RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => Topic started by: piedstilt on Friday 12 February 16 02:38 GMT (UK)
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It has been some time since I have been involved in genealogical research and ages since I have been back to Rootschat, though I loved it as a reasonably early member. Family, financial and earthquake crises have kept me off line.
Recently I received a commission to write a family history and the people concerned kindly funded a new subscription to Ancestry (at great expense). What a disappointment! I used to be able to put in a name and fossick among the various options in my own way. Now I seem to get nothing but pre-digested suggestions (the same with the newish familysearch). It all seems like genealogy for dummies.
No doubt there are new things to be discovered, but I am currently feeling grumpy enough to vent my spleen.
Sorry!
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I no longer have Ancestry but, when I did, I used it just to search for information or, as you say, fossick around. I never had any problem with unwanted suggestions because I didn't put my tree online so the program never had any branches to attach unwanted leaves to.
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Just ignore the hints and search diligently as you would anyway. There is so much more info now online that you might be pleasantly surprised :)
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I too ignore the hints - although it can be entertaining to see how far away from what I think I know, they can be. Sometimes they have been right, when i look into it and check out what I have, more often they are wrong - but you don't need to take the slightest notice of them, and as others say, there's so much online, that with images of the entries, you can save yourself some shoeleather and petrol costs!
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Yes just ignore the hints, there is a wealth of information on there. The hints can be entertaining when I see who they think might be related, or I get hints from my own tree ( I keep a basic one on Ancestry) from the site where I keep the main one ;D ;D
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Agreed, there is a wealth of info there, but sometimes it can be a heck of a job to access it.
I find that it will give you a set of results, and no matter how much or how often you amend the search terms to find who you want, it will often immediately still give you exactly the same result you got the first time - clearly has not re-searched for the answers. Very annoying !
I think it's something to do with this "new improved" version :(
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If I know the area where I want to search I was advised on another forum to go to the card catalogue and type in the town of interest, in my case usually Liverpool then that narrows it down so I don't get 1,000,000 hits, nothing more annoying than this, then when you put tick exact Christian name or whatever it comes back with zero results. :'(
My theory is "they" are trying to keep you on their subscribed site for as long as possible so instead of you going on there and finding your record ASAP you spend hours (months) scrolling through and dismissing the flotsam and jetsam and wasting time.
Some of the hints have been pretty good I must say, but some you sit there and say "WHAT??!!!!" how the hell did it come up with this for a match!! :o And consequently lots of trees have accepted these hints as FACTS and have a right muddle of names and relationships, children born before the parents, mixed up step families, etc. The same with the LDS records, these are just a hint because there is not enough information on the "select" records ie indexes to take you back further without looking at a parish register at a record office or buying a certificate.
You see lots of trees on there where the person hasn't signed back on for a year probably because they got in such a muddle and believed the Ancestry hype!!
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My pet peeve with most of these sites not only Ancestry is that when you limit the search to a specific region, you get results that are no where near the area you were searching for, sometimes not even in the same country.
But they do save us legwork and allow us to view documents that we may not have been able to see because they are in another country's archives. ;)
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To avoid the "flotsam and jetsam", I only ever search one record set at a time - I keep a little index of relevant record sets and add to it whenever I hear of something new being released. And lo - no more "Essex, Massachusetts" popping up when I don't want it! I'll use "search all records" sometimes if I'm researching a new branch. Ancestry can be so frustrating compared to FreeREG/FreeCEN/FreeBMD where you can search for exactly what you want with no distractions!
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Now: why doesn't ancestry have an "Ignore all American results" button? That might help - mightn't it?
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Why do you need an "Ignore all American results" button if you're searching a non-American database? If I search the US census, I only get American results; if I search an English census, I get English results.
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That's what I'd expected too ... but from time to time, it happens! No idea how! If it was just family trees, I'd understand it, but .....
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I must say that I do find the hints - when rigorously examined! - very helpful.
