How Not to Ancestry

I use Ancestry quite a bit... I started my tree about 3 years ago and have accumulated over 2000 people. However, what you said Andy is completely true. A few months ago, I started a new "official" tree in which everyone is 100% true and accurate. It's taking 100x longer, but I know it'll be worth it in the long run.

I even feel sorry for the people who have the invalid information without even knowing somethings wrong...

I have a girlfriend that has a tree with a couple thousand people. Mine is around 500 and that includes siblings of my
direct ancestors. I wont go past these shores, I don't have the experience and it gets to sketchy. What I have is solid.
One reason I started adding siblings is I have found info and photos in their trees that relates to mine. BUT as always,
verify!!!
 
No worries. Being able to document your lineage back to Otto the Flatulent isn't all that impressive.
The thing is, half of my family is of rather mysteriously unknown origins involving the adoption of the children of yellow fever victims. I'd sure like to get to the bottom of that. The smart thing would be to ask at the library; they have a genealogy department.
 
One other problem is that census takers in the 19th Century (at least in England) wrote down what they were told, we wasted hours looking for an extra brother who didn't exist - whoever gave the information in one census had him put down as Harry, which turned out to be Harold and a middle name. The census taker had also put him down as Walter, so he was there twice.
Also a lot of them couldn't spell!
 
A Question about Ancestry. Forgetting the assorted family trees on it, don't they have some good databases of photos, newspapers and various other documents??
Occassionally, I get a google "hit" that takes me to Ancestry and it appears there may be some original document there. Since they bought Fold3, I know you can have access all those documents from Mexican War to Viet Nam War---maybe if you pay extra.
What original documents are available on Ancestry?
 
What original documents are available on Ancestry?

Thousands. I rarely even see or use the family trees. They have censuses, newspapers, ship passenger manifests, passports, military records, some deed and estate stuff.

I think you can do this without being subscribed, but try going to the home page, click on the drop-down "search" heading, and click on "card catalog." Clicking on the various headings gives an idea what's available.
 
A Question about Ancestry. Forgetting the assorted family trees on it, don't they have some good databases of photos, newspapers and various other documents??
Occassionally, I get a google "hit" that takes me to Ancestry and it appears there may be some original document there. Since they bought Fold3, I know you can have access all those documents from Mexican War to Viet Nam War---maybe if you pay extra.
What original documents are available on Ancestry?

Google Barefoot Genealogist Crista Cowan and find the youtube video where she describes what's available. Her videos are about 20 minutes long and straight to the point and really do give you an understanding of what's available on ancestry.com. She has some that explain the place records and land records that are very helpful.
 
Unfortunately, documentation is not spread around evenly. My wife rocks and rolls on most of her genealogy, but she has the benefit of being the child of a lot of latecomers; by about the time the first of her ancestors arrived in this country, mine were all here already!* Frontiers in particular are troublesome, as people tend to be concentrating more on survival than on recordkeeping. My coal-mining and farming ancestors in the Appalachians are a lot harder to track... they didn't leave much behind in the way of paperwork.


* Example: she'd never had to deal with a pre-1850 US Census. When I showed her how sketchy the information on the earlier ones was, she was shocked...

My finding is that frontiers are also tough because the people who are willing to move somewhere will often move again. Or they'll move back for awhile or part of the family will move back.

But people can be weird when you contact them--I've had very nice responses, even when I've been saying, "I think that's the wrong guy--it's maybe his nephew even though they have the same name and died the same year." But, one person that I just was being nice to say, "Hey, we have a DNA match as 4th cousins," very peremptorily explained that I had the wrong Elizabeth, I was trying to match a different generation than his gr-grandmom. And there was an Elizabeth in that earlier generation, who our gr-grans must have been named after, but there was no real question about that part of the family tree.

What was amazing is that this is a hugely documented family tree as some relative in the 1960s tracked everyone down and got all the family stories for this one family and published them. He even documented the families that had often intermarried with this family and worked with other genealogists who'd been researching the family for a long time.

It was sort of a shock to me to discover what it was like when other family branches weren't this well documented. Although as I said on another thread, I love this one strange tree where the person has included all the brothers, sisters, grandparents, children of this very common named ancestor. It doesn't make much sense, but you don't have to go to "search" on ancestry, you just look at her tree and click on some name and go, "Well, that's one of the cousins named William who married a Margaret--there were two of the same age who both married Margarets--but it's not my William."
 
I found one ancestor that sparked my curiousity , known simply as "Thomas the Cheater" a medieval character that I want to know more about but all the hints about him are really vague.

It was an ironic name, cause Thomas was actually pretty honest...

Thousands. I rarely even see or use the family trees. They have censuses, newspapers, ship passenger manifests, passports, military records, some deed and estate stuff.

I think you can do this without being subscribed, but try going to the home page, click on the drop-down "search" heading, and click on "card catalog." Clicking on the various headings gives an idea what's available.

I've put together a lot through records alone.

You can utilize their 2 week freeby as well, and then cancel on your last day. Sometimes they do free weekends throughout the year.
 
One other problem is that census takers in the 19th Century (at least in England) wrote down what they were told, we wasted hours looking for an extra brother who didn't exist - whoever gave the information in one census had him put down as Harry, which turned out to be Harold and a middle name. The census taker had also put him down as Walter, so he was there twice.
Also a lot of them couldn't spell!

Same on this side of the pond. Many just wrote down how it sounded to them which, depending on how heavy the accents were, could be way wrong. Then there's the common nicknames - e.g. Polly for Mary, Peggy for Margaret. I've got one set of grandparents who were counted twice because they moved just as the census was being taken and got enumerated on both ends of their trip. However, the enumerators didn't write all of them down the same (they were German and the names got a bit scrambled in rural Georgia).

It's frustrating to some but also part of the thrill of the hunt for me; can you find all the hidden relatives hiding in these records ?
 
When checking census records, be sure to check preceding and following pages from person you are searching. I have found many other relatives this way. Example: my Grandfather and Granny lived in certain county of Ky. In checking preceding pages and following pages, I found his mother and her second husband, my Granny's mother and father, and several brothers and sisters of them.
 
I ran into a tree yesterday that had Nathan Bedford Forrest's son listed as his father!

This is why my tree is private; I make all kinds of assumptions and mistakes, and don't want other people repeating them. Usually I go back and fix everything eventually, but sometimes not. Maybe some day I will make a nice, elegant, professional historian-quality tree but for now it's quick and dirty.

It would be nice if ancestry automatically set people as deceased if they were born before, say, 13o years ago. Also if it reported obvious errors, such as people born before their parents. And automatic checking for possible duplicates. And adding all the information from a record when you use it to create a new person without having to go back and add it twice. It's a wonderful tool, but it could be a lot better.

I also have my suspicions that census takers were just being facetious when they wrote people's names down. It must have been really boring writing down all those names - thus Arthur Fox smith turning into Emit T Smet. I was looking for a lady named Virginia, and the census had her name recorded as... let's just say Ladyparts. Had to take a screenshot of that one.
 
When checking census records, be sure to check preceding and following pages from person you are searching. I have found many other relatives this way. Example: my Grandfather and Granny lived in certain county of Ky. In checking preceding pages and following pages, I found his mother and her second husband, my Granny's mother and father, and several brothers and sisters of them.
This is also true of relatives in service. Check the other people with the same last name in your ancestor's unit. Maybe a brother or cousin also served.
 
I have spent a great deal of time on ancestry. Creating family trees showing I am a long lost relative to some of the worlds wealthiest people.

:D
 
Back
Top