Good tips. I'm a stickler for having sources to verify all bits of information; otherwise, you need to assume they're wrong. Caution: be extremely hesitant and cautious in merging people. Yes, it can be necessary, but look long and hard at the individuals involved, their parents, siblings, and so on. Things can really get messed up by wrongly merging people.
A tip for newbies, do not take Ancestry's hints without verifying them. Preferably looking at the source material. I have seen a few people fall for it. I was trying to find the parents of a woman, and Ancestry suggests a couple. Well, yes, there is a baptism around the same time frame, similar area. But if you dig a bit further and check out the proposed parents, you find them in the 1851 census with that daughter of the same name with them. The woman I was trying to find was in Tasmania and on her second husband at that time, so it was a false lead. What makes it worse, when someone does makes a mistake on their tree (or many people copy that mistake), Ancestry then really takes it to be the likely hint, further propagating the misinformation. I would also add, whenever the image comes up in a hint or suggestion, ALWAYS look at the image. Don't blindly attach it.
There's nothing more frustrating than looking at someone's tree for clues that show their connection to your tree and they have imported someone else's tree without checking - the same people are listed multiple times. I viewed a tree this morning that had the same people in their tree 8 times. Scrolling through the names was an effort in futility. I've been using FTM since the last 1990s and constantly look for names in the tree more than once because they connect to a different branch. It's a constant source of surprise.
I only became aware of bad trees when I noticed children born in Scotland and in the US just months apart, or alternately, as if the parents went back and forth constantly in the 1700s. Not likely!
Oooh! You really don't want to see one of my trees. They are not duplicates of the same person, this particular family group kept naming everyone from the same pool of first names (ie after one another). Made it difficult when, for example, sorting out which of the cousins a marriage referred to if they were around the same age. One of my most difficult (and largest) trees that I have ever done. Very rewarding though.
@ Every generation repeated Thomas, Susannah, William and a bunch of other names. Drove me crazy. Every single cousin level was difficult to sort out. Was a fantastic tree in the end though. It had everything. Cold blooded murder (one of mine, by a relatively famous dude who got off), family massacred in Indian Mutiny (rather horrific, the only surviving son back in England was the murder victim above). Ship wrecks. Titles. British prime ministers (four!), famous author (my GF's first cousin once removed). And pretty sure that one of the gggg-grandfathers was murdered - dropped dead in the street after dinner at the club (sure, could have been natural, but could have been a poisoning, I think the latter). It was amazing to see it all unfold.
Thank you so much. I learned about cleaning up "your tree" from another set of genealogists I follow on UA-cam; however, I didn't know how to do it correctly. I appreciate that you took the time to show us how to do it. I will start cleaning this weekend, and I'm excited.
I have noticed that Ancestry puts obituaries as "Residences". I always have to add the fact that it's an obituary in the description tab. I also use the tags to mark my direct ancestors. It makes it easier for anyone looking at my trees to easily see who my ancestors are versus who their ancestors are.
I'd like to suggest that entirely removing a woman's married surname from her name leaves her in a 'limbo' as to where she is connected. If I don't know her maiden name, I leave her married name there, but I enclose it with single quote marks. That way, I can tell at a glance it isn't her maiden name, but I know who she's married to & where she connects. When I find the real maiden name, i replace the quoted name entirely.
I put the married name in the Suffix field. At Crista Cowan's suggestion I now add five underscores if the maiden name is unknown. In the past I left it blank. Crista has stated that the Ancestry algorithm doesn't like quotation marks so I'll put nicknames in parentheses.
@@SamStone1964 I've heard Crista talk about the five underscores too. And the quotation marks issue applies to Ancestry AND the other sites too, although I would be careful with parentheses - they may cause the same problem.
I thought I had joined last year, but finally realized I wasn't seeing any charges on my credit card. So sorry! I watch all your videos and replay them. Joined today! Happy New Year!
Great video. Question, I am an NPE, I have my biological father on my tree but I have my dad (my birth certificate father) listed as my step dad. Would it be more appropriate to list him as adoptive father?
