Anyone with a nodding familiarity of national elections from 2016 to today in western societies is familiar with the phrase fake news. Much has been written about fake news and how destructive these “news” pieces can be. It never occurred to me that fake news could throw a serious wrench in genealogical research. Or, at the very least, how fake news of yesteryear can lead a researcher down a deep – and ultimately fruitless – rabbit hole in the quest for historical evidence in the search for ancestors.