I come from the line of Gabriel through VA. How is he tied into the Holland Line of the Duke of Exeter Family?

On Tuesday, April 4, 2023 at 7:54:42 AM UTC-7, Sally Matter wrote:
> I come from the line of Gabriel through VA. How is he tied into the Holland Line of the Duke of Exeter Family?

What makes you think he was tied to them? Unfortunately, there is a long tradition of just tracing as far as one can and then picking someone famous with the name surname to invent connections to. While it is possible that the London-area Holland family of Gabriel had some remote connection to the Holands of Upholland, to which the Dukes of Exeter belonged, it is just as likely they descended from an immigrant from Holland and were completely unrelated to the Upholland family.

As to the Dukes of Exeter themselves, Duke Henry is the last known male-line survivor of his branch. He had three illegitimate half-brothers who apparently died before him. Only one of these is known to have married, and he had only daughters. However, these brothers, often misattributed as sons of Duke Henry, have served as frequent targets for Holland family 'pin the tail on the donkey' descents.

taf

On Tuesday, April 4, 2023 at 1:19:24 PM UTC-4, taf wrote:
> On Tuesday, April 4, 2023 at 7:54:42 AM UTC-7, Sally Matter wrote:
> > I come from the line of Gabriel through VA. How is he tied into the Holland Line of the Duke of Exeter Family?
> What makes you think he was tied to them? Unfortunately, there is a long tradition of just tracing as far as one can and then picking someone famous with the name surname to invent connections to. While it is possible that the London-area Holland family of Gabriel had some remote connection to the Holands of Upholland, to which the Dukes of Exeter belonged, it is just as likely they descended from an immigrant from Holland and were completely unrelated to the Upholland family.
>
> As to the Dukes of Exeter themselves, Duke Henry is the last known male-line survivor of his branch. He had three illegitimate half-brothers who apparently died before him. Only one of these is known to have married, and he had only daughters. However, these brothers, often misattributed as sons of Duke Henry, have served as frequent targets for Holland family 'pin the tail on the donkey' descents.
>
> taf
I Am the Ninth GG Grandaughter Of Captain Francis Gabrielle Holland, My DNA Came Back On True Ancestry As Related To The Plantaganets And King Richard III & Anne Plantaganet His Sister, Her Husband Henry Holland Descended From The Duke Of Exeter. SEE The Pages I Posted To Wikitree For Captain Francis Gabrielle Holland & His Find A Grave I Have Updated. Captain Francis Gabrielle Mother Was Mary Molyneux(Mullinax In Old English) I Have Mullinax Cousins On Gedmatch. Whoever You Are You Are Giving People False Information About My Family Line. My DNA Is On Ancestry. Ftdna & Gedmatch. Here Is My Email staceystar2015@gmail.com. Anyone Wanting Information May Contact Me. My Male Holland Uncles DNA Went To The Grandsons Of Henry Holland Who Married Sarah Clay. Henry Holland Is Documented As Coming From Nansemond Virginia In The Geneaology Book Of Their Family.

On Thursday, January 4, 2024 at 7:09:51 PM UTC-8, x x wrote:
> On Tuesday, April 4, 2023 at 1:19:24 PM UTC-4, taf wrote:
> > As to the Dukes of Exeter themselves, Duke Henry is the last known male-line survivor of his branch. He had three illegitimate half-brothers who apparently died before him. Only one of these is known to have married, and he had only daughters. However, these brothers, often misattributed as sons of Duke Henry, have served as frequent targets for Holland family 'pin the tail on the donkey' descents.
> >
> I Am the Ninth GG Grandaughter Of Captain Francis Gabrielle Holland, My DNA Came Back On True Ancestry As Related To The Plantaganets And King Richard III & Anne Plantaganet His Sister, Her Husband Henry Holland Descended From The Duke Of Exeter. SEE The Pages I Posted To Wikitree For Captain Francis Gabrielle Holland & His Find A Grave I Have Updated. Captain Francis Gabrielle Mother Was Mary Molyneux(Mullinax In Old English) I Have Mullinax Cousins On Gedmatch. Whoever You Are You Are Giving People False Information About My Family Line. My DNA Is On Ancestry. Ftdna & Gedmatch. Here Is My Email staceys...@gmail.com. Anyone Wanting Information May Contact Me. My Male Holland Uncles DNA Went To The Grandsons Of Henry Holland Who Married Sarah Clay. Henry Holland Is Documented As Coming From Nansemond Virginia In The Geneaology Book Of Their Family.

