So true, Sue. I don't know how long it took me to twig that I should usually not be casting my eyes farther than 5 or 10 miles from the ancestral village. I got a lot farther as soon as I stopped going so far!
My mother's birth is placed in Leeds, Kent on a number of trees by people who should know better when in fact she is a Leedsloiner, proudly Yorkshire-born. Modern computer methods don't help in this case, with Ancestry eagerly offering a pop-up menu of wrong choices.
That's why I think sometimes the older genealogy books are more helpful; a century or two closer to the events in question and vetted for publication. I recently went to the book (published 1870) owned by my grandfather (b. 1848) and was impressed with how much confirmation popped right up online. There was a minor error in one twig's birthplace (born before, not after, the family moved), and that was corrected in the margin in my grandfather's own handwriting. Another advantage of a hard-copy book.
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