Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
So I spent a lot of time a while ago researching one line of family in Europe and got back to 1700 or so.
This was doing manual research mainly on another site (more EU focused) and putting entries into ancestry.
But it just stopped with no more data or records.
Today I went to the same parental line with a completely unmapped grandparent and ancestry kept finding very valid matches all the way back to....1550 seriously like 12th great-grand father.
My question is, on the other grandparent, if I take out (delete) my manual research (aka people) would it get better results by auto identifying? There are various spellings of names and not easy to know which one ancestry will pick up. I feel that I don't want to risk losing my prior research if there is no benefit.
I don't know if ancestry will say it knows a parent of someone if you have already filled it in?
That is maybe the question.
I have searched but find this question not easy to find results on, even on ancestry. thanks
It sounds a lot like you're just copying trees which is not a reliable way to research. Even if those trees have records attached, you still need to verify those records and with data within, which takes a lot of time and effort and should not be as quick and easy as what you're describing here.
Ancestry.com's "potential relative" hints will not recommend a parent if one is already filled in. But you need to understand these hints are just pulling data from other trees, which are not necessarily accurate - in fact, that far back in history and they probably aren't accurate. Many researchers have member tree hints and potential relative hints turned off for this very reason. Although trees can give you leads to follow, you should not be just blindly copying them.
Although trees can give you leads to follow, you should not be just blindly copying them.
Correct. But they are often a convenient & helpful way to confirm or challenge what you've put together.
Small differences abound. Most are easy to sort out as a 'minor' error. otoh ... Big differences stand out.
eg: Just today I asserted my data for a birth location using a birth cert.
Others used a census from 2-9 year later ... after the people had moved.
Quote:
It sounds a lot like you're just copying trees which is not a reliable way to research.
... just pulling data from other trees, which are not necessarily accurate -
Yesterday I followed a distant DNA match with one of the family names. Cooper.
The data I've put together goes back to England. No reason to think otherwise.
This other tree shows the line going back to Germany with a name change (from Keifer).
The time period and location (Great Wagon Road) aligns with some other Germans in the mix.
It WILL be looked into at some point but I'm not copying anything before I do.
Be very wary of data going back that far. A lot of early genealogy was forged so that people could look like royalty or descended from knights, etc.
The only way is to look at primary sources of info in whatever language they're in if not in your primary tongue, and for most, that's pretty impossible when going back hundreds of years.
Be very wary of data going back that far. A lot of early genealogy was forged so that people could look like royalty or descended from knights, etc.
The only way is to look at primary sources of info in whatever language they're in if not in your primary tongue, and for most, that's pretty impossible when going back hundreds of years.
Of course, who could even read Middle English?
I have a number of German direct ancestors which I can track back to about 1550. The initial work was done by a serious genealogist who searched German church records in person in Europe about 20 years ago. His tree didn’t provide images or link to images though. I copied the profiles I was interested in to the Family Search tree. This helped immensely as some record hints for births, marriages and death records immediately popped up and I was able to attach them. I then searched the record database at Family Search for the remainder and easily found many more as the database had fortunately been indexed.
I have other ancestors that I can trace back to about 1650. There’s less certainty before that date because the French burned a number of churches (with their records) in what is now southwest Germany during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). So there is a gap in the records.
It really helps when some ancestors tend to stay put in one village for generations - and the damned French aren’t burning down churches!
I’ve given up looking earlier than 1550 as usage of surnames was much less common.
Be very wary of data going back that far. A lot of early genealogy was forged so that people could look like royalty or descended from knights, etc.
The only way is to look at primary sources of info in whatever language they're in if not in your primary tongue, and for most, that's pretty impossible when going back hundreds of years.
Of course, who could even read Middle English?
The 1500s were more Early Modern English than Middle English, which is difficult but not entirely impossible for most modern readers. In my experience, the bigger issue is the handwriting, and basic availability. That far back, sometimes you may only have access to lineage books that have detailed and worked off of the original parish records, but that's still a secondary source which may or may not be accurate (depends on the author). A lot of the originals haven't been digitized, usually because they're not a high priority.
