Hints for Dealing With Ancestry Hints - Member Trees

In my post Hints for Dealing With Ancestry Hints I sort of glossed over how I handle the Member Trees hints from Ancestry when I stated:

"The Member Trees are a special challenge for me since I don't trust anyone's trees (sometimes I even doubt my own work). My usually approach for the member trees on Ancestry is to do a quick glance at what they have posted to see if there is anything of particular interest and then review those documents. Sometimes I will add to my to do list an action to search for a document to confirm what someone added to their tree."

For me, the Member Trees hints fall under my first rule of my genealogy research of "Trust no one"¹

As I start to write this post I have 739 Member Trees hints. That is down from 846 from last week when I decided I really needed to clean up the non-record hints in my Ancestry tree. By reviewing those hints I've created 10 to do items from information I gleaned from the various member page hints. I've also sent to a message to two Ancestry members concerning a possible incorrect marriage fact in their respective trees.

First of all, when going through the Member Trees hints I would recommend starting at the oldest hint. Why? A few reasons:

• The oldest hints are usually about the people you first added to your tree. These are often the people of most interest to you.
• It also can give you a sense of accomplishment as you go to the next page of hints and it isn't a never ending list.

Screen capture from Ancestry Member Trees hints for McKinlay/McMullen tree

As you can see by the screen capture I have 37 pages of hints with 20 people per page. To quickly go to the last page I just type in 37 in the page number box and press the Enter key.

Next I Ignore the hints of people that, according to Ancestry, are not a spouse of a blood related family member or someone not related to me through blood. Back when I started working on my third version³ of documenting my family tree I was still in the "name collecting phase" that most of us go through when we start researching. In the current iteration of my tree I am a bit more focused on the connections I record.  So when I see a Member Trees hint for someone like Jean Brannan that states she is the "mother-in-law of wife of 2nd cousin 3x removed" that is usually a quick decision to ignore the hint. However, even then I might click on the Review button.

Screen capture from Ancestry Member Trees hints for Jean Brannan

When I do come across a Member Trees hint of interest I click on the Review button to see what other trees might have information that I don't. Here is an example of a hint for Daniel Beverly Hatfield, my 2nd cousin 5 times removed. I've blanked out the name of the tree and owner for privacy sake.

Screen capture from a specific Ancestry Member Tree hint for Daniel Beverly Hatfield

As you can see, there is much more information for his family than what I have including a possible first marriage and a list of children. There is even a death date in that suggested tree.

Notice that there is a difference in the date for the marriage to Annie Somerville. This raises a flag for me. Is my information incorrect? Since my master database is not on Ancestry but stored in my offline Legacy Family Tree I need to consult the source or sources I've used. If it is only single source I need to see if I can find a corroborating source for what I have. Of course, I might be in error⁴.

In this case, my source of the date of the marriage to Annie Somerville is from "The Records of The Reverend James Gray, Kings County, New Brunswick 1857-1898" compiled by Graeme F. Somerville.

Date of Marriage: 1893 Feby 8
No of License: 10875 (house of J Gray)
Parties Married and Residence: D. Beverly Hatfield, age 55 Ch. of England Farmer, Norton / Annie Somerville, 19, Baptist, Norton
Names of their Parents: Daniel Hatfield, Mary Lannen / John Somerville, Gertrude Belding
Witnesses and their address: Jane Gray, Sussex / Bella M. Patterson, Sussex

However that book is an extract from the original records. Might there be another set of records I can check to verify the date?

The first place I went to is the "Daniel F Johnson's New Brunswick Newspaper Vital Statistics" collection at the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick site. There, in volume 85 number 1421, from the 3 Mar 1893 edition of the Kings County Record of Sussex in Kings County Daniel has extracted:

"Norton (Kings Co.) March 1 - D.B. HATFIELD, our police magistrate, took to himself a wife about two weeks ago, in the person of Miss Annie SOMERVILLE, eldest d/o John SOMERVILLE, section foreman."

But that is still an extract. Can we find an image of a civil or parish record?

In the Vital Statistics from Government Records (RS141) at the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick site there can be found the 8 Feb 1893 marriage record for D. Beverley Hatfield⁵ and Annie Sommerville. So it seems like my information is correct.