If you DNA matched with the Plantagenet line of Richard and his sister, that means that you descend from a matrilineal relative of them. This would have nothing to do with descent from the Holland family, because the only child born to Henry Holland, Duke of Exeter, and his wife, was a daughter who died childless, his heir being his sister (who, was not a female-line relative of his wife). Your Hollands may well descend from immigrant Henry Holland, but he did not descend from Duke Henry. There are no known male-line descendants of the entire Exeter line. The sole documented legitimate child of the last Duke was a daughter who died without issue. His sister was his eventual heiress, meaning his father also lacked other legitimate sons. The father did have three illegitimate sons, the so-called 'Bastards of Exeter', sometimes wrongly placed as Henry's sons, but the only one of them with a documented family left two daughters and coheiresses. I don't think the generation before, the first John of the Exeter branch, had more surviving sons than his two successors, the elder of whom died relatively young and childless, and I have not seen any claimed bastards for him. I don't even think the generation before that, the first Earl of Kent, left any younger sons with documented male-line descendants. Thus if there is a relationship between immigrant Henry Holland and the Exeter Dukes, this connection must branch from the Holland of Upholland family prior to their ennoblement, at least four generations back from Henry Holland Duke of Exeter.

taf

taf wrote:

> On Thursday, January 4, 2024 at 7:09:51 PM UTC-8, x x wrote:
>> On Tuesday, April 4, 2023 at 1:19:24 PM UTC-4, taf wrote:
>> > As to the Dukes of Exeter themselves, Duke Henry is the last known male-line survivor of his branch. He had three illegitimate half-brothers who apparently died before him. Only one of these is known to have married, and he had only daughters. However, these brothers, often misattributed as sons of Duke Henry, have served as frequent targets for Holland family 'pin the tail on the donkey' descents.
>> >
>> I Am the Ninth GG Grandaughter Of Captain Francis Gabrielle Holland, My DNA Came Back On True Ancestry As Related To The Plantaganets And King Richard III & Anne Plantaganet His Sister, Her Husband Henry Holland Descended From The Duke Of Exeter. SEE The Pages I Posted To Wikitree For Captain Francis Gabrielle Holland & His Find A Grave I Have Updated. Captain Francis Gabrielle Mother Was Mary Molyneux(Mullinax In Old English) I Have Mullinax Cousins On Gedmatch. Whoever You Are You Are Giving People False Information About My Family Line. My DNA Is On Ancestry. Ftdna & Gedmatch. Here Is My Email staceys...@gmail.com. Anyone Wanting Information May Contact Me. My Male Holland Uncles DNA Went To The Grandsons Of Henry Holland Who Married Sarah Clay. Henry Holland Is Documented As Coming From Nansemond Virginia In The Geneaology Book Of Their Family.

> If you DNA matched with the Plantagenet line of Richard and his sister, that means that you descend from a matrilineal relative of them. This would have nothing to do with descent from the Holland family, because the only child born to Henry Holland, Duke of Exeter, and his wife, was a daughter who died childless, his heir being his sister (who, was not a female-line relative of his wife). Your Hollands may well descend from immigrant Henry Holland, but he did not descend from Duke Henry. There are no known male-line descendants of the entire Exeter line. The sole documented legitimate child of the last Duke was a daughter who died without issue. His sister was his eventual heiress, meaning his father also lacked other legitimate sons. The father did have three illegitimate sons, the so-called 'Bastards of Exeter', sometimes wrongly placed as Henry's sons, but the only one of them with a documented family left two daughters and coheiresses. I don't think the generation before, the first John of the Exeter branch, had more surviving sons than his two successors, the elder of whom died relatively young and childless, and I have not seen any claimed bastards for him. I don't even
think the generation before that, the first Earl of Kent, left any younger sons with documented male-line descendants. Thus if there is a relationship between immigrant Henry Holland and the Exeter Dukes, this connection must branch from the Holland of Upholland family prior to their ennoblement, at least four generations back from Henry Holland Duke of Exeter.

> taf

This sounds like one of those numerous cases where a line on the net [i believe from Ancestry c1998 and
thence to Family Search] has been copied to other sites and become 'fact'. I dont know if this the line
referred to, but just about every Holland in the USA seems to have adopted it.

