Deleted
Posts: 0
May 18, 2024 20:27:47 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Feb 15, 2017 2:45:45 GMT
So if you choose to make your tree/account and DNA results private, will Ancestry still show you your matches?
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Mystie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,299
Jun 25, 2014 19:53:37 GMT
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Post by Mystie on Feb 15, 2017 3:24:51 GMT
This is all making me want to plunge back into my genealogy work and family tree!
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Sue
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 3,234
Location: SE of Portland, Oregon
Jun 26, 2014 18:42:33 GMT
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Post by Sue on Feb 15, 2017 6:59:10 GMT
So if you choose to make your tree/account and DNA results private, will Ancestry still show you your matches? Yes, you will still see your matches. It's just that other users won't be able to view your tree but your user name will still be shown to them as a match if you have DNA in common.
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Post by gillyp on Feb 15, 2017 11:54:14 GMT
So I started watching one of the tutorials on YouTube and the woman suggested getting Family Tree Maker. Is that something I might need? That is a programme that you keep on your computer. I much prefer using one as I keep ALL my info, photos, certificates etc. on my computer database (I use Family Historian) and just keep a very basic tree on Ancestry. I figure that if anyone wants further information about what I have on Ancestry they can ask me for it and I'll only give it to genuine requests. What I keep on Ancestry is simply what anyone could find quite quickly if they could be bothered looking, the rest of the information, which has taken me about 20 years to amass, I will happily give to someone with a proven link. I'm not so precious about it that I think it's taken me years of time and money, I just want it to go to the right person iyswim. Going back to programmes, Family Historian has a free trial period for you to see if you like it. I imagine Family Tree Makers does too. Maybe just try your hand at Ancestry for now, to see if you enjoy the experience. (I bet you will!)
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Post by leftturnonly on Feb 15, 2017 13:24:23 GMT
So if you choose to make your tree/account and DNA results private, will Ancestry still show you your matches? You have several options: 1) You can not have any tree at all and have your DNA tested through Ancestry. 2) You can have a tree, public or private, and not attach your DNA test results to it, or attach your results to the wrong person, i.e. not to yourself in your tree. 3) You can have a private tree and attach your results to the correct person. 4) You can have a public tree and attach your results to the correct person. For all 4 cases, Ancestry will generate a very long list of people who match your DNA, starting with the closest relatives (the most shared DNA) to the least, and these matches are further broken into categories. If you test yourself and one of your parents or one of your children, the results will say that you are parent and child. Your child will be an extremely close relative to your parent. Because all DNA is passed along by splitting both the mother's and the father's, each person gets their own unique combination. You may have a bit more of your mother's DNA. Your sibling may have a bit more of your father's. The closer you are to having had the same ancestor(s), the more DNA you will share. There is a range that most (not all) of these relationships have of shared DNA and these different testing sites will show that as categories. There is a category that says probably 4th cousin, but most likely anywhere between 4th-6th. The last category is 5th-8th cousins. The chances that you share a common ancestor(s) with one of these matches decreases the less DNA you have in common. Testing sites have a cut-off lowest shared DNA amount that they consider as a strong enough possibility to include in their matching results. Each match - and you may easily have thousands of matches, the majority falling into the 5th-8th cousin category - will have a link to a profile page of the person who was tested where you can see exactly how much DNA you share and if you share any of the same matches to others who have tested. These matches must be at the 4th cousin level or better or Ancestry won't consider them. ALSO..... Sally may have many shared matches with you, but if you check out those matches, not all of them may have Sally listed as a shared match. I can tell you in all seriousness that I have spent DAYS following one match to another to another to another before I ran out, because so many matches from a match on one list include new matches on their lists. It doesn't matter if they have any tree at all, their results are attache to the wrong tree, or if their tree is private or public. The ancestry computers will evaluate if anyone in your direct line on the tree you attached your results to is a likely match to anyone in your matches' direct lines on trees they attached their results to. SOME of these matches will be attached to people who have done a lot of work and put it out there on public trees. Ancestry will find some (not all) of these probable same ancestors and put a shaky leaf on that match. If your tree is private and their tree is public, Ancestry will spell out for you who you appear to have in common and how you both descend from that person or people. If their tree is private, you'll only see a leaf but you won't see any of the people on their tree. If both of your trees are private, you should both see the same information. If their tree is public, you'll be shown a nice