I would make a note in the description of an event if the place was misspelled or wrong or whatever, and generally the reason why. On some records you can submit corrections. I mainly find abbreviations in parish records, because they are local, they refer to some place as say "Barton" instead of its full name. Fine for locals in that time and place. Also place names (and boundaries) can change over time.
That’s a great question. I’m honestly not sure. I would reach out to Ancestry. Their standardized places show when you start typing a place. However it can get muddled when you have a place erroneously entered in the tree earlier. Wish they would make it more clear for us.
Thanks for this video! I recently started migrating my tree to Gramps, but I’m rebuilding manually and have found so much additional information from actually looking at the sources - eg additional family members Ancestry didn’t recognise, birth dates, etc.!! Ancestry is also very slow for me lately so I’m hoping to be less reliant on it in future.
@@AncestryAimee it was a bit complicated to learn at first, but I really like how customisable it is! And I love that it can give me stats on the dashboard, e.g. people in my tree with the most grandchildren, or youngest person to be married. It makes my tree feel a bit more alive somehow!
Another addition to naming that I’ve been doing recently is updating the associated facts in each record to match the correct name so you can easily see which name shows up on which record at a quick glance
Thank you for the great information! I've been wanting to clean up my tree and just get lost in some of the details. Sorry, I'm new to membership to this channel. Where do I find the handouts?
Welcome! Thanks for becoming a member. To get the handouts. Go to my channel page and the membership tab. There we have community chats that are for members only and they contain links to the handout of the month.
@@carlaporath7076 I put the actual date of enumeration if there's any other facts close to that time, such as a marriage, a birth, or a death. It helps with the timeline. Otherwise, I don't really bother, and just leave the year.
Great question! I don’t take the time to do that usually; however, if there’s a timeline question right around it, I will take the exact date to put that there. For those who aren’t aware, the date is at the top of the census page.
Thank you. I really needed this to go back and remove anything I got from another tree which does not show a source. I do need more info about the stepfather/ foster father concept. One woman divorced her husband, took all her children with her into a new marriage, and they immediately were listed on the following censuses under her new husband's name. But the formal name change happened many years later, and for only one son that I know of. This son always used his stepfather's name in military records and court documents. Why shouldn't I use "stepfather"? How will that muddy the waters?
Great question. I just know that somebody’s going to be a stepfather in that situation so I don’t list it that way. It will create another father relationship and the child will be listed twice underneath the mother. But if that’s what works for you, then go for it!
I started my husband's and my family genealogy back in 1984. At that time I was using family group work sheets to collect my information. When I finally got a computer in the late 1990's I started using the Family Tree Maker to store all my info but then the software went obsolete. I started an Ancestry tree years ago. I am currently remodeling my office and cleaning up files and such and am trying to decide if I need to keep all those paper family group work sheets since they take up so much room. There is no sources or citations on the sheets. What would you do?
What are the odds. The first ever video I have watched and the road shown at 4:19 I recognise. I have ancestors living on the same street at the same time.
Aimee, I have people in my tree that are (shame on me) not related to me as home person. Most likely they had been linked to me but the link was destroyed somehow. How do I find these people so I can clean them up in my tree? How do I find my orphans and either delete them, or link them back?
The reason I download and then upload records to Ancestry is to keep the records in my tree. My subscription is not continuous and many of the sources and records disappear when my subscription lapses. Likely, others download/upload for the same reason.
I also use the event description to highlight discrepancies or conflicts (particularly when people may have fibbed about their ages, or perhaps informant at death gets it wrong about age). One issue I have with Ancestry, it has a place in the name for a suffix, but not a prefix (like a title, eg Dr, Sir). I really wish they would add that. Speaking of prefixes, particularly when you are looking at the parish registers of England way back (18thC and earlier), do not fall for "Mrs" (usually on a marriage entry) as denoting she was married. It is often an honorific title indicating 'respectable family' (but yes, sometimes she is a widow, or widow as well). At a certain class level I generally assume firstly she was never married, then if not found, go looking for a former spouse. Also, back in the 19th century particularly there was a fair bit of desertion going on, and some women would claim to be widows when they were deserted wives. This more of a working class thing. Thanks for the tips on merging/adding sources on different events. I have noted that when say adding two different sources for say a marriage, Ancestry adds it like a new event. So going to clean that one up now! It is something that I have only found recently, so I suspect Ancestry changed something at the back end.