What about that possible first marriage? Can we confirm that information?

With that marriage taking place prior to civil registration a search of the Vital Statistics from Government Records is probably futile but since it takes just a minute to do I did it anyways just in case. Nothing was returned using the following criteria:

• Family Name exactly hatfield
• Given Names begins with d
• Years 1850-1860
• County All Counties

A search of the Daniel F Johnson's (DFJ) New Brunswick Newspaper Vital Statistics collection has two entries:

21 Aug 1858 New Brunswick Courier (Saint John, New Brunswick): "m. 26th July, by Rev. W. Alves, D.B. HATFIELD, Norton parish (Kings Co.) / H.A. Hamilton DOANE fourth d/o Capt. Isaac DOANE of (St. John) city."

and

27 Aug 1858 Religious Intelligencer (Saint John, New Brunswick): "m. 26th July, by Rev. W. Alves, D.B. HATFIELD, Norton parish (Kings Co.) / H.A. Hamilton fourth s/o Capt. Isaac DOANE (St. John)"

Hmmm...it appears that her last name isn't Hamilton but is Doane.

What about her death? Is that correct? Back to the DFJ collection and a search for the last name of Hatfield and a forename starting with "D" (the husband is often mentioned in notices of that time). I do find two notices for Adelaide Hatfield for a death taking place in Norton, Kings County, New Brunswick on 5 March 1887. She is recorded as the wife of D. Beverley Hatfield and daughter of the late Captain J.W. Doane.

d. Norton (Kings Co.) 5th inst., Adelaide HATFIELD w/o D. Beverley HATFIELD, Esq. and d/o late Capt. J.W. DOANE, age 53 (Boston, New York and Chicago papers please copy)

J.W. Doane and not Isaac Doane. Sigh, yet another mystery for another day. Also with a request for other newspapers to copy I wonder if there might be family members in those other places.

However, it appears that the information presented for the family of Daniel Beverly Hatfield from this specific public tree on Ancestry is suspect. But I did find clues to work from and records to confirm.

As an aside, just verifying these details took under 30 minutes since I knew where to search. It will take me about an hour to record the details in my master offline family tree database and to make the additions to my Ancestry tree.

The one thing I will never do is just blindly accept those hints from another tree into my own tree.

Keep in mind that an ignored hint can always been viewed by selecting Hints and clicking on "Ignored".

Screen capture from Ancestry for Ignored hints of Jean Brannan in McKinlay/McMullen tree

Those ignored hints are never really lost and can be reviewed if you find that this person is really of interest to you in your family history research.

When doing the hint clean ups from the Ancestry Member Trees, keep in mind that it will take some time. It isn't a simple process and you will always end up with to do items and a lot of data entry. But it is worth it in the end.

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1. I try to follow three basic rules in my research:

1. Trust no one
2. Verify everything
3. Even if written in stone it might be wrong²

2. See my posts Zombie in the census? about Robert Howe and also Endnotes and Footnotes concerning the grave maker for Elizabeth (nee Chipman) Sommerville.

3. I'm currently on my fifth version of the tree as part of my long term "do over" project.

4. Yes, I make mistakes. Sometimes they are whoppers but often they are simple transcription errors.

5. The marriage registration states "D. Beverley Hatfield" but the marriage certificate has his signature written as "D. Beverly Hatfield".

Hints for Dealing With Ancestry Hints

There are times in my genealogy research I find that I need to let the computer do some of the work for me. This is where the hint system in the various online family tree sites such as MyHeritage, Findmypast, and Ancestry can help out.

I have tree on Ancestry that serves two purposes: "easy" record finding and as cousin bait. So I often get hints for the over 10,000 people in my tree. Most of these people were connected to my tree in my name collecting phase on my research and have relationships to me such as "paternal grandfather of wife of 1st cousin of husband of 1st cousin 3x removed". However, I don't want to prune those folks from my tree just in case a closer relationship appears. This means that I have 16,400 hints broken down as:

• Records: 14992
• Photos: 443
• Stories: 119
• Member Trees: 846

I will admit that it makes for a nearly impossible task to review each of those hints for validity. Especially since if a hint is valid for a person it can often lead to several hours of additional research. So this is my approach for whittling down at least some of those hints.