pedigree chart of 7? generations of direct ancestors with active links for each person. You can click on those links and get that ancestor's particular information, or you can click on another link and go to that match's entire public tree at Ancestry. There is a Beta program that you must have your results attached to a public tree in order for their computers to include you. These computers match both the DNA results AND the direct ancestors on your attached trees. The computers require that there be at least three distinct lines from a common ancestor before they will make a DNA circle of all those who meet the DNA and tree criteria. That means that you could have a DNA circle to your great-grandparents if you and several of your cousins (from different parents) all tested and attached your results to public trees. There is a different Beta program that will suggest that someone may be an ancestor based on other people's DNA and their trees, even though you do not have that person on your tree as an ancestor. The results of these have NOT helped me find my direct ancestors nor those of my mother. I know who our ancestors were much further back than these specific people lived, so it's out of the question that we descend from them. HOWEVER.... we may all descend from a common ancestor that goes much further back. (It's that founding DNA thing playing with Mom's and my results here.) My son's results are different. He has a LOT of DNA Circles primarily because I don't have the missing gaps in such near ancestors for him as I do for me, and because his blood cousins on his father's side have actually had DNA tests done at Ancestry. My cousins have not and the difference in our results really shows it. He has had NO possible new discovery ancestor hints at all. One thing to remember..... although these are listed as cousins, that's a bit of a misnomer. You're really looking at how many people you are separated by. You may be 2nd cousins one removed and be in the 3rd cousin category. OR.... you could be in a wrong category altogether of how closely you are related because you get such different amounts of DNA from the same ancestor. It's pretty cool when the computer matches you up with your known relatives. :-)
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Post by leftturnonly on Feb 15, 2017 13:49:02 GMT
So I started watching one of the tutorials on YouTube and the woman suggested getting Family Tree Maker. Is that something I might need? That is a programme that you keep on your computer. I much prefer using one as I keep ALL my info, photos, certificates etc. on my computer database (I use Family Historian) and just keep a very basic tree on Ancestry. I figure that if anyone wants further information about what I have on Ancestry they can ask me for it and I'll only give it to genuine requests. What I keep on Ancestry is simply what anyone could find quite quickly if they could be bothered looking, the rest of the information, which has taken me about 20 years to amass, I will happily give to someone with a proven link. I'm not so precious about it that I think it's taken me years of time and money, I just want it to go to the right person iyswim. Going back to programmes, Family Historian has a free trial period for you to see if you like it. I imagine Family Tree Makers does too. Maybe just try your hand at Ancestry for now, to see if you enjoy the experience. (I bet you will!) Any genealogy program - and this includes the online one at Ancestry - has a pretty good learning curve. It's going to take a little time for you to figure it out and feel comfortable with it. There are some very good programs. Legacy is excellent and can be synced with Family Search ---- which is trying to build ONE human tree and does not have all these individual trees that Ancestry does. Family Tree is another and that can by synced with Ancestry. There are (or at least were) one or more programs in the works that could sync with multiple sites. It's been a while since I looked into any of them, so I've no idea what their status is/are. As I noted earlier, I personally lost all my information on Family Tree Maker 3 different times. The first two happened when I upgraded to new versions - there were big gaps between the versions I had and the new ones - and the last time was a string of horrible coincidences that happened while our lives were being turned upside down through evacuation and family difficulties. I lost EVERYTHING I had backed up from Family Tree Maker ON 3 SEPARATE COMPUTERS at the same time!!! Life happens. The information on your desktop or laptop program is subject to being easily lost. My situation was out of bounds of any sense of what is normal probability and the odds of that happening to someone else so dramatically would be pretty slim.... but it only has to happen once. If you work primarily with an online site, you are not tied to one desktop computer. You don't have to be home. You can use an app on your phone or your Kindle or some other tablet as well as your laptop and/or desktop computer. You can download whatever you want whenever you have internet access, so you can have everything on your computer - in a genealogy program or not - so you can have access later when you don't have internet. If you want to easily share your information, you really need to have an online presence somewhere. A lot of people have specific blogs devoted to sharing their histories. Some have public trees that pop up on a Google search. Some have everything private - blog or tree - and share the address only with those they choose to share with. It's a new world. Allowing yourself to take advantage of at least some of these new opportunities online can expand your history like never before possible while still allowing you to also have paper or other digital backup at your fingertips.