Thanks for all those great additions! I completely agree about desertion/widow. I’ve seen that for men occasionally too. I didn’t know about the custom in England. So glad to learn that too! Thanks!!
@@AncestryAimee It seems more prevalent in the 19thC, or perhaps just more noticed in the 19thC (England, and colonies). It could be because of the census being introduced 1841, and also civil registration, plus our access to search these databases that cover a wider area. As for divorce, I cannot recall the dates exactly, but before 19thC in England, divorce had to be granted by parliament of all things (so only for the rich). By the mid-19thC the working classes became more mobile looking for work, so another thing that possibly did make it more prevalent. Part of the joy of doing FH research is getting to know various aspects of history generally. In my own, I have it all from working class up to the posh, murders, massacre victims, ship wrecks, power marriages. And have disproven a number of family legends along the way!
The most frustrating thing I find when looking at other public trees is actually finding my relative in there. So many times person X is claimed to be on a tree but I cannot find them. So annoying!
If you click on that person's name it generally goes to profile view. If you look up the top, switch it to tree view, then use the search function on the right hand side. I had come across that as well, being difficult to see where that person fits in (sometimes on tree view, you have to show other spouses etc to see the line).
@@AncestryAimee Part of the issue is expanding the views for different spouses or via siblings that were not expanded. It is time consuming to try to follow the trail. I thought I was some kind of genius to find the function (already built in, LOL) I actually had that today, but the search did not reveal the person. Either the tree creator had marked them as living (therefore hidden), or somehow has disconnected them, I have no idea! We are talking late 1700s to early 1800s, so I am fairly certain they are not living...
I would like to add I just found feature!!! In the tree view on the LHS, in that menu, three vertical dots, select 'tree viewing options'. It opens up on the right and you can change the default to 'show all spouses'. Not sure if this applicable to all your trees, or just the current one.
Should you really be going back 14-15 generations listed on your tree? I seen a video that said we only have DNA back to 4-5 generation so why go back farther?
It’s a matter of personal choice. That’s true of dna but you can trace your family with records as well. One can usually only go back 14-15 generations if they are related to royalty or link to Chinese records.
When you enter a Residence fact, why do you only put the town, county, state, country? Why do you add the address only in the details? Surely it would be simpler to record the address as the residence?
So Ancesty can map it and utilize its AI function to provide search results and hints. Putting too much info in the location bar confuses it. I always put the specific address, if I have it, as the first thing in the description box.
Great question. The AI can’t handle the address and it will limit your searches and hints. By putting it in the details it’s still there but not affecting things. It also messes up the mapping feature if you have pro tools.
Great info, one of your best videos. Thanks.
I appreciate that! Thanks!
Good tips. I'm a stickler for having sources to verify all bits of information; otherwise, you need to assume they're wrong.
Caution: be extremely hesitant and cautious in merging people. Yes, it can be necessary, but look long and hard at the individuals involved, their parents, siblings, and so on. Things can really get messed up by wrongly merging people.
Great tip! Thanks!
A tip for newbies, do not take Ancestry's hints without verifying them. Preferably looking at the source material. I have seen a few people fall for it. I was trying to find the parents of a woman, and Ancestry suggests a couple. Well, yes, there is a baptism around the same time frame, similar area. But if you dig a bit further and check out the proposed parents, you find them in the 1851 census with that daughter of the same name with them. The woman I was trying to find was in Tasmania and on her second husband at that time, so it was a false lead.
What makes it worse, when someone does makes a mistake on their tree (or many people copy that mistake), Ancestry then really takes it to be the likely hint, further propagating the misinformation.
I would also add, whenever the image comes up in a hint or suggestion, ALWAYS look at the image. Don't blindly attach it.
There's nothing more frustrating than looking at someone's tree for clues that show their connection to your tree and they have imported someone else's tree without checking - the same people are listed multiple times. I viewed a tree this morning that had the same people in their tree 8 times. Scrolling through the names was an effort in futility. I've been using FTM since the last 1990s and constantly look for names in the tree more than once because they connect to a different branch. It's a constant source of surprise.
