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.