications it was, I'll post it in another Discussion.

Calling Ancestry.com an "amateur site" is, frankly, the pot calling the kettle dirty. It was one of exactly two genealogical resources I had access to at that time (and I don't have it now), and the other one was no use at all.

I do have considerable trust in the Miles Files for genealogical information relating specifically to the Eastern Shore of Virginia - the farther afield they get, the less accurate their information is. But they were so dead-on on their home ground that they enabled me to find, not only my elusive great-great-grandfather, but *his* parents as well.

Sorry, Maven. I didn't mean to make you defensive.

Certainly the Visitation pedigrees can be wrong or inaccurate.

The Visitations were intended to require that families in a given area prove they had a right to use a coat or arms. If they couldn't prove it, they had to publicly disclaim it, a socially humiliating outcome. The process required men to appear before the heralds with the genealogical and heraldic evidences in their possession. The Visitation pedigrees at bottom are nothing more than the abstracts prepared by the heraldic officers from those documents, many of which no longer exist.

Some of the heralds were venal. Some of the families didn't care to present evidence of distant branches, especially not when there were no existing property rights to worry about. Probably, some families did present evidence but, especially in the earliest Visitations, the heralds didn't trouble to abstract them fully.

I think we can agree that there are many cases where the Visitations are known to be wrong or incomplete. However, I see a very big difference between suspicion and proof.

If a Visitation pedigree says d.s.p and you suspect it might be wrong, then you need a contemporary source to counter it. If no source exists, you're out of luck. It's hard to accept a dead end, but most times it's the only academic alternative. You might disagree, but I don't see how polling Internet trees -- Ancestry, Geni, or any other -- rises to the level of proof.

Personally, when I look at Ancestry, Rootsweb, or Geni, I focus on the minority opinion. In my experience those records are from people who are less likely to have copied other Internet trees. Most times they'll be just as clueless (didn't bother to even check), but once in a while you find a real gem; someone who has actually done the research and discovered something significant that's at odds with the copiers.

I rarely take time to cut or dispute shaky connections. But when someone raises a question, what I like to see on Geni is a narrative that describes the possibilities, stopping short of making an actual parent-child connection.

The trouble with that is, if there are no parents specified, the romantic myth comes crawling right back and smothers the facts. It's happened at least once already.

Yep, that's the sign of an amateur genealogist. It's hard to accept that the parents really are unknown ;)

A common strategy on Geni is to create "Unknown Father" and "Unknown Mother" profiles (or something similar), and get a curator to lock them, with a note about why.

The "minority opinion" in this case is that Grace Neale was the daughter of Edmund Neale and Elizabeth NN. There is only one record that agrees with this (Drake Family Tree), and one that says she was the daughter of Edmund but doesn't know who the mother was (Hayne, Pattee, Selby, Atherton, Parrott Family Tree).

I kept trying to get to actual records and getting the runaround. Apparently the "Library Edition" of Ancestry.com has some extreme limitations put into it - or my local library didn't buy full access.

The Drake Family Tree gives exact birth and death dates for Edmund Neale: born 1575, died Feb 11 1610. Trouble is, I don't know where they got that from, or if the death date is Old Style or New Style.

Make that two records, counting the Miles Files. And they're pretty reliable most of the time.

That makes three records claiming she was the daughter of Edmund, about a dozen claiming she was the daughter of John Neale and Elizabeth Conquest - and HUNDREDS claiming she was "Lady Grace O'Neil" yada yada yada "granddaughter of Shane O'Neil" yada yada yada yada yada.

The OTHER sign of an amateur genealogist is to write someone off as "died young" when they fail to find anything beyond birth records. Sometimes they didn't look hard enough, sometimes the person got married (maybe several times) and/or left town - this is especially a monkey wrench for tracking women, because of the name change(s).

Yep. Keep looking. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you!

I'm going to leave things as they are, but I added a note that her exact parentage is not quite certain. She's pretty definitely the granddaughter of John Neale and Grace Butler, and *not* the daughter of Raphael Neale. But beyond that the Visitations are worse than no help and there aren't any other primary sources.