Because its so common it may be worth a moment to examine.

The real Henry Holland Duke of Exeter [1430-75] married c1447 Anne of York [1439-76] sister of Edward IV
who later married Thomas St.Leger [1440-83] She had 2 daughters, 1 by each husband.

The eldest, Anne Holland [1461-74] m Thomas Grey [1455-1501] eldest son of Elizabeth Woodville, but she
died childless as Todd says. According to wiki, the younger Anne St.Leger [1476-1526] was allowed to
inherit her mothers 'Holland lands' when she married George Manners [1470-1513] in 1490.

However in the fictitious line Henry Holland is also given 2 sons, Henry and Thomas.

1 Thomas Holland [1461-1501]
2 Henry Holland [1490-1561] m Anne 'Plantagenet' dau of Edward IV and Katherine Woodville
3 Henry Holland [1527-70] m 30/1/1547 Hillary Barwarde [1527-61]
4 John Philemon Holland [1556-1628] m 5/3/1584 Mary Mollinax
5 Gabriel Holland [1596-1665]

no1 As Todd says the Duke had no male heir so any Thomas was not his son. There are other Thomas Hollands
in this period but they are not his son. Findagrave has a record of a Thomas Holland buried 29/7/1540 at
St.margarets Westminster [next to the abbey], but i havnt seen the source for this or any connection with
the Exeter family.
no2 There doesnt seem any proof for this person and he did not marry Anne of York [1475-1511]; she married Thomas Howard. As he is sometimes called Duke of Exeter on Family Search et al this seems a conflation of
Duke Henry who died 1475 and no3.
no3; The records for this marriage again come from St.margarets Westminster, and a Henry Holland born 1527
was buried in st.margarets according to findagrave but i havnt seen the source for this or for his
marriage or anything to connect him with the family of the duke of exeter. I have seen some digital images
of the parish registers connected to these records, but these relate to the 1650s.
no4; a John Holland did marry in 1584 in westminster but there seems no proven connection with either of
the other generations or with other dates associated with him.
no5; existed but i think his dates have been confused with another man who emigrated and died in Virginia
in 1637 with others who died later in 1660 1665 or 1670. Its not clear that he is the same who was born in
1595 or 96.

Holland seems a very common name and there may be a connection with this Westminster family or another
Holland family but not a descent from Henry Duke of Exeter.

There is a useful discussion about this line on Wikitree which addresses these and the USA links

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Holland-645

About the DNA; how do they decide from a test result that it shows you are related to some bod 500 years
ago? Is there a DNA bank somewhere which holds test results of known descendants to compare with?

Mike

On Saturday, January 6, 2024 at 5:15:59 PM UTC-8, miked wrote:

> However in the fictitious line Henry Holland is also given 2 sons, Henry and Thomas.
>
> 1 Thomas Holland [1461-1501]
> 2 Henry Holland [1490-1561] m Anne 'Plantagenet' dau of Edward IV and Katherine Woodville
> 3 Henry Holland [1527-70] m 30/1/1547 Hillary Barwarde [1527-61]
> 4 John Philemon Holland [1556-1628] m 5/3/1584 Mary Mollinax
> 5 Gabriel Holland [1596-1665]
>
> no1 As Todd says the Duke had no male heir so any Thomas was not his son. There are other Thomas Hollands
> in this period but they are not his son. Findagrave has a record of a Thomas Holland buried 29/7/1540 at
> St.margarets Westminster [next to the abbey], but i havnt seen the source for this or any connection with
> the Exeter family.

A notable one was Thomas Holland, Bastard of Exeter, Duke Henry's half-brother, but he was beheaded before this one was supposedly born, and I have found no indication he was married at the time or had children. I think all of the early dates in this line are made up.

> no2 There doesnt seem any proof for this person and he did not marry Anne of York [1475-1511]; she married Thomas Howard. As he is sometimes called Duke of Exeter on Family Search et al this seems a conflation of
> Duke Henry who died 1475 and no3.

The obvious explanation is that 'Anne Plantagenet, daughter of Edward IV' is a garbled mis-rendering of Anne 'Plantagenet', sister of Edward IV and wife of Duke Henry. One way or the other, someone has attached Duke Henry's wife, shifted down a generation, into this pedigree. Her husband is not Duke Henry in the current rendering, but probably once was, his identity and dates being stripped and replaced when the chronological trainwreck it would entail was recognized. (Alternatively someone, rightly or wrongly originally concluded that Henry [gen 3] was son of some obscure Henry [gen 2] and that this person was subsequently conflated with the Duke to attach the wife.. Either way, I doubt the dates have any historical basis whatsoever.