On more than one occasion recently, when searching for a female, I have had a hint of a woman with a completely different surname, but same dob/pob. And sure enough, with a bit of diligent searching, I have then turned up the relevant marriage, name of husband, and matched it on a subsequent census with the person I was looking for.
You just have to check the hints carefully as of course - as people have said - they are sometimes well off the mark.
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Perhaps the clue is in the name ... they are only "hints" ::)
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I remember picking up a baptism off of their hints - they'd attached it to the wrong child but it was the right family (the first Chrissie died when she was three and they'd baptised the next female Chrissie) the baptism was for the first Chrissie but suggested as a hint for the second
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I must say that I do find the hints - when rigorously examined! - very helpful.
On more than one occasion recently, when searching for a female, I have had a hint of a woman with a completely different surname, but same dob/pob. And sure enough, with a bit of diligent searching, I have then turned up the relevant marriage, name of husband, and matched it on a subsequent census with the person I was looking for.
You just have to check the hints carefully as of course - as people have said - they are sometimes well off the mark.
Yeah I've found some marriages that way too, of course I check it out properly rather than blindly accepting what Ancestry says. Sometimes it seems to add up - right age, right birthplace, right husband - but if there are two girls born around the same time with the same name, Ancestry's hints aren't clever enough to know which one is which!
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Having read this and all responses I can understand the dilemma that seems to overtake people searching and forever searching ...... often you reach saturation point so which way next?
Just lately I have thrown my lot in with http://www.wikitree.com/ for answers....... it's not easy if the name you seek is Smith or something similar but it does give a chance of comparing a name/names with others and I am an old dog who is favourably impressed with what I have gleaned so far... it may not appeal to some but at least it is quite free.
Joe
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I remember picking up a baptism off of their hints - they'd attached it to the wrong child but it was the right family (the first Chrissie died when she was three and they'd baptised the next female Chrissie) the baptism was for the first Chrissie but suggested as a hint for the second
This is not unique to modern online sites. One child of my great(x6) grandparents was baptized in 1711, and died two years later. A second son was baptized with the same name 2 years after that: all events recorded in the same parish register. When the second son died aged 63 his burial record and gravestone record him as 68.
And a Victorian journalist made a similar mistake when recording the death of Pablo Fanque the circus proprietor (as in Sergeant Pepper). The internet has just increased the chances of perpetuating error, just as it increases the opportunity for disseminating fact.
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I remember picking up a baptism off of their hints - they'd attached it to the wrong child but it was the right family (the first Chrissie died when she was three and they'd baptised the next female Chrissie) the baptism was for the first Chrissie but suggested as a hint for the second
This is not unique to modern online sites. One child of my great(x6) grandparents was baptized in 1711, and died two years later. A second son was baptized with the same name 2 years after that: all events recorded in the same parish register. When the second son died aged 63 his burial record and gravestone record him as 68.
And a Victorian journalist made a similar mistake when recording the death of Pablo Fanque the circus proprietor (as in Sergeant Pepper). The internet has just increased the chances of perpetuating error, just as it increases the opportunity for disseminating fact.
I agree...........I have the unusual circumstance of a direct male ancestor who had his first child of his second marriage baptised ' Grace' after his first wife who died a couple of years earlier.
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Hello.
My beef are the transcriber's, who faced with a spread sheet, with a column for gender, have seen fit to award one, when gender WAS NOT assigned in the original Church records. I've found numerous parish records where, for at least a period, the baptism record stated; lawful [numeral like 3rd] child of XYZ; instead of the more common, lawful son [daughter] of XYZ.
While not helpful for confirming gender, it has been VERY helpful for finding gaps in the sibling order of family birth/baptisms being researched. Also draws attention to where Christian names have been re-assigned, for what ever reason.
Assuming gender is fraught with danger for the unwary.
- Alan.
PS And yes I am male.
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I agree...........I have the unusual circumstance of a direct male ancestor who had his first child of his second marriage baptised ' Grace' after his first wife who died a couple of years earlier.
My grandmother was Isabella, as was her father's first wife
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Hello.
