* Family trees on Ancestry can be useful

Got general Family History research questions - this is the place
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Gowermick
Megastar
Posts: 1770
Joined: 13 Oct 2015 07:22
Family Historian: V7
Location: Swansea

Family trees on Ancestry can be useful

Post by Gowermick »

In my tree, I have a Mary Hewitt from Warrington, marrying a Mr Wright. Everything looked tidy, right age and location, matching fathers name on marriage etc. Her mother was Margaret Potter.

Then I saw a tree on Ancestry stating she married Isaac Smith. Hang on I thought, they’ve made a mistake. Nevertheless I checked for birth of their first child Margaret, to see if mothers name was Hewitt. Not only was it correct, but her full name was Margaret Potter Smith time for me to eat some humble pie. Needless to say, a quick edit of my tree was called for.
NB Margaret Potter used as forenames was carried through to subsequent generations!

So it just goes to show it pays not to disregard Ancestry Trees, just because you think they have it wrong! Their information can be useful at times, just glad I didn’t dismiss it out of hand :D
Mike Loney

Website http://www.loney.tribalpages.com
http://www.mickloney.tribalpages.com
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JohnB47
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Posts: 97
Joined: 31 May 2024 19:42
Family Historian: V7

Re: Family trees on Ancestry can be useful

Post by JohnB47 »

I've found that Ancestry trees can provide useful pointers, even though some information is obviously wrong

For example, I recently came across a tree which had an ancestors birth, death and marriage dates, complete with a link to the marriage registration. The obvious flaw was that the birth and deaths were only 4 years apart.

I checked out the marriage registration and saw that the wife's father's name was wrong. I could have simply disregarded that tree information but the birth date did match my own information. So I searched for the death mentioned and sure enough, that individual did die early at 3.5 years old and matched my ancestor.

So some of the information was useful. I do wonder, though, how anyone can add marriage information for someone they have already stated died in infancy.
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Ruth_W
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Posts: 59
Joined: 26 Jan 2021 16:26
Family Historian: V7
Location: Wirral

Re: Family trees on Ancestry can be useful

Post by Ruth_W »

In defence of [some] Ancestry trees: sometimes you click to save a record to come back to later for evaluation (but maybe you should evaluate it a bit better at the time so it doesn't get 'lost' with the wrong person)
The way Ancestry works can be awful - I have been adding family to a Quick and Dirty private tree for dna purposes - then I get duplicate wives, children, etc ... ugh! It can't spot very similar differences (e.g. born 1846 or 1847 could be the same person - yet it thinks that Isabella who died aged 2 in 1830 could be Elizabeth in a telephone directory ...)
My Ancestry tree is there for hints, cousin catching, etc. All the real research is offline (now in FH7 plus lots of documents)
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