Tip of the Week: What You Don't See

If you have used any sort of genealogy database, such as FamilySearch.org or Ancestry.com, you will know that once you type ancestor information into the search fields and choose the "search" option, you will get a list of possible matches.  On Ancestry.com it is even easier than that; once you add a person to your tree, it gives you the "leaf hints" of possible matches, without even having to go to the search process.  It is great!

These hints or lists really are fabulous.  They take hundreds of thousands of records and sort them in a blink of an eye.  Most of the time these hints are very, very useful---and I really don't want to belittle the worth of using the hints.

My tip to you is this, however, please dig deeper.  Always dig deeper.  Look through the leaf hints, look through the first page of results, but then continue on and dig deeper.  I cannot tell you how many times I have been looking for records of any type and kept going past pages 5, 6, 7 and so forth and found incredibly useful information. 

There are many reasons these records might not show up on the first page of search lists---it could be a misspelled name, a wrong birth year or just not a very popular record.  Census records tend to be one of the first records a researcher uses to find out family information.  Census records also tend to be one of the main records linked to a search.  Every time someone attaches a census record to a specific person, it is more likely to come up as a primary record the next time that person is searched by another researcher. 

Digging deeper can help you find previously unmatched records, like tax records, wills, military activities, etc.  Each time you do this, you have the potential to unlock previously unrecorded information about your ancestor.  Some records I have found by digging deeper have been Civil War service records, wills that tie two ancestors together and proving a relationship that I had suspected and passenger lists showing when an ancestor first set foot in the United States.

So again, follow the leaf hints, look through the first page of search results, but don't take the easy way out, keep digging and you will be surprised what you might find on the 9th, 10th or 100th page of results!

Tip of the Week: Overzealous "Leafing"

Each week I will post a tip on something I have learned over my years of research.

Like many people, I use Ancestry.com as my root research tool for family history research.  All of us have seen the commercials on television where the person types in a name, has dozens of hints in the form of tree leaves pop up and magically traces their roots back five generations and everyone is happy.

"It isn't that simple?" you ask.

Unfortunately, it doesn't always work this way.  And what isn't said is that those "leaf hints" are many times links to other public family trees not just historical documentation.  The problem with that is that you never know to what extent the other trees are accurate.  "Leafing" is what I like to call the act of following family trees back by using those little leaf hints without substantiating the familial links with documentation and research.

Chances are you can put a name in and track your ancestry back to someone like King Edward the Elder of the 10th Century just by "leafing".  And maybe there is someone who has done incredible research and this in fact true, but how do you know who has and who hasn't done the research?  My point is overzealous "leafing" can lead to error upon error upon error in your tree.  While you might think you are related to King Edward the Elder and be completely happy with using those hints to get you there, my recommendation is to slow down and document.

"But I followed the trees back and there were 80 matching trees.  How can they all be wrong?" 

The problem is that the further we go back in our family history, the more possible people can be related to a common ancestor.  And that means more people who have seen the magical commercial and have done "leafing" of their own.  The problems can extrapolate until you literally have hundreds of matching trees saying you are related to King Edward the Elder, but not one tree with any proof.

And as much as I hate to admit it, I was once a "leafer" too.  When I first started on Ancestry.com I connected my family back almost 2000 years by matching leaf hints with other trees.  Then I went back and started trying to document the 2000 years and was left with literally hundreds of people in my tree that I had to delete in order to get back to the point that every relationship was documented.  It would have saved me hours of research time if I had documented each connection to start with. 

My recommendation to you is, while you might consider "leafing" to get yourself going, you will be glad you didn't in the long run.  Sometimes when I suspect a connection, I will look at those little leaf hints connecting me to other public trees and see just how far back the tree can possibly go...then I prove it.

~Christine