First of all I try to only pay attention to those hints for my cousins, grandparents, and others of "blood" in my direct family lines. I will periodically to go the oldest person of a specific direct line branch and display their tree to see what leaves in Ancestry appear.

Screen capture from Ancestry.ca for a portion of William Bell Little's tree

Keep in mind that often these hints are not from all of the collections but from a select group of commonly used sets such as those found in census, birth, marriage, death, immigration, and military collections.

Of course, by doing this, even more hints might be found and thus your count of hints will go up. But you might find additional clues to break through your brick walls. In my case, with almost 15,000 record hints the number seems to never really go down.

I will often turn to reviewing the photo and story hints since that list is much, much shorter! Here is where I get some of my best clues to investigate.

Screen capture from Ancestry for Story Hints for the McKinlay/McMullen tree

As you can see, someone has posted the possible obituary for Alfred Boller Stanford. It is critical that you review the hint to make sure it really does apply to the person in your tree. Even then, I rarely link another person's document to someone in my tree. Instead I will see if I can find the original document the hint came from. In the case of the "obit for alfred stanford", the person that posted that story stated "By United Press International | February 14, 1985". I can now search newspaper sites like GenealogyBank, Newspapers.com, and NewspaperArchive to find the specific newspaper the obituary was from. Other times you will come across research notes that can help you analyze the information in a tree.

For the photo hints, I will go through the list to see if there is photo or image of a document that adds value to what I have already found concerning a person in my tree. Pictures of headstones can be a particular interest, especially if the poster has indicated the cemetery in which the marker may be found. If I don't have a bith or death date, or even a spouse listed, then the grave marker can possibly give me a clue to hunt down. In the photo hints I've come across not only are there the usual pictures of people and grave markers but also hard to find birth, marriage, and death registrations, clippings from newspapers announcing important events in a person's life, and pages from books that I wasn't aware even existed.

The story and photo hints can also lead you to finding new cousins. Take a look at who that story or photo is linked to. Maybe even drop a note to the tree owner asking them how they are connected to the person. You never know what connection you will make.

The Member Trees are a special challenge for me since I don't trust anyone's trees (sometimes I even doubt my own work). My usually approach for the member trees on Ancestry is to do a quick glance at what they have posted to see if there is anything of particular interest and then review those documents. Sometimes I will add to my to do list an action to search for a document to confirm what someone added to their tree.

Remember, at least on Ancestry, if you ignore the hint it isn't gone forever. It is still available to view in the "Ignored Hints" for a person in your tree.

As for going through my own hints as I was writing this post the results are:

• Records: 15066
• Photos: 285
• Stories: 44
• Member Trees: 846

A net decrease of 159 hints but even more record hints appeared!

Looks like I still have my work cut out for me on Ancestry. However, I did discover a transcription of an obituary I've been trying to locate. I also came across a detailed explanation concerning the parentage of Nancy, daughter of Handley Chipman and Nancy Post, and her date of birth that I need think about and also to examine the source documents mention.

Canadian First World War Resources - A Recap

Many of us in Canada have a connection to a relative or ancestor that fought or served in the First World War. With this year's Remembrance Day also commemorating the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Armistice I thought it was important to look at some of the resources available to us when doing our genealogy and family history research for those that fought or served during the Great War.

Library and Archives Canada

The first place I always recommend is the First World War landing page at the Library and Archives Canada web site. Take the time to look through the various resources available either online or onsite. Some of the resources include:

• Canadian Expeditionary Force
• Aboriginal Soldiers
• Royal Newfoundland Regiment and Newfoundland Forestry Corps
• Imperial War Service Gratuity files
• Non-Permanent Active Militia
• Royal Canadian Navy and Naval Reserve
• Nursing Sisters that served with the CEF
• Military Medals, Honours and Awards, 1812-1969

Don't forget to look at the "Published Sources"since those books can shed some light on the lives of those that served. Some of the online record collections at Library and Archives Canada might only be indices. However, often the digitized documents may be found elsewhere.

Do you have a War Bride in the family? If so, review the War Brides page at Library and Archives Canada for possible collections that you might want to check out.

