When using Ancestry.com to research your
family tree, should you take the
recommended hints? Today, in this video,
we're going to talk about whether you
should accept the record, tree, and other
suggestions that Ancestry makes to you.
[Music]
Howdy,
I am Devon Noel Le with Family History
Fanatics, where we help you understand
your DNA, climb your family tree, and
write your ancestor stories along the
way. If this is your first time here,
howdy! I'm so glad that you joined us. And
be sure to let us in the know in the
comments that you are watching for the
first time and what questions you have
about Ancestry.com or other genealogy
research questions. Today, like I said
before, we're gonna talk about
Ancestry.com, and the hints, and whether
you should accept them or not. After you
log on to Ancestry.com, you may find a
screen a lot like this one. So let's show
you a few locations where you can find
hints for your trees to investigate. Now
a few of the places where you're going
to find hints to investigate suggestions,
that Ancestry makes for you, are in this
main box this is just one of the family
trees I have on Ancestory.com. And I can
click on "View People With Hints."
I'll come back to that in just a moment.
The other place that you can find hints, is
this leaf. And sometimes the numbers show
up and sometimes they're hidden. But here
are a number of hints that Ancestry is
recommending to me; however, if I click on
this bar I can see that I have three
different trees here on Ancestry with
which to explore my hints. So let me show
you what happens when we dive into the
hints. So I have a list of quite a few
clues that Ancestry is recommending
to me. And as I scroll down I can see
that I have record hint, photos hints,
story hints, and member tree hints. But I
want to show you one other place that
you might be finding your hints.
As you're exploring the Ancestry family
tree, if you come to your family tree
and look at this, which is more of a
portrait descendant all the way up to
your ancestor view (with a portrait
family tree view). You also have what we
call the landscape view. I'm showing just
this gentleman but I can go down to
Andrew and notice how that expands. And I
can go to Lura Maude, and then that expand
there. But the hints will appear when
you click on these shaky leaves. It shows
me that there are five Ancestry hints
for this relative. So let's actually
begin to evaluate hints on Ancestry.com.
We're gonna dive into this hint from
Oscar Ward. And I can click on that hint
and it will go straight to the hint page.
If you're on a profile page for an
ancestor, you'll also be able to see the
hint page right here. That helps you in
case you're getting lost. So as you can
see, this is my third great-grandfather
Oscar Ward and there is a hint for a
Michigan death record. And it says the
name is Oscar Ward and the child is
George Albert Ward. And then we can see
"Oh hey, there's a George Albert Ward!"
right now. Now we have a video on this
channel about "Researching Common Name
Ancestors." Oscar Ward is a common name.
George Albert is not entirely ,common but
it can be common. So what you always have
to do when you're researching your
ancestors, no matter how common their
name is, is don't look at this hint and
say, "Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and accept
that." Always go
look at the original record, whenever
possible or the indexed if an original
record is unavailable. So there's a
thumbnail. let's go and explore.
I clicked on that image. And then Ancestry,
it's so handy,
it gives me Oscar Ward's name up here at
the top, and his wife's name, a bit of the
information I have discovered. And as you
can see, I don't know where Oscar
died. It's a mystery for me. I'm still
researching that, but if there was a
death date Ancestry would provide that
for me. It also tells me the children of
Oscar- Emeline and George Albert. And I see the
wife, as well as their parents. So it's a
quick snapshot of information to help me
remember who am I researching on. And if
I ever forget where I am on this tree, I
could either click on Oscar and go back
to that profile page and review the
information I have already gathered or
you could right click and open a new tab.
You can't see my tab because I've hidden
them on this screen, but you then I can
just switch back and forth without
having to leave this page. Now I have
a little bit of information here about
Oscar Ward but it doesn't really tell me
everything I need to know. Two other
things to keep in mind as you're
navigating here on Ancestry, if I click
on the link for the child, you see that
that child's name is a link. If I click
on it now, I switch to the view where
George Albert Ward is the primary person on
this document listed below, and the
extracted information about him. I
can see that he died it was 67, when he
died, and I can see a birth date and
place, and all of this information.
