Navigating Trees on Ancestry

[Elderflower]

Have been browsing a lot on this forum since joining a few months ago and wow, what a lot I’ve learned despite having been researching my Family History for 9 years.

One of the things I learned is about the Trees people put on Ancestry. I have limited access to this site but have found someone who lists quite a lot of information about a person I have been researching. The Tree owner has over 60,000 names in his tree. Is there a way, other than contacting the Tree owner, that I can identify where the person I am interested in links to the Tree owner? I do find the Tree section a bit hard to navigate and there seems to be no overview of a Tree itself.

I am sure if there is a way of navigating a Tree on Ancestry then the brilliant people on here will know.

Thank you for any advice.

Pat

[Glen in Tinsel Knickers]

If the tree owner is a direct ancestor of the name you are interested in then it should be relatively easy to spot, if the connection is a little more obscure then it could be very difficult to follow the connection amongst so many names.

Personally i would be tempted to contact the tree owner and ask if they are related to the name you are looking at, if they have come by the information from another source perhaps they can say who or where they contacted. Knowing what research they have done and what may have been found via other trees might lead you to new contacts too.

Over to everyone else for their thoughts and comments.

[margaretmarch]

I agree, you need to contact the person whose tree it is because otherwise it is almost impossible to see how they are connected.
Margaret

[Mary from Italy]

Yes, I agree too, Ancestry trees are awful to navigate.

[Olde Crone Holden]

My immediate feeling is that on a tree of 60,000 names there possibly isn't any direct connection with the tree owner, but then I'm a cynic!

OC

[Elderflower]

Thankyou for your replies. You all have the same thoughts as me! My problem is that I only have access to Ancestry through the voluntary work I do at the local LDS Family History centre. I will have to see if I can contact the tree owner when I am next there and give them my own email address. I also have access through our local library but there seems no way to access trees through a library license.

Thanks again for your input.

Pat

[Glen in Tinsel Knickers]

My immediate feeling is that on a tree of 60,000 names there possibly isn't any direct connection with the tree owner, but then I'm a cynic!

OC

I used the very same words OC then re-typed. The odds of a direct connection are pretty slim and i would be a bit doubtful about how many contributors there are too, not many trees of that size can be the result of one person researching and i wouldn't be suprised if there had been a few gedcom files merged together before uploading to Ancestry.

[Olde Crone Holden]

I rarely resort to Ancestry trees but was forced to recently when I discovered 30 years of my research was wrong for one set of 2 x GGPs and I was desperate.

I found them on a huge Ancestry tree, checked "my" bit, but couldn't fathom out how they connected to the larger tree.

I left a message on the tree saying that I had some useful further information on my branch if the tree holder wanted it. Never heard a word. I think that says it all, really.

OC

[Gwyn in Kent]

I rarely look at Ancestry trees, but looked in earlier and found someone had my husband's G grandmother dead at age 9. Definitely the same person as they have birth details from the birth certificate.
I left the tree owner a message, but am not holding my breath waiting for the information to change there.

[JBee]

It is difficult to decipher especially with a large tree.

If you find a tree that has a common ancestor - go to their public tree and then click on their list of names and find your ancestor under the alphabet heading.

Click on the name and it takes you to what info they hold on that person. Then go to the Pedigree view followed by next tab family view which shows the tree and who they're immediately linked to.

However with 60,000 names I think it'll take quite awhile if you want to find the exact relationship with the other trees owner.

One I had recently only had one ancestor of mine who happened to marry into the family and they hadn't bothered with the subsequent children.

It's a pity ancestry doesn't have a relationship chart like Tribal pages where you put the two peoples names in and it tells you their relationship.

[Durham Lady]

My immediate feeling is that on a tree of 60,000 names there possibly isn't any direct connection with the tree owner, but then I'm a cynic!

OC

Ditto, probably someone like my cousins son's father in law who insists he's related to my parents! He has one of my g g grandfathers married to 2 wives living in different counties on the same census and with the incorrect wife several years after his death. Gg granny doesn't fair any better she was born 6 years after I know she married :D He also has Alfred the Great on his tree on so I think that says it all as far as he's concerned.

On the other side of the coin it is worth asking. I've had contact this week from a distant relative of my OH via his g g grandfather. She'd seen g g grandfathers name and asked if he was brother to her g g grandfather. I had the name Robert as he was with OH gg grandfather as visitors in someone elses home 1851 but hadn't added him as I couldn't prove a relationship.

[ayse]

Ancestry trees

I recently found a distant relly via Ancestry Tree and we have been in correspondence since. I use them now and again and have had mixed results. I tend to avoid huge trees (same goes for Genes) ever since a "contact" just uploaded all my stuff without asking.

Last night Ancestry was a nightmare. I definately don't get on with the changes and the new tree set up is just so confusing. Or is it just me?? Trying to find how to contact a person can be just as bad. Ancestry also tries to send you to the new set up. I much prefer the old search etc. GRrrrrrrr!!:(

Well, happy days Ayse

[Oakum Picker]

I think the problem with Ancestry trees is that the 'owners' of many of them have never set foot inside a Record Office & too many people are happy to copy straight from someone's tree with out verifying the details.