> About the DNA; how do they decide from a test result that it shows you are related to some bod 500 years
> ago? Is there a DNA bank somewhere which holds test results of known descendants to compare with?

Yes. These exist in several forms. The original poster claimed a match with Richard III and his sister. As part of the process of discovering and identifying his remains, his type was determined and published, and was broadly reported in the media and blogs, so a match to him is easy to determine if you have your own haplotype determined. Similarly, there are web pages that have collated those of famous people who have been tested - Wikipedia has such a page. For less notable matches, there are different types of pages available. For example, FamilyTreeDNA has individual surname pages with user submissions so you can see if your Y matches someone else with the same surname (helpful in identifying which of the many Clark immigrants was your ancestor, for example). They also have a database that lets you browse by haplotype and identify submissions that match yours, independent of surname. This is just one example.

taf

taf wrote:

> On Saturday, January 6, 2024 at 5:15:59 PM UTC-8, miked wrote:

>> However in the fictitious line Henry Holland is also given 2 sons, Henry and Thomas.
>>
>> 1 Thomas Holland [1461-1501]
>> 2 Henry Holland [1490-1561] m Anne 'Plantagenet' dau of Edward IV and Katherine Woodville
>> 3 Henry Holland [1527-70] m 30/1/1547 Hillary Barwarde [1527-61]
>> 4 John Philemon Holland [1556-1628] m 5/3/1584 Mary Mollinax
>> 5 Gabriel Holland [1596-1665]
>>
>> no1 As Todd says the Duke had no male heir so any Thomas was not his son. There are other Thomas Hollands
>> in this period but they are not his son. Findagrave has a record of a Thomas Holland buried 29/7/1540 at
>> St.margarets Westminster [next to the abbey], but i havnt seen the source for this or any connection with
>> the Exeter family.

> A notable one was Thomas Holland, Bastard of Exeter, Duke Henry's half-brother, but he was beheaded before this one was supposedly born, and I have found no indication he was married at the time or had children. I think all of the early dates in this line are made up.

yes i agree. this fiction was probably put together when online resources were limited, and while most of these speculations usually have a few weak links, this 1 has problems at every generation. I suspect
that the dates of no1 were influenced by or confused with Thomas Grey [d1501] who had married Anne Holland.

>> no2 There doesnt seem any proof for this person and he did not marry Anne of York [1475-1511]; she married Thomas Howard. As he is sometimes called Duke of Exeter on Family Search et al this seems a conflation of
>> Duke Henry who died 1475 and no3.

> The obvious explanation is that 'Anne Plantagenet, daughter of Edward IV' is a garbled mis-rendering of Anne 'Plantagenet', sister of Edward IV and wife of Duke Henry. One way or the other, someone has attached Duke Henry's wife, shifted down a generation, into this pedigree. Her husband is not Duke Henry in the current rendering, but probably once was, his identity and dates being stripped and replaced when the chronological trainwreck it would entail was recognized. (Alternatively someone, rightly or wrongly originally concluded that Henry [gen 3] was son of some obscure Henry [gen 2] and that this person was subsequently conflated with the Duke to attach the wife.. Either way, I doubt the dates have any historical basis whatsoever.

No as it stands its a complete fabrication, and looking at a number of these lines which
include this descent i find that this Anne Plantagenet [1490-1577!] is given the same id no as
a certain Anne [dates vary] daughter of a John Fitton of Gawsworth [d1526?] who married a Richard
Holland. I dont know if these people are real but I suspect a bit of identify theft.

>> About the DNA; how do they decide from a test result that it shows you are related to some bod 500 years
>> ago? Is there a DNA bank somewhere which holds test results of known descendants to compare with?

> Yes. These exist in several forms. The original poster claimed a match with Richard III and his sister. As part of the process of discovering and identifying his remains, his type was determined and published, and was broadly reported in the media and blogs, so a match to him is easy to determine if you have your own haplotype determined. Similarly, there are web pages that have collated those of famous people who have been tested - Wikipedia has such a page. For less notable matches, there are different types of pages available. For example, FamilyTreeDNA has individual surname pages with user submissions so you can see if your Y matches someone else with the same surname (helpful in identifying which of the many Clark immigrants was your ancestor, for example). They also have a database that lets you browse by haplotype and identify submissions that match yours, independent of surname. This is just one example.