That's pretty handy. So if I switch back
to that other tab, and I click on George Albert
Ward, I can go and see born September 1869,
Mount Morris in Genesee, Michigan.
September 1870, Mount Morris, Michigan.
Okay.
That birth, is it 1869 or is it 1870? We'll
come back to that in a second. We have a
death date of 23 April 1938 and 23 April
1938. The locations are right. And then we
have a father's name of Oscar but do
they not have the mother's name. If we
have the mother's name and it happened
to be a Jeanette,
then we know with pretty accurate
certainty that this record is for George.
So let's dive one step further in
evaluating this record to see what's
going on here. So we have George Albert
Ward, he is deceased. We have this
information and he is the husband of
Grace Ward. Let's go back and evaluate.
We have a Grace Hamilton, so I thought it's
starting to line up. We see that he is a
theater manager. Oh, isn't that great when
you have occupational information! It
helps you separate your ancestors.
You definitely want to pay attention to
these little details and don't leave
them hidden on these records. We'll come
back to what we do with this in a moment.
We're coming down. We've got the Mount
Morris. Oscar is the name of the father.
Darn it!
There is no name for the mother for
whatever reason. But the informant, the
informant, the person who provided this
biographical information, their name is
Lee Ward. Sometimes it will tell you
how that person is related to the
deceased, other times you have to put on
your thinking caps to try to figure it
out. Well we're gonna go back to Ancestry
and we're going to look and see.
All right, I don't have any siblings on this
particular record that identifies a Lee
Ward, however since he died an Oscar, I
mean George, the son of Oscar, died in
1938, let me see if after he got married.
there is a son named Lee that shows.
And send me these census records, so I
click on it. Since this record is from 1900.
And if I view it, I can see there's a
Lawrence Ward, a child without a first
name Ward, a Thea Ward. Okay, so that's
1900, I'm still piecing all of this
information together. I'm gonna go ahead
and click the 1910 census. Let's see what
household is in there. We're looking for
a Lee.
We have a Lorenzo, a Lawrence.
a Theodore. Okay, we still do not have a Lee,
but we do have some possibilities. 1930!
let's look at that. We just have two
in the household. It looks like their
children have grown up and left the nest.
But I almost skipped over a clue! Did you
see it? His occupation is manager
in a theater and he's living in Mount
Morris! Okay so we're gonna go ahead and
actually accept this hint, because it
fits the parameters we were looking for.
Let's go back and we can save from here
and the record will be saved to Oscar
and to George and whoever else is named
in your record. I'm gonna just go all the
way back to that first hint and save it
from here just for fun. I'm going to
click "Yes!" that was correct. And then I'm
going to click name. ,Now if you come
across situations where there are
alternate spellings of your ancestors
name, you can click "alternate." And so
Ancestry will save an alternate
variation of your ancestor's name.
This is particularly handy when you have
ancestors that change their name or
anglicize their names. And if for
instance we have Benjamin Freeman Lee
and Benjamin Freeman Garnett that would
definitely be an alternate. But if you
have someone with a name spelled in
Cyrillic and then they go to an
English-speaking country, and there is
an English variation, you'll definitely
want to keep that alternate spelling. But
this one is the same, so we're going to
hit leave it. And by clicking that it's
going to bring the information over.
Notice it's not going to change it
because it's the same. But we're also
going to go ahead and click "Add child"
because now the record will not only be
added to Oscar but it will be added to
George as well. Let's see if there's any
information that we want to change.
We have George Albert Ward - George Albert
Ward. And we have September 1869 for a
birth date. And on this death record, it
said 12 September 1870. Now for the sake
of time in this video, that September
1869 came from the 1900 census. And so
in this sense, it is a very good clue. But there
are some times when other records were
more accurate. And in this case I'm going
to go ahead and accept this 12 September
1870 date. And notice I'm going to
overwrite that September 1869 date.