I only became aware of bad trees when I noticed children born in Scotland and in the US just months apart, or alternately, as if the parents went back and forth constantly in the 1700s. Not likely!
Yes… yes… yes!
Oooh! You really don't want to see one of my trees. They are not duplicates of the same person, this particular family group kept naming everyone from the same pool of first names (ie after one another). Made it difficult when, for example, sorting out which of the cousins a marriage referred to if they were around the same age. One of my most difficult (and largest) trees that I have ever done. Very rewarding though.
@@StrawberryFieldsNIR Wow!! Way to carefully sort through it!!
@ Every generation repeated Thomas, Susannah, William and a bunch of other names. Drove me crazy. Every single cousin level was difficult to sort out.
Was a fantastic tree in the end though. It had everything. Cold blooded murder (one of mine, by a relatively famous dude who got off), family massacred in Indian Mutiny (rather horrific, the only surviving son back in England was the murder victim above). Ship wrecks. Titles. British prime ministers (four!), famous author (my GF's first cousin once removed). And pretty sure that one of the gggg-grandfathers was murdered - dropped dead in the street after dinner at the club (sure, could have been natural, but could have been a poisoning, I think the latter).
It was amazing to see it all unfold.
Thank you so much. I learned about cleaning up "your tree" from another set of genealogists I follow on UA-cam; however, I didn't know how to do it correctly. I appreciate that you took the time to show us how to do it. I will start cleaning this weekend, and I'm excited.
Glad it was helpful! Happy cleaning!
Your tutorial on editing is so helpful. Thank you.
Glad it was helpful!
I have noticed that Ancestry puts obituaries as "Residences". I always have to add the fact that it's an obituary in the description tab. I also use the tags to mark my direct ancestors. It makes it easier for anyone looking at my trees to easily see who my ancestors are versus who their ancestors are.
Good idea, thanks
Great suggestions. Thanks for adding them!
I'd like to suggest that entirely removing a woman's married surname from her name leaves her in a 'limbo' as to where she is connected. If I don't know her maiden name, I leave her married name there, but I enclose it with single quote marks. That way, I can tell at a glance it isn't her maiden name, but I know who she's married to & where she connects. When I find the real maiden name, i replace the quoted name entirely.
Thanks so much for sharing how you handle it. I can see how that would be helpful.
Yes, I put a married name in brackets for the same reason. Works for me.
I put the married name in the Suffix field. At Crista Cowan's suggestion I now add five underscores if the maiden name is unknown. In the past I left it blank. Crista has stated that the Ancestry algorithm doesn't like quotation marks so I'll put nicknames in parentheses.
@@SamStone1964 I've heard Crista talk about the five underscores too. And the quotation marks issue applies to Ancestry AND the other sites too, although I would be careful with parentheses - they may cause the same problem.
I thought I had joined last year, but finally realized I wasn't seeing any charges on my credit card. So sorry! I watch all your videos and replay them. Joined today! Happy New Year!
So glad to have you as a member! Happy to hear the videos help you. 😄👍
Didn’t know about the merge tool. I’ll be using that in the future!
Glad there was something helpful for you!
Great video. Question, I am an NPE, I have my biological father on my tree but I have my dad (my birth certificate father) listed as my step dad. Would it be more appropriate to list him as adoptive father?
Yes you can - that’s really a matter of choice but it would make it more clear to others.
Is there anyway to curate the suggested list of places? So often they have misspelling or other odd things.
I would make a note in the description of an event if the place was misspelled or wrong or whatever, and generally the reason why.
On some records you can submit corrections.
I mainly find abbreviations in parish records, because they are local, they refer to some place as say "Barton" instead of its full name. Fine for locals in that time and place. Also place names (and boundaries) can change over time.
That’s a great question. I’m honestly not sure. I would reach out to Ancestry. Their standardized places show when you start typing a place. However it can get muddled when you have a place erroneously entered in the tree earlier. Wish they would make it more clear for us.