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Post by leftturnonly on Feb 15, 2017 13:51:52 GMT
Oh, and don't forget Facebook!
I belong to several family groups just for one surname. (It's an unusual surname.)
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Post by melanell on Feb 15, 2017 14:05:34 GMT
My biggest advice to be very, very careful what information you pull in from other trees. It's really easy to just start adding information including parents and siblings to your tree. You then find out that there's absolutely no documentation to substantiate who the parents are. This cannot be repeated enough!!! An unsourced family tree on Ancestry is nothing more than a story that may contain hints you can use. But even then you need to beware, because having wrong info in the back of your mind may prevent you from finding the correct info, kwim? Because you're too busy trying to prove the wrong things. And if they list a source, and it's just a different family tree---that's the same as having no sources. Now, if you find a tree where they have actual items attached to the tree, such as death certificates, marriage licenses, passenger lists, photos, etc.--- now you may be getting somewhere. But personally, even with those things present, I still consider it all to be hints until I look over all of the info and draw the same conclusions. Records can be wrong. Very wrong. For dozens of reasons. So if a fact exists on a tree with a source that happens to have wrong info, it's still wrong. And for me to say "Oooh! It has a source! I'm copying it into my tree!" is bound to cause headaches later. Which is why I try to find as many pieces of proof as possible for any person or fact I add to my tree. Of course the further back you go the harder that starts to be, but by being very sure of your facts for the last 150 years, for example, I still see it as setting up a good foundation and good research habits. Plus, I think it serves to build up a good gut instinct about things. That gut instinct will really help you later on. Save
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Post by melanell on Feb 15, 2017 14:14:49 GMT
Please do not put in wrong dates. This can cause confusion for decades to come. Anyone currently living or shown as living is private - it cannnot be seen even if your tree is public. My tree is public. I want to share my information. I want to help others find information. Private trees are frustrating for avid hobbyist genealogists like me. I agree about the dates. Mark anyone you don't want show as "living" and they won't show up. Or just leave off the dates completely for living people. They can be filled in later. I do, however, still have my tree as private, because it is probably only 10% filled in right now, and 95% of those people are living. Since I've started with my children and moved back from them, I am very much still in the current generations. Also, I do not (and actually never have had) a paid Ancestry account, so if I make my tree public, no one can contact me about it anyway. Someday, when I have more time to devote to it, then I will get a paid subscription, but for right now, I can work on my tree there with a free account. Some PA records (which are what I primarily use) are also free for PA residents. Plus, the library has an ancestry account, so when DS #2 is at story time or DS #1 is at book club, I use Ancestry there if I have anything I need to look up. Save
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Post by melanell on Feb 15, 2017 14:18:47 GMT
Oh, and don't forget Facebook! I belong to several family groups just for one surname. (It's an unusual surname.) There are also groups for regional genealogical research "Maine Genealogy" or "Central PA Genealogy" or "New England Genealogy". This goes for other countries, provinces, etc. as well. And you can also find some good hints--or even a relative or two--by looking for groups tied to the town or area your ancestors came from or lived in. Things like "You know you're from Philly if..." or "Syracuse memories", etc. Save
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Post by leftturnonly on Feb 15, 2017 14:32:32 GMT
My biggest advice to be very, very careful what information you pull in from other trees. It's really easy to just start adding information including parents and siblings to your tree. You then find out that there's absolutely no documentation to substantiate who the parents are. This cannot be repeated enough!!! An unsourced family tree on Ancestry is nothing more than a story that may contain hints you can use. But even then you need to beware, because having wrong info in the back of your mind may prevent you from finding the correct info, kwim? Because you're too busy trying to prove the wrong things. And if they list a source, and it's just a different family tree---that's the same as having no sources. Now, if you find a tree where they have actual items attached to the tree, such as death certificates, marriage licenses, passenger lists, photos, etc.