The War Diaries of the First World War are not the diaries of the individual service member but daily accounts of the CEF units. Searching for the diaries for a specific unit is not a straight forward task but the results can be worth while. There you will find that serving could be days of boring routine followed by hell in the trenches. If you know the unit of your soldier and when they were injured or killed, the war diaries can often help pinpoint where the unit and quite possibly the soldier was on that date.

Maps

Once you have the service file and know where your soldier was on the group through reading the War Diaries then being able to find them on the ground during the fighting is often the next step. McMaster University has an amazing Digital Archive in their Maps Collection for the First World War. You can even look at the Trench Maps for the Western Front.

Newfoundland

FamilySearch has the digitized collection "Newfoundland military service records for the Royal Newfoundland Regiment and the Newfoundland Forestry Corps, 1913-1918" available online. You will need to review the digitized index first to determine the volume and file number. Then you can go to the appropriate digitized microfilm roll to review the service records. You will also find military records and other information about Newfoundlanders in the First World War at the Newfoundland's Grand Banks site.

Commonwealth War Graves Commission

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission helps you find where a service member that died during the Great War is buried or memorialized. You will often find the Grave Registration Report included on the page. If no body was recovered the name may be found on one of several memorials. A photo of the panel when the name is written may also be included on the page.

Memorials

Those Canadians in uniform that died during the First World War (and other wars), you can find their name inscribed in the Books of Remembrance housed in the Memorial Chamber of the Peace Town in Ottawa. You can search the books and view the page from the specific Book of Remembrance.

Veterans Affairs Canada houses the Canadian Virtual War Memorial. The CVWM is a registry to honour and remember the sacrifices of the Canadians and Newfoundlanders who have given their lives serving in uniform.

Ancestry

If you have a paid Ancestry subscription or you are accessing Ancestry from a library or archive then you will find a number of collections including:

• Canada, WWI CEF Personnel Files, 1914-1918 - This collection is the same as what is available directly from Library and Archives Canada. However, the individual services files at Library and Archives Canada come bundled as a PDF whereas on Ancestry you need to retrieve the individual images for each service member.
• Canada, Imperial War Service Gratuities, 1919-1921 - At the end of the First World War, all Canadian service personnel received a payment to help in the transition from military service to civilian life. In December 1919 the Canadian government decided to increase the gratuity for all Canadian residents that served with the British forces during the Great War. These are the records of applications for the increased gratuity payment. Most of the applications were from those personnel that served with the Royal Flying Corp, Royal Navy, and the British Expeditionary Force.
• England, Queen's Canadian Military Hospital Registers, 1914-1919 - This collection includes registers of admission and discharge, and rolls of patient transfers for the Queen's Canadian Military Hospital at Beachborough Park, Shorncliffe.
• U.S., Residents Serving in Canadian Expeditionary Forces, 1917-1918 - The CEF didn't just have Canadians in their ranks. Americans that didn't want to wait for the United States of America to join the war against the Central Powers also joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force.
• Canada, Nominal Rolls and Paylists for the Volunteer Militia, 1857-1922 - Often you will find on the CEF Attestation Papers a mention that the recruit had served in the militia. You may be able to find their name in these nominal rolls and paylists.
• Canada, War Graves Registers (Circumstances of Casualty), 1914-1948 - This database has the death and burial information for Canadian military personnel
• Canada, CEF Commonwealth War Graves Registers, 1914-1919 - The "Black Binder" registers were used to record the final resting place of those that died during the First World War in Belgium, France, and the United Kingdom.
• Canada, Military Honours and Awards Citation Cards, 1900-1961 - These index cards documenting awards and honours received by service personnel may include your service member or Nursing Sister.
• Canadian Passenger Lists, 1865-1935 - Don't forget that those that served overseas needed to come back home to Canada. You will often find them in the passenger lists of the ships that were seconded to act a troop ships.

Other Collections

There is also the Military History Research Centre at the Canadian War Museum. You can search their online catalogue or make an appointment to review the onsite resources.

Was your relative or ancestor a prisoner of war during the First World War? If so, search the Prisoners of the First World War collection at the International Committee of the Red Cross.

A number of the Nominal Rolls for the Canadian Expeditionary Force have been digitized and made available on the Internet Archive by searching for "nominal roll canadian expeditionary force".

Do you have a picture of the service member and you can't figure out the badge on the uniform? Check out the "Badge Registry: The Canadian Expeditionary Force" pages.

