Many people love my research over the shoulder series that
I've done for the past years and today's question came from
a viewer that said, how do you process your research hints?
What is your flow? So, I'm going to use Ancestry.com and
show you what I do from the time I start adding somebody
new to a profile and then processing the hints that
Ancestry give me. Howdy, I'm Devon Noel Lee with Family
History Fanatics and I love helping you climb your family
tree and have a whole lot of fun on along the way. If family
history isn't fun, then maybe just maybe you're doing it
wrong. So, let's see the fun things that you can discover by
processing your hints on Ancestry.com. So, for the sake
of this video, we're going to pretend that I have added a new
child for Jacob Colvin and Mary H Titus. I know that her
husband is Frank and her children are Newton and
Merrimae. So many times you're going to add new people to the
tree as a wife or as an in law or somebody to get married into
the family or new child and you'll have a few starting
records and then Ancestry will give you a lot of hints. So in
this case I'm going to go ahead and start my flow of processing
these hints. So join me. So across the top you're going to
see that I have 11 new hints none that are undecided no
hints that I've ignored and three that I've accepted so the
three that I've accepted are the find a grave a marriage
record as well as a newspaper.com article about
when Clara married Frank so I'm going to go back to my hints
and I'm going to walk you through which ones I evaluate
first now in a previous video I've already told you that I
don't necessarily look at Member Tree so I'm going to go
ahead and ignore that now if I start running into a brick wall
and I want to be able to look at what other researchers have
found. I click on ignored and there is that family traits and
then I can go ahead and review them from there. Back to the
new. Now, what I want to do is I want to look work from her
death to her birth. So, even though these aren't sorted in
that order, I'm going to look for like the 1930 census 80 and
I'm not seeing the 1930 census. So, So, I'm going to make a
note, okay? So, now I have a note. It saves automatically. I
don't have to do a save button which is really nice. So, I'm
going to go ahead and go through this research process.
This is the quick comparison. I have a board about 1873. I'm
going to be adding this new information and here is Frank.
I'm actually going to go ahead and click through to this page
because I want to go to the original image. Now, sometimes
it's really nice when Ancestry does these guide bars. I I wish
they would do it on so many more of their records. So these
are the top headers for the census record. Here's the name
so that when you're scrolling over you can see Sarah Rapp was
born in Ohio. So that's really neat. So I'm going to scroll
down here and I'm looking for Frank A Catern and Clara N.
I can see where their living and the house number that he
owns the property with the mortgage. I could see their
ages where both of them were born. Here's Iowa for Frank in
California for Clara and his parents from from were from
North Carolina and Ohio. Claire is from New York. That's all
checking out and I also have his occupation. Now, there's
some other notations that I want to be aware of but I have
enough information that lines up with what I know and I go
ahead and click yes. This is my relative. So now, the next
thing I'm going to do is I'm going to make this more
standard. I'm going to take out this assembly a district but
now I have Los Angeles, Los Angeles. Um we can go ahead and
have that other information and type that in there. If you're
doing some other research, you can say parents, you can type
in any other details that you also saw on the report so this
becomes your tracking of your notes that I've talked about in
other videos and lectures that I've given. So, I'm going to go
ahead and do Frank as well. Now, I like that they matched
it because I already took out that assembly address District.
I'm not sure why they did that unless this was already in the
Family Search Family Tree but when I'm going to do put head
if I'm ever uncertain, that's the one part that I'm not
really fond of. There isn't a quick way like on some other
platforms where you can just go back to the image. So, instead
right click open a new tab and it'll take you back and you can
verify that you have yeah father from North Carolina,
mother from Ohio. Any details that are in these various
records and you have that opportunity to use the
description box I would go ahead and put it because what
happens is if you see right here married to the head as
wife assembly district 69, both parents from New York, you have
these quick notes that you can reference which is really nice.