--- now you may be getting somewhere. But personally, even with those things present, I still consider it all to be hints until I look over all of the info and draw the same conclusions. Records can be wrong. Very wrong. For dozens of reasons. So if a fact exists on a tree with a source that happens to have wrong info, it's still wrong. And for me to say "Oooh! It has a source! I'm copying it into my tree!" is bound to cause headaches later. Which is why I try to find as many pieces of proof as possible for any person or fact I add to my tree. Of course the further back you go the harder that starts to be, but by being very sure of your facts for the last 150 years, for example, I still see it as setting up a good foundation and good research habits. Plus, I think it serves to build up a good gut instinct about things. That gut instinct will really help you later on. SaveEven excellent source have wrong information. My grandmother's brother was the informant on several different death certificates, etc. and he got some pretty basic things wrong. He was the 2nd youngest of about a dozen kids and his brothers and sisters were born along the family's migration from new england to delaware to pennyslvania. I see records and think - "that's not right," and check the informant and there's my Uncle! *If* my GG grandfather had a tombstone (if he did, it's gone now) it would have had the wrong dates on the stone to go along with the wrong dates on his death certificate. And don't even try to get the "correct" spelling for some names. My own father went by 4 different names! There was the way the family spelled his first name, then there was the way the government spelled his first name, then there was the name he legally changed his first name to, and then there was the entirely different name my mother, her friends and family called him. In addition to that, his brother had a common name that was very similar and my dad got called that name and it's drivative nicknames as well! I have found newspaper articles and other documents - legal name change papers, high school diploma, etc - with just about all of them just for proof that I'm not making it up.
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Post by melanell on Feb 15, 2017 14:35:53 GMT
It's called FAN - Friends, Associates and Neighbors. Sometimes the only record of someone is when they witnessed their neighbor's child's baptism and you won't see it if you don't check in on the neighbors. There's another very real phenomenon that I've learned by trying to tie a whole host of DNA matches to my tree.... groups of family groups moved together as they settled new frontiers. These families tended to intermarry and were very closely involved in each other's lives. They witnessed each other's marriages and last wills. Their properties bordered each other's. And... they moved on together as a group, always seeming to leave a few behind at each step along their path to go on to be leaders in those communities that they formed. This is so, so important!! Sometimes, when I couldn't find my great-grandfather's surname (because it was often mutilated ), I would search for the surname of the family that came to the US with them (because that one was typically written correctly), and sure enough, my family would be there, just doors or blocks away. In fact, a few years ago I accidentally stumbled upon someone on a Facebook Group (one of those regional memories types) who is not related to me, but who shares relatives with me. And she had a mess of photos of my ancestors/relatives and I had a bunch of photos with hers. And we each were able to fill in so many gaps in our individual understanding of our own trees, including some tricky things such as an unofficial adoption and a missing father. Even better, now I can ask my older relatives questions for her, and she can do the same for me. Save
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Post by melanell on Feb 15, 2017 14:40:43 GMT
I think, OP, that you'll also find that each person has different websites that work really well for them. Some states or counties have excellent information online, and you'll do so well with that, while I might find no luck at all. For me, the one site that I regularly subscribe to (although I do unsubscribe when not using it to save money) is newspapers.com. I can access my "clippings" even when I'm not a paid subscriber. So I pay for several months. Then I stop, and really work with what I've slipped during that time. But that site works so well for me because it just so happens that there are many local papers in their archives, AND that they are included in the "basic" rate, which makes it more economical for me. So with something like that, I'd suggest taking the free trial week to see if they have papers from places & times that work for your family. But you may want to wait until you have a list going of who lived where & when.