I had a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_haplogroups_of_historic_people, prob not the
best source [it includes Mary Magdalen and St.Luke!], but it led to the article on Richard III.
AIUI the skeleton they found was id by matching the mtDNA with 2 maternal line descendants from
his sister Anne of York. Does it not matter if say a male descendant of Anne had a wife who had
child from a secret affair or lover, like many do?

One of the most common Y haplogroup outside Africa is R1b, so what does it tell us if that is our
haplogroup? I notice that R1b includes King Tut and the descendants of Charles Darwin. If someones
Y is R1b, does that mean they are directly descended from the Amarna Pharoahs or just share a
common ancestor in the mists of time along with millions of others?

Mike

On Sunday, January 7, 2024 at 3:30:50 PM UTC-8, miked wrote:
> I had a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_haplogroups_of_historic_people, prob not the
> best source [it includes Mary Magdalen and St.Luke!], but it led to the article on Richard III.

This is one of the drawbacks of Wikipedia policies. Anyone with the most minimal level of critical thinking can see the Mary M and St Luke identities as baseless nonsense, but Wikipedia allows - indeed, requires acceptance of - anything that has been formally published, even if it is absurd. It is the journal editors who decided to publish this 'click-bait' who should be ashamed of themselves.
> AIUI the skeleton they found was id by matching the mtDNA with 2 maternal line descendants from
> his sister Anne of York. Does it not matter if say a male descendant of Anne had a wife who had
> child from a secret affair or lover, like many do?

mtDNA passes in the female line, so the identities of sexual partners is irrelevant to the analysis. What could affect the analysis is a circumstance where a man had two wives, and the pedigrees wrongly attribute the relevant daughter to the wrong mother, but this would produce a false mismatch. That there was a match between a skeleton that based on other evidence was deduced to belong to Richard III and a descendant of a pedigree claiming descent from a sister of Richard III strongly favors both the pedigree and the identification being correct, though one can always come up with an ad hoc explanation who it could be coincidence.

> One of the most common Y haplogroup outside Africa is R1b, so what does it tell us if that is our
> haplogroup? I notice that R1b includes King Tut and the descendants of Charles Darwin. If someones
> Y is R1b, does that mean they are directly descended from the Amarna Pharoahs or just share a
> common ancestor in the mists of time along with millions of others?

R1b traces back more than 10,000 years, and is thus of limited genealogical relevance. It can be used to exclude male-line links to people with and I or a G or an X haplogroup, but is not an indication of close relationship, within a genealogically-relevant timeframe, to anyone else with that haplogroup. Were it determined with more precision by investigating more genetic marker sites, say R1b3c2a7b, that could be precise enough to link to an identifiable historical individual, but few families have been characterized with sufficient precision to allow genealogical conclusions, other than exclusion of non-matches.

taf

I just want to point out that in the circles of genetic genealogists, the True Ancestry service is considered to be a unreliable source.

TrueAncestry is not the same as Ancestry

TrueAncestry makes a shark leaping effort to genetically connect you to people who lived five hundred to three thousand years in the past, and it's methods are very suspect.

On Monday, January 8, 2024 at 10:44:34 PM UTC+1, taf wrote:
> On Sunday, January 7, 2024 at 3:30:50 PM UTC-8, miked wrote:
> > I had a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_haplogroups_of_historic_people, prob not the
> > best source [it includes Mary Magdalen and St.Luke!], but it led to the article on Richard III.
> This is one of the drawbacks of Wikipedia policies. Anyone with the most minimal level of critical thinking can see the Mary M and St Luke identities as baseless nonsense, but Wikipedia allows - indeed, requires acceptance of - anything that has been formally published, even if it is absurd. It is the journal editors who decided to publish this 'click-bait' who should be ashamed of themselves.

A minor correction. WP has no policy which says that whatever is published by experts needs to be reported. There have been efforts over the years to clarify this in policy texts. The rule is meant to work from the other direction. What is put in should be verifiably an expert opinion when verification is called for or checked. Editors are expected to select what is most relevant and credible from the field they are working on. Even the best books will contain nonsense.

