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Sir Ralph Dunham - His wife is real, be he doesn't exist.

Started by Private User on Monday, October 19, 2020
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Private User
10/19/2020 at 4:43 PM

Where is the evidence that this person existed and married anyone? He is not the same person as Ralph DENman/DENham who married Elizabeth daughter of "Golden" Thomas Wentworth.

"Paul C. Reed explains in "The Fraudulent Ancestry of Deacon John Dunham of Plymouth" in The American Genealogist, vol. 73 (1998):101-104 (link points to the article on the NEHGS website) that Ralph Dunham did not exist. The information about him apparently arises from a misreading of a visitation record that documented a man named Ralph Denman, who had different parents and different family than are attributed to "Ralph Dunham.""

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Dunham-156

This has been out since 1998, so I can't help but wonder why such a spurious/fake pedigree could continue to exist nearly 23 years later, all things considered. On MP'd Geni profiles??!

Private User
10/19/2020 at 4:54 PM

I just checked the extensive literature and sources given for "Ralph's" parents, John Dunham of Kirlkington and Benedicta (who really did exist and are well documented): No son named Ralph.

Brian Johnson
10/20/2020 at 1:36 PM

People just think they can use anything they can find. They find the old books on Google Books and archive.org, and copy it all into their tree, and upload it to a site, where the smartmatchers pick it up, and the mega-collectors accept all the hints, etc etc and it all goes on for ever.

People don't think that if it's not on good sites there might be a reason why not. They just think they've found something that nobody else has found. They think their ancestry is all theirs and don't get how many cousins they share it with who must have looked before they did.

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