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Deleted
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May 18, 2024 20:27:47 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Feb 15, 2017 15:19:33 GMT
Overwhelming, yet fascinating! So when Ancestry displays matches, do they give you the actual names or user names of the individuals? And, I'm assuming you have to subscribe in order to be able to communicate with your matches?
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Post by myboysnme on Feb 15, 2017 16:01:43 GMT
I also want to mention that the 1940 census was so eagerly anticipated that it was rushed and has an incredible number of erroneously coded names and information. For example, the name Donald was transcribed as Dorvald by the coder. If you look at the script/cursive you can see how someone made that mistake if they were not familiar with 1940's cursive letters. They also used computer reading to get that 1940 census pushed out and computers misread anything they are not programmed to recognize.
On certificates in many cases the certificates were filled out years after the fact and information is missing. Also several genealogy peas helped me solve a mystery where a daughter and a grandson totally botched the spelling of a maiden name and you could see how they may have thought it sounded like they wrote it but it was nothing like the real name was spelled.
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Post by leftturnonly on Feb 15, 2017 16:06:21 GMT
Overwhelming, yet fascinating! So when Ancestry displays matches, do they give you the actual names or user names of the individuals? And, I'm assuming you have to subscribe in order to be able to communicate with your matches? Your name will appear as it does on your sign-in name, so a test attached to you will show you as seasidemermaid. Tests that you administer will be shown as that person's initials, so Sammy Michael would be S.M. (administered by seasidemermaid). Occasionally, people do attach their real names for their own test. It's all personal preference. Yes, you need an active paid subscription to see the results. I've had one the whole time I've had DNA results to check, so I can't give you a first-hand account of what exactly you can see and what you can't.
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Post by leftturnonly on Feb 15, 2017 16:24:43 GMT
I also want to mention that the 1940 census was so eagerly anticipated that it was rushed and has an incredible number of erroneously coded names and information. For example, the name Donald was transcribed as Dorvald by the coder. If you look at the script/cursive you can see how someone made that mistake if they were not familiar with 1940's cursive letters. They also used computer reading to get that 1940 census pushed out and computers misread anything they are not programmed to recognize.
On certificates in many cases the certificates were filled out years after the fact and information is missing. Also several genealogy peas helped me solve a mystery where a daughter and a grandson totally botched the spelling of a maiden name and you could see how they may have thought it sounded like they wrote it but it was nothing like the real name was spelled. If you think those are bad, you should see how crazy the computer-read city directories from the 1800's are that I've been looking at! There's no way you would get a result by searching for a name since the computer has added so many additional characters and/or turned the name around all wrong. When that happens, you can go to the card catalog and search the city directory database directly for a specific date and location. You then page through the book just as you would if you had a real book sitting in front of you. When you find someone you want to attach the record to, but you don't want the name to be all gibberish, you can click on the button that is the profitle of two people that's to the right of the button with the page numbers. That will open up the menu of all the people on the page that have been indexed. If a name - or address, or other info - is an active link, you can double click on it to bring up a box where you can submit an alternative name - or address. If you just click once, you should highlight that entire row of information. If you go up to the right hand corner and click on save, you can enter the person you want to attach that particular highlighted person's information to. If there is someone else on the page that you want to attach information to in your tree, scroll to that name at the bottom in the same indexed list and click on that person to highlight them. Your save button should have turned back to green and you can attach the record as you wish. Sometimes, the person you most want the information for has been left off the list at the bottom and isn't indexed at all. You can click on the wrong name just and attach it to the right person, just make sure you put the correct information into your own tree. If it bothers you to have the Record have the wrong information, you can edit it from the Record page. Click on the attached record on the Fact page and it will open up the Record page for that source. You can open up the document from there to view it in the viewer (if your subscription is current) and you can submit edits for that particular record from that same Record page whether you've paid or not.
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Post by scrapcat on Feb 15, 2017 16:27:56 GMT
I've been using ancestry.com on and off for a few years now. I deactivate my membership when I don't have as much time to devote to it.
