Early Oregonians Warning

The Oregon State Archives hosts a database called "The Early Oregonians". The database portends to hold genealogical information on the early settlers, unfortunately, at least for the record on William M. Rutledge, the source of the genealogical information is the World Connect project (noted as "wc" on the source line). When I saw the record, I emailed the archives desk and they told me 'wc' means "World Connect".

Here is the reply I received in December, 2022 - "I checked the entry for William Rutledge and it appears that the references to his parents were gleaned from an online Family Tree, most likely the one found on World Connect. I did find two additional family trees online both of which reference the same parents names."

It doesn't appear that we have any "evidence" to prove the parents other than the FT's online.

I told them about how bad this information is and I found it troublesome that a State Archives would propagate the information, but they do not seem to care.

For those who are not familiar with the World Connect Project, a lot of early researchers got together and exchanged information on Rootsweb. A lot of the old data has been proven incorrect and much was openly conjecture by the researchers, who were working together before the advent of online records.

So - please DO NOT believe anything you see on "The Early Oregonians" beyond the land records, which, by the way, are available on the BLM site - https://glorecords.blm.gov/search/default.aspx