The Canadian Expeditionary Force Study Group is a group of enthusiasts with an interest in the Canadian Expeditionary Force. They have amassed a large collection of files and information concerning the CEF and are a great research when digging into the lives of service members and history of the units.

If your ancestor or relative did something particularly brave during the war they might have been "gazetted" with a mention in the Canada Gazette or London Gazette. Remember that some of the awards, honours, and medals were done post-war.

Don't forget to check the newspapers in the villages, towns, and cities that your relative or ancestor lived. Often there will be a mention of them heading off to war, returning, getting injured or killed, and also in memory post-war.

Easy Backups to USB Flash Drive

Backup Reminder

USB Flash Drive

I periodically get asked how I do my backups on my Microsoft Windows 10 based system¹. Besides doing a monthly backup of my computer to an externally connected hard drive I also do a periodic backup of only my genealogy information to a USB memory stick/thumb drive/flash drive. Today's post will cover just how I do that copying to the USB flash drive.

Now I could easily just copy and paste the contents of my genealogy folder to the flash drive. I actually used to do that when I only had a small amount of information to copy. However, I now have over 57 GB² of various images, digitized books, and other related files in my genealogy folder. Some of that information I don't need or want to have backed up since it can be very easily recreated from the original sources³. That still leaves about 49 GB of information to be backed up. If I manually copied all the files I want backed up it would take several hours. Instead I use a free program called SyncBackFree by 2BrightSparks to handle my backups to the USB flash drive.

Why SyncBackFree? First of all, it is free. When on a tight budget, free is often a good thing. Secondly, it doesn't use some fancy proprietary format for storing the backup in. The files on my USB flash drive can be accessed from any modern Windows (maybe even Mac) computer just like any other file. This is a great benefit when it comes to recovering the files after a disaster since all I have to do is copy the genealogy folder on my USB flash drive to my computer's hard disk.

Screen capture of SyncBackFree profiles

As you can see I have two profiles created to do my backups. I have two profiles since I have two USB flash drives that I use to hold the backups and I rotate between the drives. Each USB flash drive has been assigned a specific drive letter⁴. That way I have two different backups available that were taken at different times.

So what does one of these profiles look like?

Screen capture of SyncBackFree profile for creating a mirror backup

As you might have noticed in the screen capture of my profile list, I actually am not making a backup of my genealogy folder but I am mirroring the contents of the folder to my USB flash drive.

Mirroring? What the heck is that?

In a backup, you often have a copy of all the files that you ever had starting from a specific point in time. In a mirror, it is only what exists when you make the copy. For the purposes of my genealogy only backup to the USB flash drive, I just want a snapshot of what I have now. Since I have two USB flash drives that I rotate through, I do have one older copy I can easily access if need be.

I have also only specific sub-folders selected when it does the mirror copy of my genealogy folder. These are often folders that don't change very often or can be recreated from other sources. These excluded folders are backed up when I do my full backup of my computer each month.

Screen capture of SyncBackFree profile File & Folder Selection screen

With how I've defined my profile in SyncBackFree it usually only takes minutes to make a mirror copy of my genealogy folder since only changes are sent to the USB flash drive.

I don't have this kind of backup running automatically. However, anytime I make a large number of changes or additions to my master database I make a backup of my genealogy directory. Sometimes I make a copy of my genealogy folder just because I haven't run a backup for several days. For me, it is as simple as connecting the USB flash drive to my computer, checking to see which drive letter it is, selecting the correct profile, and clicking Run. SyncBackFree will even tell me it there were problems doing the backup.

Remember, this isn't the only way to backup your information. Find the tools and methods that work for you. Just make sure that you do your backups on a regular basis!

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1. Sorry Mac users, I don't have a solution for you. I've been a Windows user for way too many years.
2. Yes, 57 gigabytes of information.
3. My Family Tree Maker sub-folder is my backup of my Ancestry data. I don't use Family Tree Maker to enter information into my tree since I use Legacy Family Tree as my master database but I want to backup the information I have put onto my Ancestry cousin-bait tree.
4. See https://www.howtogeek.com/96298/assign-a-static-drive-letter-to-a-usb-drive-in-windows-7/ for how to do this.