Thanks for this video! I recently started migrating my tree to Gramps, but I’m rebuilding manually and have found so much additional information from actually looking at the sources - eg additional family members Ancestry didn’t recognise, birth dates, etc.!! Ancestry is also very slow for me lately so I’m hoping to be less reliant on it in future.
I’ve noticed issues lately too. Isn’t it terrific all that you find when you go through and look more carefully?!
How do you like Gramps?
@@AncestryAimee it was a bit complicated to learn at first, but I really like how customisable it is! And I love that it can give me stats on the dashboard, e.g. people in my tree with the most grandchildren, or youngest person to be married. It makes my tree feel a bit more alive somehow!
@Chloe-pw4uh good to know. Thanks! Maybe I’ll do a video on it.
Thanks! Very helpful!!!!
Glad it helped! Thanks for the super-thanks!
Another addition to naming that I’ve been doing recently is updating the associated facts in each record to match the correct name so you can easily see which name shows up on which record at a quick glance
Love that suggestion!
Thanjs Aimie, you certainly packed a lot of helpful information in this video.
You're so welcome!
Thank you for the great information! I've been wanting to clean up my tree and just get lost in some of the details.
Sorry, I'm new to membership to this channel. Where do I find the handouts?
Welcome! Thanks for becoming a member. To get the handouts. Go to my channel page and the membership tab. There we have community chats that are for members only and they contain links to the handout of the month.
Thank you! Second time to watch. Very helpful information.
Awesome! Thank you!
Do you ever put the date a census was enumerated? I.e. 12 April 1910 or do you just leave it as 1910….Great information today Aimee
I do as it clarifies their address and can help with moves.
@@carlaporath7076 I put the actual date of enumeration if there's any other facts close to that time, such as a marriage, a birth, or a death. It helps with the timeline. Otherwise, I don't really bother, and just leave the year.
I only do only if the person has died the year of the census, so that the census doesn't show in the timeline after the death date
Great question! I don’t take the time to do that usually; however, if there’s a timeline question right around it, I will take the exact date to put that there. For those who aren’t aware, the date is at the top of the census page.
Solid info.
Glad you think so!
Thank you. I really needed this to go back and remove anything I got from another tree which does not show a source.
I do need more info about the stepfather/ foster father concept. One woman divorced her husband, took all her children with her into a new marriage, and they immediately were listed on the following censuses under her new husband's name. But the formal name change happened many years later, and for only one son that I know of. This son always used his stepfather's name in military records and court documents. Why shouldn't I use "stepfather"? How will that muddy the waters?
Great question. I just know that somebody’s going to be a stepfather in that situation so I don’t list it that way. It will create another father relationship and the child will be listed twice underneath the mother. But if that’s what works for you, then go for it!
Thanks
I started my husband's and my family genealogy back in 1984. At that time I was using family group work sheets to collect my information. When I finally got a computer in the late 1990's I started using the Family Tree Maker to store all my info but then the software went obsolete. I started an Ancestry tree years ago. I am currently remodeling my office and cleaning up files and such and am trying to decide if I need to keep all those paper family group work sheets since they take up so much room. There is no sources or citations on the sheets. What would you do?
If the objective is to share it, I would build it on Ancestry and make it public to share it with others and have it secure.
What are the odds. The first ever video I have watched and the road shown at 4:19 I recognise. I have ancestors living on the same street at the same time.
Wow! That’s crazy!
Aimee, I have people in my tree that are (shame on me) not related to me as home person. Most likely they had been linked to me but the link was destroyed somehow.
How do I find these people so I can clean them up in my tree?
How do I find my orphans and either delete them, or link them back?
Good question! The only way really is to go to the list of all people in your tree and look for them there.
how do you add a second name on Ancestry. thanks
Go to facts and add a fact. You can add a name or also known as.
The reason I download and then upload records to Ancestry is to keep the records in my tree. My subscription is not continuous and many of the sources and records disappear when my subscription lapses. Likely, others download/upload for the same reason.
I realized that after I posted. I hadn’t thought of it before and I completely understand. Thanks for mentioning it. Others might appreciate that too.