I agree with and underline those who say be cautious of adding everything to a tree. My Dad's cousins claimed they found out so much on ancestry. Except when I started reviewing their trees, I would find things like parents who according to the dates would've been 2 years old when they had a child, or parents who were deceased years before children were born. I ended up not using many of the public tree hints and just do the work myself.
It can be very tasking and takes times. I have a physical file for documents, I use some online docs to keep info. I have a notebook that i am planning to update with info bcz sometimes its easier to see it in front of you than to navigate thru ancestry.com. It has a lot of info, but you really have to tweak and mess around with it sometimes. I've thought about making some spreadsheets to support my research too.
I also have a spotty info to go on, but I've surprisingly uncovered quite a bit. I focus on one people at a time. I've also found the most info from Cenus records, but have had to comb thru them, as the transcription of names is not always right. I've found my last name spelled 3 different ways, so who knows what it really was?!
It's fun and I have visited some places to do more research and have plans to visit more. But I would say don't get discouraged because it does take time.
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Deleted
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May 18, 2024 20:27:47 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Feb 15, 2017 16:49:05 GMT
Overwhelming, yet fascinating! So when Ancestry displays matches, do they give you the actual names or user names of the individuals? And, I'm assuming you have to subscribe in order to be able to communicate with your matches? Your name will appear as it does on your sign-in name, so a test attached to you will show you as seasidemermaid. Tests that you administer will be shown as that person's initials, so Sammy Michael would be S.M. (administered by seasidemermaid). Occasionally, people do attach their real names for their own test. It's all personal preference. Yes, you need an active paid subscription to see the results. I've had one the whole time I've had DNA results to check, so I can't give you a first-hand account of what exactly you can see and what you can't. Thanks! I think I'll update my name for the time being and just use initials as it would be easy to find me outside of Ancestry if one were to search my full name. Not sure I want anyone doing that quite yet.
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Post by leftturnonly on Feb 15, 2017 16:56:46 GMT
Your name will appear as it does on your sign-in name, so a test attached to you will show you as seasidemermaid. Tests that you administer will be shown as that person's initials, so Sammy Michael would be S.M. (administered by seasidemermaid). Occasionally, people do attach their real names for their own test. It's all personal preference. Yes, you need an active paid subscription to see the results. I've had one the whole time I've had DNA results to check, so I can't give you a first-hand account of what exactly you can see and what you can't. Thanks! I think I'll update my name for the time being and just use initials as it would be easy to find me outside of Ancestry if one were to search my full name. Not sure I want anyone doing that quite yet. My initials are my name. My name there is part of my surname. Relatives that know me can usually figure out it's me by that bit, but those who don't know me will have a much harder time.
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Deleted
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May 18, 2024 20:27:47 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Feb 15, 2017 18:57:05 GMT
I decided to start a trial today because if this thread. And now I know when my paternal grand parents were born and died. This is HUGE for me. I hesitated ever doing my genealogy because I don't have much--my dad's birth certficate. I've spent the last two hours finding my great and uncles names too! Very exciting for me.
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Post by Darcy Collins on Feb 15, 2017 19:13:06 GMT
I decided to start a trial today because if this thread. And now I know when my paternal grand parents were born and died. This is HUGE for me. I hesitated ever doing my genealogy because I don't have much--my dad's birth certficate. I've spent the last two hours finding my great and uncles names too! Very exciting for me. It's shocking how much information you can find. I started with absolutely nothing but my grandparents. My parents had a shocking lack of information about even THEIR grandparents. You'll find some lines are incredibly easy - sometimes as they're recent immigrants and my goal is to just get my lines back to the first immigrant ancestor (a bunch of my Dad's family came in the 1850s potato famine) and sometimes it's because a region just has awesome records. One of my mom's lines is through New Mexico and all of the Catholic church records are online and lists not just parents, but often grandparents - I have her direct paternal line back to the early 1700s. Give a shout if you need any help!