It's not impossible to go back to the 1500s (IF primary records go back that far - they don't always, some places didn't start keeping parish records until the 1600s, or even 1700s and even when they did start earlier, those records haven't always survived to today), but the method the OP seems to be using is not a reliable method. And yes, there's many false links to royalty and nobility out there. There's a lot of pitfalls to research this early - it takes a lot of experience and skill, a lot of caution, a lot of deep research, none of which I'm seeing described by the OP.
I recently read a good point someone made on Wikitree because pre-1700 profiles there are locked and can only be worked on by certified researchers. The reasoning being not only because early research is more difficult, but also because an ancestor that far back would literally have millions of descendants, and before you rush into getting certified to do pre-1700 research at Wikitree, you have to stop and ask yourself, of all those millions of descendants, am I really the best, most skilled researcher to be working on this profile?
"when you are adding an ancestor in the 1600s, or especially earlier, you are presuming to personally take on the responsibility of ancestral identification for tens of millions of living and past people who are directly descended from that ancestor. So are you really prepared for that responsibility? Are you the only genealogist who has presumed to do so? And are you the best single one genealogist among them all, who is really prepared to accurately, or firstly, do so?"
Granted, this is in the context of working on a crowd sourced tree, so everyone works on the same profiles, there's no individual trees. So people have a greater responsibility to other researchers and descendants because the profiles are all shared. Technically, people can do whatever they want with their own individual trees at sites like Ancestry, but considering how frequently those individual trees get blindly copied and recopied again and again with little to no sound research, I think everyone could use a little reminder about responsible research now and then.
The 1500s were more Early Modern English than Middle English, which is difficult but not entirely impossible for most modern readers. In my experience, the bigger issue is the handwriting, and basic availability. That far back, sometimes you may only have access to lineage books that have detailed and worked off of the original parish records, but that's still a secondary source which may or may not be accurate (depends on the author). A lot of the originals haven't been digitized, usually because they're not a high priority.
It's not impossible to go back to the 1500s (IF primary records go back that far - they don't always, some places didn't start keeping parish records until the 1600s, or even 1700s and even when they did start earlier, those records haven't always survived to today), but the method the OP seems to be using is not a reliable method. And yes, there's many false links to royalty and nobility out there. There's a lot of pitfalls to research this early - it takes a lot of experience and skill, a lot of caution, a lot of deep research, none of which I'm seeing described by the OP.
I recently read a good point someone made on Wikitree because pre-1700 profiles there are locked and can only be worked on by certified researchers. The reasoning being not only because early research is more difficult, but also because an ancestor that far back would literally have millions of descendants, and before you rush into getting certified to do pre-1700 research at Wikitree, you have to stop and ask yourself, of all those millions of descendants, am I really the best, most skilled researcher to be working on this profile?
"when you are adding an ancestor in the 1600s, or especially earlier, you are presuming to personally take on the responsibility of ancestral identification for tens of millions of living and past people who are directly descended from that ancestor. So are you really prepared for that responsibility? Are you the only genealogist who has presumed to do so? And are you the best single one genealogist among them all, who is really prepared to accurately, or firstly, do so?"
Granted, this is in the context of working on a crowd sourced tree, so everyone works on the same profiles, there's no individual trees. So people have a greater responsibility to other researchers and descendants because the profiles are all shared. Technically, people can do whatever they want with their own individual trees at sites like Ancestry, but considering how frequently those individual trees get blindly copied and recopied again and again with little to no sound research, I think everyone could use a little reminder about responsible research now and then.
Good answer! Especially the bit about responsible research. Ancestry loves to promote the ease of copying without verification.
So I went and researched part of what was being mentioned and even though I was having fun and my tree is private I did find this and it has helped me understand that I might have created quite a bit of work to sift through. So I guess I don't even understand why they allow people to "add" these parental hints directly to a tree. Anyway, that was part of the reason I left my tree private, I already knew I had some dates wrong or not as precise as needed. Anyway, I just wanted to see where it would go and where I wound up does make sense.
So I guess I don't even understand why they allow people to "add" these parental hints directly to a tree.
Because they can be valid hints, and they're trying to make it easier for people to find leads that might turn out to be true. That's why they're hints, not facts. But if you research and verify that the hint is correct, then making it easy to add it into your tree is a huge benefit.
But like I say, you can turn the hints off in your settings, and many researchers do just that.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