I probably need to go back and put the Huntington Drive on
there. If I forget it and I can do it here. And so now I have
Huntington Drive. So ideally what's going to happen is that
you have all these residence information. You can track your
ancestors. This is particularly useful when you have city
directories and you get that street address and you could
see where they change. So now we go back to hints and we go
and find what? The nineteen ten census. So, I'm going to do a
control of mine. It does a pop-up screen that you can
kind of see up here but now I'm at the 1910 census. I'm
going to do a quick compare little bit South Pasadena.
That's about right and here is the husband and the two
children. Here are and here are the husband and the two
children. I'm going to go ahead from here and say yes but I'm
also going to right click and open that page here so that I
could go and look. Ah. I love when those header bars come.
Such a great feature. Alright, so I'm going to go ahead and
transcribe. Okay, so now that I have a bit of the
transcription, I haven't done a full transcription but I'm
going to go ahead and say attach this to the family tree.
I'm going to go ahead and say yes. Once again, brought to
that old school way of doing the attached to the tree. So
1910 South Pasadena. Don't need to change anything read there.
This is for Clara. So, I'm going to take this note and put
it in there for her and then I'm going to take the residence
and put it in there for her and the how many years married.
Okay, so I have that and then I still have the notes for Frank.
So now, I'm going to make that go away for a minute and do
Frank. Go ahead and add that there for him and now I also
have Newton, the sun. So, I'm going to put the address here
and I'm going to do the same thing for the child. There you
go and now I'm going to go ahead and save it and now the
nineteenth senses ten senses is there. I really like all of
these little markings that Ancestry does to say, okay, it
talks about this and it talks about the birth and it talks
about the residence and stuff. So, I wish they could do it
worth all, well, that's really good. Now, I could walk you
through the other 10 hints but I think to be respectful of
your time that I'm actually going to just tell you what
order do I actually begin looking for things so I almost
always start with census records and then I go to city
directories because city directories fill in the gaps
between census records and now that I have the census records
and I have the city directories then I go and I look for vital
information which would also include gravestones and
cemetery records because I know enough about when people were
and when people died so that when I see the vital records
and I also see the relationships and when I see
informants, I know enough about that family that I can then go
ahead and say, yeah, that is the vital record for this
person. From there, it all depends on where you're
researching. Now, in Clara's case, we have border crossings.
We have newspaper articles and we have published and compiled
genealogies From the Daughters of the American Revolutions. So
what order would I put those in? I like newspaper articles
because after I've done City Directory Census Records and
Vital Records I really if there's a story I want to read
the story. So I personally go to newspapers next especially
if the ancestry finds them for me. After I look at newspapers
then I go ahead and look at some of the fun things such as
the border crossings, you might also spine county histories,
you might find land and tax records, all of that
supplemental information to support who they are and then I
let leave the genealogy's and the compiled lineage. I leave
that for the end. So, I'm methodically going through
everything building the case and then just filling in
afterwards. Now, what about photos? It depends. It really
depends. If there's a quality image that is above a person or
a gravestone, I'll go ahead and accept it. If it's the fifth
cop of the same picture and probably ignoring four of them
and picking one. Sadly, I don't know and I'm having a hard time
figuring out who published the photo first. Um so sometimes I
just skip the photos completely. I don't know. You
tell me in the comments what you do about photos and
stories. Um one of the other things is sometimes people have
newspaper articles and when it comes to newspaper articles, I
will off in because I have a subscription to newspapers.com.
I'll use it the image that people would put on as a hint
to go over to newspapers.com and then save a clipping over
to Ancestry. I have a video on how to do that if you're
unaware but I used I like that quality of the image better
than what most people put in their media gallery. So, if
there's anything I'm missing, go ahead and let me know in the
comments. That is how I process my hint don't dislike hints but
I do evaluate every hint that I come through. I'm looking for
are the hints for people in the correct place at the correct
time with the correct relationships. If I'm not sure,
well then, put that in your maybe folder and that's when
you can have things for undecided that you can come
back to later. So, if you're ready to learn more about using
Ancestry, be sure to check out our Ancestry History playlist
up at the top and then if you're ready for the latest
video, be sure to check out the one down below. Howdy, I'm
Devin Noel Lee with Family History Fanatics and I love
helping teach