I also use the event description to highlight discrepancies or conflicts (particularly when people may have fibbed about their ages, or perhaps informant at death gets it wrong about age).
One issue I have with Ancestry, it has a place in the name for a suffix, but not a prefix (like a title, eg Dr, Sir). I really wish they would add that.
Speaking of prefixes, particularly when you are looking at the parish registers of England way back (18thC and earlier), do not fall for "Mrs" (usually on a marriage entry) as denoting she was married. It is often an honorific title indicating 'respectable family' (but yes, sometimes she is a widow, or widow as well). At a certain class level I generally assume firstly she was never married, then if not found, go looking for a former spouse.
Also, back in the 19th century particularly there was a fair bit of desertion going on, and some women would claim to be widows when they were deserted wives. This more of a working class thing.
Thanks for the tips on merging/adding sources on different events. I have noted that when say adding two different sources for say a marriage, Ancestry adds it like a new event. So going to clean that one up now! It is something that I have only found recently, so I suspect Ancestry changed something at the back end.
Thanks for all those great additions! I completely agree about desertion/widow. I’ve seen that for men occasionally too. I didn’t know about the custom in England. So glad to learn that too! Thanks!!
@@AncestryAimee It seems more prevalent in the 19thC, or perhaps just more noticed in the 19thC (England, and colonies). It could be because of the census being introduced 1841, and also civil registration, plus our access to search these databases that cover a wider area.
As for divorce, I cannot recall the dates exactly, but before 19thC in England, divorce had to be granted by parliament of all things (so only for the rich). By the mid-19thC the working classes became more mobile looking for work, so another thing that possibly did make it more prevalent.
Part of the joy of doing FH research is getting to know various aspects of history generally. In my own, I have it all from working class up to the posh, murders, massacre victims, ship wrecks, power marriages. And have disproven a number of family legends along the way!
The most frustrating thing I find when looking at other public trees is actually finding my relative in there. So many times person X is claimed to be on a tree but I cannot find them. So annoying!
If you click on that person's name it generally goes to profile view. If you look up the top, switch it to tree view, then use the search function on the right hand side. I had come across that as well, being difficult to see where that person fits in (sometimes on tree view, you have to show other spouses etc to see the line).
Perfectly said! Thanks for adding that explanation! I get lost too in that tree view.
Love @strawberryfieldsnir explanation!
@@AncestryAimee Part of the issue is expanding the views for different spouses or via siblings that were not expanded. It is time consuming to try to follow the trail. I thought I was some kind of genius to find the function (already built in, LOL)
I actually had that today, but the search did not reveal the person. Either the tree creator had marked them as living (therefore hidden), or somehow has disconnected them, I have no idea! We are talking late 1700s to early 1800s, so I am fairly certain they are not living...
I would like to add I just found feature!!! In the tree view on the LHS, in that menu, three vertical dots, select 'tree viewing options'. It opens up on the right and you can change the default to 'show all spouses'.
Not sure if this applicable to all your trees, or just the current one.
Clean up my family genealogy tree thanks.
Good luck! Hope it goes well.
Should you really be going back 14-15 generations listed on your tree? I seen a video that said we only have DNA back to 4-5 generation so why go back farther?
It’s a matter of personal choice. That’s true of dna but you can trace your family with records as well. One can usually only go back 14-15 generations if they are related to royalty or link to Chinese records.
When you enter a Residence fact, why do you only put the town, county, state, country? Why do you add the address only in the details? Surely it would be simpler to record the address as the residence?
So Ancesty can map it and utilize its AI function to provide search results and hints. Putting too much info in the location bar confuses it. I always put the specific address, if I have it, as the first thing in the description box.
Great question. The AI can’t handle the address and it will limit your searches and hints. By putting it in the details it’s still there but not affecting things. It also messes up the mapping feature if you have pro tools.
FYI, I have discovered that the limit on Custom Tags is 80. If I want to add any new ones, I have to delete an existing custom tag.
Good to know! I wasn’t aware of that.
Is this where the spelling of your name came from? 😃
France - I was named after my great aunt (Aimee) whose mom was French and was named Aima.