A better way to explain the problem is that once some genealogist comes along and over-enthusiastically adds a DNA story published by a real historian or geneticist, it can become difficult to remove it. This is mainly a problem on articles that don't get much attention. On articles which do get more attention, big DNA-related texts are constantly being added and then deleted or whittled down. I think it also helps that people are starting to be better equiped to understand the DNA articles and this means they are better able to see which claims are strong or weak.

On Wednesday, January 10, 2024 at 7:22:11 AM UTC-8, lancast...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Monday, January 8, 2024 at 10:44:34 PM UTC+1, taf wrote:
> > On Sunday, January 7, 2024 at 3:30:50 PM UTC-8, miked wrote:
> > > I had a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_haplogroups_of_historic_people, prob not the
> > > best source [it includes Mary Magdalen and St.Luke!], but it led to the article on Richard III.
> > This is one of the drawbacks of Wikipedia policies. Anyone with the most minimal level of critical thinking can see the Mary M and St Luke identities as baseless nonsense, but Wikipedia allows - indeed, requires acceptance of - anything that has been formally published, even if it is absurd. It is the journal editors who decided to publish this 'click-bait' who should be ashamed of themselves.
> A minor correction. WP has no policy which says that whatever is published by experts needs to be reported. There have been efforts over the years to clarify this in policy texts. The rule is meant to work from the other direction. What is put in should be verifiably an expert opinion when verification is called for or checked. Editors are expected to select what is most relevant and credible from the field they are working on. Even the best books will contain nonsense.
>

Not a formal policy, no, but just try, in the face of someone who want sit there, to remove something that has been published by a scholar (and has not had a followup scholarly critique) based on personal expertise and see how far that gets you. Except for high-interest areas where there are enough separate editors with expertise to convince otherwise, every example I have seen ends with the simple and lazy ' it's been published' winning the day. This is not just a DNA problem - genealogical speculation or trial balloons that have appeared in a scholarly article, no matter how tenuous, tends to be treated as if it was noteworthy scholarly consensus. At best one might get it removed as non-noteworthy, but that often doesn't stick.

taf

On Thursday, January 11, 2024 at 1:08:59 AM UTC+1, taf wrote:
> On Wednesday, January 10, 2024 at 7:22:11 AM UTC-8, lancast...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Monday, January 8, 2024 at 10:44:34 PM UTC+1, taf wrote:
> > > On Sunday, January 7, 2024 at 3:30:50 PM UTC-8, miked wrote:
> > > > I had a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_haplogroups_of_historic_people, prob not the
> > > > best source [it includes Mary Magdalen and St.Luke!], but it led to the article on Richard III.
> > > This is one of the drawbacks of Wikipedia policies. Anyone with the most minimal level of critical thinking can see the Mary M and St Luke identities as baseless nonsense, but Wikipedia allows - indeed, requires acceptance of - anything that has been formally published, even if it is absurd. It is the journal editors who decided to publish this 'click-bait' who should be ashamed of themselves.
> > A minor correction. WP has no policy which says that whatever is published by experts needs to be reported. There have been efforts over the years to clarify this in policy texts. The rule is meant to work from the other direction. What is put in should be verifiably an expert opinion when verification is called for or checked. Editors are expected to select what is most relevant and credible from the field they are working on. Even the best books will contain nonsense.
> >
> Not a formal policy, no, but just try, in the face of someone who want sit there, to remove something that has been published by a scholar (and has not had a followup scholarly critique) based on personal expertise and see how far that gets you. Except for high-interest areas where there are enough separate editors with expertise to convince otherwise, every example I have seen ends with the simple and lazy ' it's been published' winning the day. This is not just a DNA problem - genealogical speculation or trial balloons that have appeared in a scholarly article, no matter how tenuous, tends to be treated as if it was noteworthy scholarly consensus. At best one might get it removed as non-noteworthy, but that often doesn't stick.

I know this happens but I think WP articles rarely go backwards in quality in big obvious steps. There is typically a ratchet effect. I think the cases you are talking about go back and forth easily because if I understand correctly you are talking about junk articles that most better would keep away from, and would prefer to delete. Many articles about people interesting to genealogists are just a few notes and citations to Burkes, if anything. Increasingly I see articles on Wikitree for less notable people which are better-sourced and more correct than their Wikipedia equivalents, and for non-notable people that is how it should be because non-notables should not even have Wikipedia articles. (That is a policy.)

