When time and circumstances allow, I like to surf the Internet looking for unique genealogy stories. Today I found a blog written by genealogy expert Megan Smolenyak in the April 6 Huffington Post. Smolenyak writes about her research into the heritage of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who had a grandmother named Hannah Jones. The 'Jones' surname is like Murphy or Sullivan or Kelly in Ireland - ubiquitous - or as a relative of my husband once said, "the woods are full of 'em."

Smolenyak discovered two women named Hannah Jones born at about the same time and place. The one with the easiest record trail to follow turned out NOT to be Hillary Clinton's grandmother, which Smolenyak claims made every family tree wrong on at least eight different family tree websites. I'd hazard a guess that close to half the family trees posted on the Internet contain errors, both minor and major. It's just too easy to grab a fact or merge a tree and proliferate a mistake. What's surprising is that someone as famous and well-researched as Hillary Clinton would have such a glaring error in her tree. Smolenyak concludes her comments with these questions:

If everyone got a quarter of Hillary Clinton's tree wrong, what about yours? Are the names adorning your tree really your ancestors or just crowd-sourced fiction? The entire article can be read at www.huffingtonpost.com/megan-smolenyak-smolenyak/
hillary-clinton-family-tr_b_7009986.html