I like this version of Mount Morris,
Genesee, Michigan, United States more than
this truncated one, so I'm going to leave
it. And then I'm going to.. uh-oh! I have two
death dates. Which one's accurate? You can
continue doing research until you find
the accurate date, or we can do that
alternate date. So here we're going to
"Add As An Alternate." Later we can go
and switch to which one we preferred. But
I'm going to go ahead and add in an
alternate date so I can keep researching
until I find my accurate answers.
They have Mount Pleasant, Isabella,
Michigan. That's the same. So now all I
have to do is save to my tree.
But what happens if a hint
doesn't seem accurate? Let's go and check
out one of those hints. Now here I'm
working on Mary Elizabeth Smith and she
has 10 hints. Just a few moments ago,
though she only had three. Let's dive in
and look at a few of the hints where I'm
thinking, "I don't think this might
be accurate." I see a number of hints
right here. One is for a marriage for
Elizabeth's son Orlando Smith. I do
have an old Lando Smith and I think
that's accurate. But I'm gonna go ahead
and skip that for now. But I have an
Elizabeth Smith born in 1834 in Ohio and
now she's living in Minnesota in 1920.
This is when you need to go back to your
facts.
So 1920, I don't even have to go back to
my facts list to say this can't be right.
She was dead in 1889 and she's buried.
There's a stone on the family plot. So
there's no way that this one is accurate.
So I'm going to go ahead and ignore the
hint. And it's pretty simple. All we have
to do is click "Ignore" and it goes away.
Well here's another one - Levi Steel,
1850s, St. Joseph's, Indiana. What the heck
is going on? Let's go ahead and look at
the facts. I don't believe her name is
Levi steel. I'm scrolling down to 1859. She's
married to Leon Philip Smith and it
looks like she never left this Franklin
County or Delaware County area in Ohio,
just north of Columbus, so why do we have
Levi Steel And her name is
Elizabeth Smith? Now occasionally hints
like this, are from my experience (and I'm no
expert but you can ask Ancestry support
staff) but what I found is that people
who have my ancestors in their trees
have made a mistake.
And Ancestry doesn't know necessarily,
the algorithm doesn't know that that's a
mistake. But they see that "Okay, you have
Leon Philip Smith he married Mary
Elizabeth Smith who is the daughter
of Daniel Smith and Elizabeth Ogden. Oh!
This other tree has the Mary Elizabeth
Smith and these sources attached to them."
So essentially, Ancestry is trying to be
helpful by letting you know what other
researchers have on
their tree. Because they never would
have found this for you in search. So
this is another ignore hint. And because
we know that she isn't living in Iowa in
1856, because she's married to Leon
Phillip Smith in 1859
according to her marriage record,
we can continue ignoring hints. So the
question is, "Should you believe the hints?"
And the answer is there are a lot of
hints that show up on Ancestry. And
you're going to just have to go and hit
ignore. So now if i refresh I'm down to
one hint and this one is accurate. When
should you accept the hints on Ancestry?
Well a good genealogist,
which we are striving to be, always
validates the hints before we accept
them. There are some genealogists to
ignore hint whole cloth, but I think
that's a waste of your time.
Use the hints, but validate them if they
support that at research you have
already established. Then go ahead and
accept the hint. If it significantly
contradicts what you have found, then you
can reject it. But wait! Sometimes you
really should reject what you think you
should have and accept something that's
contradictory. Uou have to make sure that
you go and do further research on the
hints just as I did in this video. Does
it look like she could have gone to
Indiana? No. Mary did not go to indiana.
That's a hint to reject. Could it be that
George Albert Ward was the son of Oscar
and all of this information supports his
death? Yes. Why? Because we went and we
revalidated and reproved the information
we had already gathered. So when do you
accept the hints? After you examine that
hint and found it to be a clue
and in line with the research you had
already done or improving the
information like we did with that
birthdate improve the information that
you already have
using new information. If you have
further questions on what to do with
Ancestry hints, be sure to leave your
question in the comment section of this
video and either I or a member of a
community will be happy to answer them.
If you want more hints and tips on how
to use the Ancestry platform, be sure to
check out this playlist right here.