As a practical way to get around this problem, when someone actually takes the time to start adding proper citations and converting the article into something more respectable looking, WP editors (even pretty bad ones) do not normally dare to openly push the article back into an obviously worse position. For example as you say, deleting a proper looking source or quotation will trigger alarm bells. So if you just add quick notes to a bad article, yes, they might just get deleted. If you don't have time to do more than that, perhaps post an explanation on the talk page as well, because that might be there longer and it will probably help a better editor at some point in the future (which could be months or years later).

As you will probably also know, instead of people pushing articles back in bad directions in an "obvious way" like deleting sources, there are less obvious ways that things can be "subtly" pushed in the wrong direction. But I don't think that's the type of case you are talking about, and to be honest once the article is good enough that people need to use subtle strategies to push it in a bad way, then it is probably a much better article than a lot of historical biography "stubs".

On Wednesday, January 10, 2024 at 5:35:34 PM UTC-8, lancast...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Thursday, January 11, 2024 at 1:08:59 AM UTC+1, taf wrote:
> > On Wednesday, January 10, 2024 at 7:22:11 AM UTC-8, lancast...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > On Monday, January 8, 2024 at 10:44:34 PM UTC+1, taf wrote:
> > > > On Sunday, January 7, 2024 at 3:30:50 PM UTC-8, miked wrote:
> > > > > I had a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_haplogroups_of_historic_people, prob not the
> > > > > best source [it includes Mary Magdalen and St.Luke!], but it led to the article on Richard III.
> > > > This is one of the drawbacks of Wikipedia policies. Anyone with the most minimal level of critical thinking can see the Mary M and St Luke identities as baseless nonsense, but Wikipedia allows - indeed, requires acceptance of - anything that has been formally published, even if it is absurd. It is the journal editors who decided to publish this 'click-bait' who should be ashamed of themselves.
> > > A minor correction. WP has no policy which says that whatever is published by experts needs to be reported. There have been efforts over the years to clarify this in policy texts. The rule is meant to work from the other direction. What is put in should be verifiably an expert opinion when verification is called for or checked. Editors are expected to select what is most relevant and credible from the field they are working on. Even the best books will contain nonsense.
> > >
> > Not a formal policy, no, but just try, in the face of someone who want sit there, to remove something that has been published by a scholar (and has not had a followup scholarly critique) based on personal expertise and see how far that gets you. Except for high-interest areas where there are enough separate editors with expertise to convince otherwise, every example I have seen ends with the simple and lazy ' it's been published' winning the day. This is not just a DNA problem - genealogical speculation or trial balloons that have appeared in a scholarly article, no matter how tenuous, tends to be treated as if it was noteworthy scholarly consensus. At best one might get it removed as non-noteworthy, but that often doesn't stick.
> I know this happens but I think WP articles rarely go backwards in quality in big obvious steps. There is typically a ratchet effect. I think the cases you are talking about go back and forth easily because if I understand correctly you are talking about junk articles that most better would keep away from, and would prefer to delete. Many articles about people interesting to genealogists are just a few notes and citations to Burkes, if anything.. Increasingly I see articles on Wikitree for less notable people which are better-sourced and more correct than their Wikipedia equivalents, and for non-notable people that is how it should be because non-notables should not even have Wikipedia articles. (That is a policy.)
>

Not really what I was talking about. I was more talking about the way that there is pressure to include ill-advised genealogical speculation by scholars in what are otherwise generally-decent articles. Removal of that is almost always reverted, by established editors, because 'it is cited to a reliable source.' Applying personal expertise to argue that the hypothesis lacks sufficient basis for inclusion usually runs up against 'no original research'. The result is that, unless there has been a published critical response, on a practical level when such published week-sauce scholarly guesses eventually find their way into articles, they prove recalcitrant.

An example is an article on a king that reports a hypothesized parentage for his wife based on a university scholar's published paper, but it was published in a lower-quality journal, and the genealogical claim made in that publication were simply, 'I found these relationships on the internet' (though this derivation is hidden elsewhere in the paper, not where the specific claimed connection is discussed), yet its removal was reversed multiple times because it was appropriately cited to a scholarly source written by an 'expert'. Such dubious genealogical guesswork can find its way into otherwise decent detailed articles, like the speculation that Earl Siward was related to Ulf Jarl, based on a scholarly paper that has every appearance of getting the wrong end of the stick.

taf