I spend several hours each week trying to enter into discussion with people who have 'incorrect' details for some of my family. The majority don't reply even though the trees are active & those that do usually say something like ' I copied it from someone else's tree'. I then present them with years of research using original records PRs, Wills, Poor Law Records etc. but they stick with what they have because 17 people think the same way as them. One person making a guess & the rest following like sheep.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't think I'm infallible - I've made some whopping mistakes but if any of my research was queried, I'd want to enter into a discussion to be as sure as possible who was correct.

[Olde Crone Holden]

Glen

I completely agree with you!

It's not just Ancestry though. I was recently asked by a professional genealogist to cast my eye over his client's Holden tree. He had been asked to prove that "George" was the son of "Arthur".

Well, who knows, because I couldn't get past two HUGE errors to find out! The client had "George" (born in 1815, no supporting docs whatsoever) had been left a property in the Will of a man, supposedly "Arthur's" brother, who died in 1796.

The professional agreed with me of course - he too had spotted this but wanted to know if I did - and wrote to his client advising him to get a few certs back to George and also get a copy of the 1796 Will to see exactly what it said.

The client is furious, has bombarded the genealogist with what can only be described as hate mail and at the moment, is about to sue him because he was "paid to prove that George was the son of Arthur, not make stupid unhelpful remarks".

The client has a huge tree, all culled from the IGI and not a single piece of paper to prove anything, not even any census returns. Yet he was perfectly prepared to pay a professional to find a piece of information for him! Doesn't make the slightest sense to me.

OC

[Janet]

I could not agree more about ancestry trees than what has already been written. My own rule of thumb is if the tree is that big then don't bother with it! I put a notice on Ancestry 5 years ago about a tree where somebody had got hold of some very erroneous material from Ireland. I left my e mail address suggesting they contact me for further information and heard nothing from the person putting up the information.

However, the one good point about it was that another American family picked up my message and they were also puzzled by the information posted. But working together we were able to sort out some Irish mysteries that helped both our families, so it can have a good effect leaving messages.

Janet

[Oakum Picker]

OC

The one that's driving me crazy at the moment isn't even a direct ancestor: he's the brother I believe of my 5xg-gf. I have done a mini ONS of the fairly uncommon surname in a small market town. The problem arises because there is no obvious baptism on the IGI so someone has found one several miles away, which to be honest isn't a very good 'fit' anyway.

The IGI shows a baptism in 1800 which has been discounted as he marries in 1801. A look at the entry in the PR shows his birth date as 1770.
His death date is given as 1838 because he wasn't alive when one of his children married. There is no burial in 1838 but there is a perfectly reasonable one in 1821, supported by occupational evidence, other family deaths & his sister's will but can I get anyone to discuss this -guess.

[Oakum Picker]

Janet,

When I've found things I think are incorrect, I used to contact people along the lines of 'I hope you don't mind me contacting you...' Most were ignored. I still contact people first but I'm a little more provocative now in the hope of opening up a discussion. If I don't hear I then put my opinions on their sites under comments so that hopefully others, especially newbies, won't just copy what's there.

[Elderflower]

It seems that everyone on here agrees with my train of thought. Thank you all for your your input.

The person on the tree in question was very famous and there is much info about him on the web. What I find strange is that the Tree owner has him dying in USA when he certainly died in the UK. I can see that he has copied some info from another incorrect enrty on Ancestry, but the biggest area of interest is that he has a little known fact that this person had a daughter when all of the biographies show this person had no children. Now I have found he had a daughter (adopted), from his Will, and I am intriqued to know how the Tree owner has found this out. I will attempt to make contact later this week when I am at the FHC.

By the way, the famous person is not yet part of MY tree. The reason I started on my Family History was the long quest to find if we are related. My Grandmother always used to say we were but it seems so far, that this might have been a flight of fancy.

Pat

[Olde Crone Holden]

Pat

Ancestry has the extremely annoying habit of defaulting to US place names if you don't specify a country.

So, if you put "born Boston" and you mean Lincolnshire, UK, Ancestry will put Boston Massachusetts, USA. It may be that is what has happened on the Ancestry tree.

I too have found information in Wills about "natural children" who are never mentioned as such anywhere else.

However, to balance that out, I have also seen trees where the owner is convinced that Betty Buggles was Joe Soap's natural daughter, because her mother married him five years after Betty's birth, and Betty gives his name as her father on her marriage cert. That ain't proof of parentage, but just you try telling someone who has decided that's the truth.

OC

[Glen in Tinsel Knickers]

I must admit my major gripe is the default to American places, a lot of my lot are Lincolnshire and it's so frustrating at times.

Becuase i don't have a sub then i can't access most of the trees anyway and have never had to wade through a tree of 60,000 but did have nose at one of around 12,000 on GR, it was a relative but pointless when it came to info. The tree owner had taken an aged aunts 35 years of painstaking research at records offices and a wealth of certs and posted it all online, the sad fact is he made some errors when inputting the details and compounded that by merging files from other sources, ask him about any name in the tree and he has to delve into his tree to see who you mean, only then he discovers he knows little about the person and can't recall whether the info he has is due to his aunt or a long forgotten GEDCOM he merged at some time.