Ancestry family trees full of lazy errors

[David Nicoll]

Not quite sure how I got the but 17,000 odds.
This is something close to 100 years worth of research.

A tree created in 1935 for one branch of the family going back 6 or so generations.

A burst of particular enthusiasm by my parents over 20 years.

200 or so photographs of my grandmother’s cousins, from the 1860’s onwards, and a bunch of similarly determined relatives.

Add DNA on top and you get to this astonishing number.

I won’t say that it is perfect, there may be some errors, but not very many, all with BMD data that I am pretty certain of, the only tenuous links are commented in the tree.

There are some disconnected bits of probably or definitely related groups, but all hopefully of interest to other researchers.

How do I check hints, go back to the original docs where possible and check, the only hints I tend to accept are personal notes which I have verified as likely to be correct, it’s a lot of work but involves researching lots of fascinating history along the way.

Happy Hunting

[Steve3180]

Err, 15736, he said sheepishly. But, in my defense, it was a neat and tidy 1800 before I got the DNA test, after that it was just one rabbit hole after another.

[coombs]

I have not gone down the DNA route yet but no doubt will have distant cousins who have already tested. I have a number of ancestor siblings who seem to vanish after a time in the 1800s, as many passenger lists of the time did not always record enough info to ID a person positively. For example "Mr Taylor, aged 30" arriving in Sydney in 1855. And even early 1900s lists can give vague info.

Yet i found two direct respective English ancestors who died in America and Australia, one was a convict from Suffolk, and the other from County Durham went to live with 2 married daughters in the US, and is on the 1900 US census, and did not have a very common surname anyway. The Durham one had a grandfather who was in the army in Canada and America in the 1770s. So 3 direct ancestors (past grandparents) that I know of who spent time overseas beyond just Ireland or France, or a couple of merchant ancestors who went to Poland in the late 1500s on trips.

[alan o]

My ancestry DNA matches most of my tree.  However it has a totally spurious ancestors: 2% from West Ireland, 2% fro Ulster Scots and 2% from Germany and omits a great grandfathers line on the Isle of Portland in Dorset going back 300 years plus.  Ironically it matches me to Portland relatives via lots of other trees back to the 1800 and 1700s but if you look at my 'region' I am not from Dorset.  Pinch of salt needed.

[David Nicoll]

Yes, but people did travel early and far, I have a YDNA match who was in America in 1670, descendants pretty well documented.
And lots of people travelled with the army, so family pop up all over the place, they don’t have to be NPE’s. Most of my family I have MRCA’s back 6 generations, they just seemed to be pretty healthy, so one branch of the family had 8 children each over 3 generations, that makes for a lot of cousins!
Ancestry regions certainly need a large pinch of salt, but can give fascinating insights.

[Glen in Tinsel Kni]

I never fuss about how many hints there are or how many I have/haven't added, quantity doesn't equal quality and there's always a cost attached to viewing stuff anyway.

[coombs]

It is partly true that many people stayed within a 10 mile radius of their birthplace, but probably just as many people moved around as well before the 1900s.

A trip from London to Plymouth, for example in about 1800 by horse and cart took about 2 or 3 days, and that was a lovely walk in the park compared to an 8 month voyage from the UK to Australia.

[rebeccaclaire86]

Over 100,000 hints which I’ve been steadily ignoring

I do check the photo ones periodically and have found some good original documents on there and connected with the people who uploaded them, which has definitely been worth doing!

I recently had an email from Ancestry telling me it had a hint about a close relative. I clicked it out of curiosity, and it took me to some suggested death entries. He’s actually in his 90’s and still going strong!

[LizzieL]

I do check the photo ones periodically

I checked a photo hint some time ago and found a picture of my maternal grandfather (not as I knew him, but as he looked in photos of him in the 1920s / 1930s). He was in a suit with a carnation in his buttonhole and labelled as the father of the bride. But I didn't recognise the groom's surname and more importantly the bride was not my mother or either of her sisters! Then it clicked, I was looking at a picture of my grandfather's identical twin brother and this was the marriage of one of my mother's cousins.
Unfortunately (apart from a picture of my great uncle), the tree of the person who shared it has not given me any useful information. She isn't directly related, in fact the tree is so big I cannot find her connection. She has completely the wrong parents for my grandfather and his brother, she has given them two extra siblings, one of which is actually their nephew, haven't a clue where she got the other one from. The attached "source" is a page from 1901 census with a set of totally unrelated people on, living more than 100 miles away. The only similarlty is a surname.