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Post by ilikepink on Feb 15, 2017 20:27:58 GMT
I may get back into this - maybe 10-12 years ago I had an Ancestry account. I was so thrilled when I found my grandmother's name on the ship that brought her to NY from England! Thanks for the excitement - and maybe the enablement.
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Post by AngieandSnoopy on Feb 15, 2017 21:12:32 GMT
As everyone else said, you can NOT trust spellings of names and dates on headstones or records. I know of two misspellings on headstones in my family.
And as birth certificates and death certificates? My OWN birth certificate had my first name misspelled but DID have my parents unusually spelled names spelled correctly. I DID get my birth certificate corrected when I was 20. My sister, well, they spelled HER name correctly on her birth certificate BUT misspelled both our parents names... and I know one family death certificate where the last name is misspelled...
I have an account with Find a Grave and have my grandparents and two sets of great-grandparents memorials. Find a Grave now adds siblings if they are attached to the parents and they add parents if you have them linked. I have lists of siblings, parents, grandparents and great-grandparents and some further and add links if I can find the correct memorial.
I also add short biographies on some. It is a great place to keep info that you want to share with relatives. On some, I have a small collage of pictures of the person from childhood on up. I have it as one small picture since you are limited how many you can upload.
Some of those headstones had just initials and last name or first name but they went by the middle name. One set and this was a bigger enough headstone and it only had the year of birth and death, not the month and day. I went in and filled all those things out. Because of that, several distant cousins found me on both sides of the family.
We have a family FB group on one side of the family and I added them to the group. They were there when one of our relatives found the only known picture of our mutual great-great grandfather. We have several pictures of our great-grandmother and most of us knew or had at least seen her when we were very young.
I've not had an ancestry account yet but two cousins have had one at some point and done a lot of work on it and verifying to make sure what they put on was correct. BUT, one OTHER relative did a little work, took credit for the other two relatives work and got ticked off that they weren't patted on the back for work someone else had done.
Went full steam ahead and went past what the others had done and we kept telling them that those other people couldn't possibly be our relatives, dates weren't right, that no one would have given birth THAT young or THAT old and other discrepancies, etc. We just finally quit saying anything or even looking at it because we don't think she could have possibly gone that many generations back that quick and it all be correct.
We know that because the first links we checked out were NOT correct. Wish we could have the family tree marked as incorrect until it has been verified.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 16, 2017 0:15:32 GMT
I started with 3 branches and now I have 24! My aunts birth certificate butchered her name--it's Gwendolyn and I've found her with 3 different spellings so far!
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Post by leftturnonly on Feb 16, 2017 15:28:20 GMT
I decided to start a trial today because if this thread. And now I know when my paternal grand parents were born and died. This is HUGE for me. I hesitated ever doing my genealogy because I don't have much--my dad's birth certficate. I've spent the last two hours finding my great and uncles names too! Very exciting for me. It really is. Good for you!
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Post by leftturnonly on Feb 16, 2017 15:40:42 GMT
It's shocking how much information you can find. We live in a public world. The local newspaper was full of gossipy tidbits about my grandparents and my parents. Mr. & Mrs. SoAndSo and their children x,y & z had dinner with her parents, Mr. & Mrs. WhoAndWho on Thursday. Sometimes, I've hit on little goldmines. Family picnics of my grandmother's grandparent's families with everyone attending listed...... 50th wedding anniversary of my grandfather's cousin with everyone attending listed (and then later finding an actual photo of that day in my father's papers). Those articles are sometimes the only clues of who people are and how they are related. In my grandmother's case, her middle name was the family surname and that family had either died out or no one had that surname any longer by the time I came along. Into my tree I plugged the different names from the newspaper and researched them until I figured out who each person was and how they fit together. My sisters, who never paid any attention, don't even know my grandmother's middle name. I have no idea how they "missed" this, but there ya go. That's just how fast we lose our family histories if no one takes the time to write it down.