My beef are the transcriber's, who faced with a spread sheet, with a column for gender, have seen fit to award one, when gender WAS NOT assigned in the original Church records. I've found numerous parish records where, for at least a period, the baptism record stated; lawful [numeral like 3rd] child of XYZ; instead of the more common, lawful son [daughter] of XYZ.
While not helpful for confirming gender, it has been VERY helpful for finding gaps in the sibling order of family birth/baptisms being researched. Also draws attention to where Christian names have been re-assigned, for what ever reason.
Assuming gender is fraught with danger for the unwary.
- Alan.
PS And yes I am male.
Rule number 1 of transcribing - NEVER guess the gender from the name. My pet hate at the moment >:(
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When really stuck I form a table and that often helps me to sort out who of several possibles is the right person. I put things down the side axis like:
Parents
Baptism
1841
1851
1861
1871
1881
1891
1901
1911
Marr
Death
(or whatever is most useful,) then I create a column for each possibility bearing that name and approximate age, across the top (large sheet of paper) and enter in info, sometimes gleaned from hints - If it "goes beyond" info I know to be right, or "wrong" spouses / children, that helps a great deal to eliminate incorrect people. I think my record was 34 possibles, in columns - about 27 quickly vanished, but I never managed to get the final two sorted - still don't know who his father was! Keep going back to him every so often, like a child picking away at a scab on a wound (ugh)
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Rule number 1 of transcribing - NEVER guess the gender from the name. My pet hate at the moment >:(
Another Rule: Never assume anything that is not on the document, gender, relationships etc if it is not specifically stated
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Rule number 1 of transcribing - NEVER guess the gender from the name. My pet hate at the moment >:(
Another Rule: Never assume anything that is not on the document, gender, relationships etc if it is not specifically stated
I used to transcribe for Familysearch, then was "promoted" to checking other transcribers' work. So often, I'd have to remove the gender from baptisms and burials, and worse still, if there was a female marriage witness, often they would be entered as the bride or groom's mother! Looks like a lot of people weren't reading the instructions properly before transcribing.
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I agree...........I have the unusual circumstance of a direct male ancestor who had his first child of his second marriage baptised ' Grace' after his first wife who died a couple of years earlier.
My grandmother was Isabella, as was her father's first wife
Could be confusing for a researcher, especially if the rest of his children were named Patronymically.
- Alan.
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Several years ago it was possible to access certain records freely. It seems that some my have been bought up by companies like Ancestry. This has the effect of making them less accessible to the general public.
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I agree...........I have the unusual circumstance of a direct male ancestor who had his first child of his second marriage baptised ' Grace' after his first wife who died a couple of years earlier.
Could be confusing for a researcher, especially if the rest of his children were named Patronymically.
- Alan.
It was confusing Alan ........ took a long while,and rootschatter' s help to pin it down.
Joe
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Thanks for all your feedback, though I have to say that I have calmed down and found my way back to some old familiar pathways in Ancestry, many of them as absorbing as ever. I did resign from my full membership, however, once I realised that Fold3 and newspapers.com were of no use to me.
I have learned to take the public family trees with a grain of salt because many of them simply mimic vaguely inaccurate information picked up from other people. The most worrying example was a verified ancestor of my husband's married off to someone in Orlando, Florida which he, most decidedly, was not.
Should I just ignore it, or make an effort to set the record straight?
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Probably not worth trying. "They" ( i.e.: the people who blissfully adopt whole forests of ancestors) never seem to take any notice.
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Hello there.
From my perspective, with regard to this person, if you don't publish your findings, it is not then open to peer and family review.
Does not have to be directly with the platform carrying the info you believe to be incorrect, as search engines are very good at finding people named in search quests.
In the past [1980's] I notated a leading libraries index card, and supplied the library a reference that proved an early newspaper article named the wrong migrant. In another instance I've made many references to a photo in a popular local history book, where the image was reversed in the printing process, but not the subjects naming caption.
- Alan.