Ancestry Hints

I see in the new newsletter that someone was complaining about the Ancestry Hints, which I assume to be the list which appears suggesting other records for that person. Whilst I accept that some folk will take these at face value and not carry out sensible cross referencing before using them ( which can result in some quite amusing statements ! - ) I personally have found those hints to be very useful on more than once occasion. I have found several families who had emigrated, for example. Obviously you need to be aware that not all the Henry Smiths they list as on the 1891 census are yours - but as a gentle pointer in the right possible direction they are, if used properly, very helpful.

 

I'm sorry to say this applies to me This has meant that I have many times had to do the research twice to find out where data came from the first time. In one way no bad thing because I often find extra information the second time around.

Another thing that is annoying, especially since I believe we all want to help beginners, is when they refuse to accept facts even when you present them with concrete evidence. This is even more frustrating when they have actually published the wrong information - I have a case where it was assumed by an author that Cutbush families living in London were all related. I proved my point - it was ignored.

 

I know it is not easy to begin on this amazing journey that we are all addicted to and Ancestry does paint a wonderful picture in their ads that all you have to do is put in one name and presto !! I find the "hints" interesting but never blindly add the info to my tree. I have had many a giggle at the info some people do add to their trees which could not possibly be correct eg men who have been dead for 20 years being the father of a child just born or girls giving birth when they are only 4 years old etc. It is so easy to go off the track and assume you are correct but some things are just commom sense.

 

I have been going over my research for the last few weeks, mostly because i am slowly adding ancestors to Lost Cousins and i have found that quite often in the beginning i was so excited to find a 'relative' i didnt bother to note where i got the information from. It's a painstaking business but that's what i am doing now. Notes and notes and copies of censuses and all sorts!! I am gradually backing up any information i found and so far i agree with all the research i have done. I know i am not extremely experienced in ancestral research but i do have far more knowledge than i had a few years ago.
Today for example i have had the day off. Did i spend it in the sun? Nope! I did what any sensible family history addict would do and i sat with my net book on my lap trawling through various sites. At the moment i am checking out a blood relative back in the early part of the 1800's and Ancestry threw up certain connections today. I looked through lots of family trees that were accessible which had the same relative as i have and it was amazing to see who they had for the parents. There appears to be around 3 parent options if you are just researching on line and dont have a chance to check out the records yourself. Not one of the trees showed their source of information and i have emailed a few to ask how they came to their conclusions. It has also been obvious that some people have simply copied from another 'tree' and this is how mistakes are made.
I will admit to once...and only once....in my very early research i simply accepted someone's information and placed it in my tree. It was to my cost as later on i found, through my own research, that it was all wrong. I never did it again! Now i check and double check and look at as many sources and records as i can before i add someone to my tree. There must be lots of family trees on Ancestry, and many other sites, where the owner has just copied names across........

 

There sure are Carla and to the beginner it must be so confusing, nothing beats doing your own research, with help from people who know what they are talking about.

 

To my utter regret the family bible from my grandmother's side of the family is with my cousin. As the youngest son, he was living with her when she died, and as a result all the photos, etc went to him. I find this hard as i have done all the research for the family, and everyone has a copy, (although it is not up to date as i have found even more ancestors). I would dearly love to have the Bible but only have a photocopy of the entries in the front *sigh*. I know it is precious to my cousin but all the same i do feel sad that my father, as the eldest son, was never interested enough to want to have any of the photos etc. Never mind...not everyone is as passionate as i am about ancestral research!

 

I have to say that I have found Ancestry to be a much easier site to use than findmypast. I know many people like the latter, but I found it frustrating, plus the fact that it doesn't have monthly subscriptions is a down-side. (Perhaps someone could suggest this to them....? ) With Ancestry I've only fairly recently cottoned-on to how useful the leafy hints can be to wade through a lot of chaff, but yes, its all taken with salt and I don't grab just everything!

And speaking of misinformation on trees - on Ancestry with one of my lines there is an horrendous amount of the wrong coupling of information (some pretty bizarre). In my early days I grabbed it to use as a starting point, then went on to try and either prove or disprove the 'facts'. Frustrating, as someone else has mentioned, that others are not really interested in sharing their proof or gaining a correct tree. I think the only recourse open to me about presenting the correct facts, backed up, is to place this family on my own website (of which one day I will build) so people searching can find it. This family is also a huge brick wall ... but we live in hope.

 

My approach, when I find an Atcherley shoe-horned into the wrong family tree on Ancestry, is to place a comment on the profile page for that person. Direct messages to the tree owner are usually ignored, but by placing a comment which other users can see when they visit the page where the misplaced Atcherley appears, they have a chance to see why I believe the Ancestry user responsible is 'barking up the wrong family tree'. Sometimes the tree owner responds, mostly not (in many cases I'm guessing the tree owners are no longer Ancestry members), but almost always my comments remain online. I explain why I believe the wrong conclusion has been reached, and in some cases I have done a little research to identify where the tree owner has gone wrong (usually several generations before the misplaced Atcherley turns up!) and offer information which could set them off on the right track.

I find that most 'ancestor thieves' (people grabbing the wrong ancestor for their trees) are beginners. As others have pointed out, newcomers to genealogy can be too inexperienced to know that hints are just hints, or that not all events were recorded, that not all records have survived, and that that not all surviving records are online (you know the approach: that Elizabeth must be the Elizabeth who married John So-and-so as it's the only marriage of a John So-and-so and Elizabeth I've found on FamilySearch). In some cases no doubt they are too lazy or have too little time to put in the required research. Those Ancestry 'shaky leaves' sure can lead to some very shaky family trees!

Then there are the 'name collectors' who simply don't know when to stop and seem to judge the value of a family tree by the number of people in it rather than its accuracy or the extent of the information it holds telling you who all those people were and how they lived their lives. I tend not to mind name collectors so much nowadays, as long as the names they have collected from my trees are linked with the correct relatives.

It does worry me that so many people blindly copy whole chunks of other people's trees without checking the validity of the data they've grabbed, since others on seeing the same data repeated in several Ancestry trees may assume that it must be right purely because so many people say so. My answer to that, in the case of my Atcherley family tree, is my website where I have made accessible the tree according to my research, and where I will over time add details of the sources I have used to reach my genealogical conclusions, along with the stories of the people who appear in the tree.

Steve