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Post by leftturnonly on Feb 16, 2017 15:57:04 GMT
As everyone else said, you can NOT trust spellings of names and dates on headstones or records. I know of two misspellings on headstones in my family. And as birth certificates and death certificates? My OWN birth certificate had my first name misspelled but DID have my parents unusually spelled names spelled correctly. I DID get my birth certificate corrected when I was 20. My sister, well, they spelled HER name correctly on her birth certificate BUT misspelled both our parents names... and I know one family death certificate where the last name is misspelled... My husband's death date is wrong on his death certificate. There was a judicial problem between two cities of whose city he died in, so his certificate wasn't even done until after he had been in the ground for 5 weeks. There's only so much a person can do and then government does what it wants. The government spelled my father's name "correctly" and not what it really was. His important records until the day he legally changed it were in either spelling and the world was just fine with it that way. One of his great uncles was Ollie and even on his headstone they wrote it 2 or 3 different ways (Oley, Olie, Ollie). Can you imagine such a thing today? We live in such different times. My grandmother's birth registration had a wrong first name for her. I don't know if her parents later changed their minds, or if her English grandmother's accent was hard to understand when she gave the information. I just know that it's a different name than the one she had her entire life. I showed my sister the certificate, and she just couldn't understand. She started peppering me with questions about how could that happen? I told her my guesses and that wasn't enough. She still couldn't understand. She's probably the smartest one of us, but she'd be terrible at genealogy!
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Post by leftturnonly on Feb 16, 2017 16:19:03 GMT
We know that because the first links we checked out were NOT correct. Wish we could have the family tree marked as incorrect until it has been verified. It can be irritating when they clearly take your information from FindAGrave - using your photos and even a screenshot of your memorial - and put it all in their tree wrong. I see it and have this pretend conversation with them that goes something like this.... "Dude! I laid it all out for you! All you had to do was put the people in the right spots in your tree, and you mucked it all up. Do you not see this? What you have makes no sense at all! Look at the surnames of the children, for goodness sakes! Isn't that a clue? Hello.... hello.... hello.... anybody home?" I have one photo I took that has popped up as a hint for my ggrandfather. It's the headstone for his wife and son. Not only isn't it for him, he is neither buried in the same cemetery OR THE SAME STATE and that information was right there where they got the photo from. I politely did explain that in a message .... and everything's still all wrong in that public tree. My gravestone photo is the profile picture for people not even buried in the same state as him. Hopefully, anyone looking at that tree will actually take a moment to wonder why. And then take another moment to wonder why the children have different last names. They didn't even have children together! The headstone profile photo is for someone not even mentioned on the page.
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Post by Darcy Collins on Feb 16, 2017 16:33:17 GMT
We know that because the first links we checked out were NOT correct. Wish we could have the family tree marked as incorrect until it has been verified. It can be irritating when they clearly take your information from FindAGrave - using your photos and even a screenshot of your memorial - and put it all in their tree wrong. I see it and have this pretend conversation with them that goes something like this.... "Dude! I laid it all out for you! All you had to do was put the people in the right spots in your tree, and you mucked it all up. Do you not see this? What you have makes no sense at all! Look at the surnames of the children, for goodness sakes! Isn't that a clue? Hello.... hello.... hello.... anybody home?" I have one photo I took that has popped up as a hint for my ggrandfather. It's the headstone for his wife and son. Not only isn't it for him, he is neither buried in the same cemetery OR THE SAME STATE and that information was right there where they got the photo from. I politely did explain that in a message .... and everything's still all wrong in that public tree. My gravestone photo is the profile picture for people not even buried in the same state as him. Hopefully, anyone looking at that tree will actually take a moment to wonder why. And then take another moment to wonder why the children have different last names. They didn't even have children together! The headstone profile photo is for someone not even mentioned on the page. This doesn't surprise me at all. Someone probably took your info from findagrave and entered it all correctly in THEIR tree. Then ancestry starts popping it up in hints in other people's trees for not just that individual, but also their immediate family. Someone saves it to their tree without looking - there you go. I have a picture I found of my husband's fourth great-great grandfather in a book (which was crazy exciting - yes that's crazy exciting in my world) - I swear every time someone copies that picture to their tree it shows up as a hint for 5 people in my tree.
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