Ancestry Beginner Confusion

[canthavetoomanylights]

I have fallen down a free trial rabbit hole and am finding the whole thing fascinating and will certainly continue but I could really do with some tips.
I seem to be flitting about looking at their hints, haven’t worked out how to look back at records I’ve accepted and am tying myself in knots.
Having said that I seem to have quite easily (thanks to families staying in the same areas for generations) gone back to the 1700s.
Are there any useful guides out there? I only have a smartphone and I’m sure that’s not ideal.
Any pointers would be so welcome.
Thank you.

Be careful of their hints, they seem to come from what others have put on, and it’s not always right. I’ve seen photos from my family incorrectly labelled by others. I try to check what they hint by other means.

Be systematic.
Don't believe anything on other people's trees until you've verified it yourself.
Do your own searches from scratch wherever possible.
Check out the hints before accepting them.

There are a lot of people who collect names and are more interested in how many people they can add to their tree than the accuracy of their information.

For the last 200 years concentrate on census records and births and marriages.
Write out what you know to be true as far back as you can. Ask older relatives if they know anything. I remember my great grandmother so got quite a way back before I needed to look up records. Found her on the 1921 census which gave her parents names and worked back from there. Look for interesting names in the family as they're often easier to find. My gggrandfather had a very common set of Welsh names so was impossible to find but then I realised it would be easier to track the family using his sister, Tryphena (not many of them around).
Good luck!

Thank you for such speedy responses.
I so regret not writing down what my father used to tell me about his family; my grandmother too. Sadly now I’m the eldest and if I don’t get down some of their stores I remember they will be lost.
Do you make paper notes too? I have been so I can check things more easily but is that just my lack of IT skills?

Yes I make paper notes, I have a file for each grandparents branch.

Be systematic.
Don't believe anything on other people's trees until you've verified it yourself.
Do your own searches from scratch wherever possible.
Check out the hints before accepting them.

All of this.

I dont know how people do it on a phone. I use a laptop for a) bigger screen and b) having multiple tabs open.

Wait til there's an offer on, then do a DNA test. Use that to verify what you've done so far and as pointers for further research. Don't trust the Thrulines though for all the reasons above. You need the evidence trail to confirm the DNA relationship.

Use GRO to get digital images of birth and death certificates (cheaper, about £3 each, and faster). Marriage certificates more expensive and slower. Look at who registers deaths, can give you more info about family members.

Ditto wills where available online can give more info about family as well as finances.

Layer up your research. Eg, they're on a passenger list - Google the ship. Newspaper articles (especially 19th century) are often full of detail - mine include fines for not sending child to school, witnesses at inquests/murder trials/divorce cases, victims of theft. Youll need a separate subscription for that - I use Find My Past (which has a better search function than Ancestry and some record collections are better in one than the other).

Yes Im an addict...

Plus I download all the documents and keep them in folders on my laptop.

I also have separate trees for each pair of great-grandparents. This has pluses and minuses. The plus at the moment is that my brother has agreed to do a DNA test so I can attach that to an existing tree, whilst mine is already attached to one of the others.

I use my I Pad for my family tree on Family Search, because it’s easier to move around on the touch screen or zoom in, than on my lap top, while I have Find My Past open on my phone. Sometimes, it’s easier to find a birth, marriage or death on Find My Past ime, then I can use the exact date to find it on Family Search, to add the source to my tree. I also found newspaper articles on Find My Past can give useful background information on relatives, especially in the 19th century.

AI can sometimes give useful information, like it will say your relative owned land in their local area, if you look it up on such and such records, you can see exactly where it was. This would never have occurred to me, otherwise.

Thank you again, some really useful ideas. I can totally see how this can become an addiction, and possibly an expensive one too

It doesn’t have to be expensive - you can just use the free websites like Family Search, Wikitree, Find A Grave, etc.

Don't just limit yourself to Ancestry/FMP. These are all free to use:

Discovery | The National Archives may have wills or other documents and some are free to download.

Lives of the First World War | Lives of the First World War and Find war dead | War graves search | CWGC will reveal if any family member died in either of the world wars. CWGC includes civilian dead.

Ordnance Survey Maps - Map Images - National Library of Scotland has digitised images of Ordnance Survey maps from the mid 19th century so you can see what their home town looked like when they lived there. It's not just Scotland.

Google Street View to see if any of your ancestors' houses are still standing.

Historical Directories of England & Wales - Special Collections Descriptions of towns and villages, lists of tradesmen.

If you have an unusual combination of first names and surnames on your tree, it's worth Googling; someone may have done some research at some time. But as pp said, check out the research for yourself.

And I agree about local newspapers. Worth paying for the higher rate subscription. You can find out all sorts of things through the local papers.

It doesn’t have to be expensive - you can just use the free websites like Family Search, Wikitree, Find A Grave, etc.

But at some point, if you're into it seriously, you will need access to the censuses, and for that you have to pay.

Our libraries and archives have free subscriptions to use

so I can use British newspapers archive for free

ancestry for free

find my past for free

just need to be physically in the library or archive to get scess

many libraries do the same

@canthavetoomanylights Have one sheet of paper for each person.

Start with yourself and work backwards. So to start with, on your tree and with a sheet each, you could have (for instance) yourself, your siblings, both parents, all four grandparents. That's enough to start with. You can then fill in the blanks with aunts & uncles, their spouses and their children (your cousins). You could easily have quite a few sheets of paper in your folder in a couple of hours. Step families makes it more interesting, especially when you start to get half-siblings.

By the way, when writing down female ancestors, you need to have their record under their maiden (birth) surname. So your mum's page would have her full name on it as registered at birth. Her birth date and place of birth, the names of both parents. Then you can write down any people your mother married (plus date of marriage and where) or had children with, including yourself, on her sheet. Practice getting information on people you know, and where you actually have proof of the details.

Use the FreeBMD website to find birth, marriage and death certificates, and send away for them. Order from the official GRO (General Register Office) and nowhere else. Those certificates will have additional information on them, such as informant of death (usually a close relative), witnesses to a marriage and the names of both fathers.

You need to be very careful and use only official records such as birth, marriage and death records, the censuses and church parish registers. Also wills, military records etc.

Just because it is on the internet, it doesn't mean it's true. Never assume that someone else's research is correct. Many MANY people on Ancestry (and other sites) find someone they think is right, add them to their tree, link to other trees, pick up hints from other people's research.... they take short cuts and assume that other people's research is correct. The error is carried forward into their own tree.Do not fall into that trap!!! Do your own confirmation of every single fact before assuming that anything on anybody else's tree can be included in yours.

Finally - some family members may have skeletons in their closets and may not necessarily tell you the truth.

@YoBetty My family tree through my paternal grandmother goes back to medieval times, because she was Yorkshire gentry, who were apparently descended from French nobility. One of them was a second cousin and trusted right hand man of William the Conqueror. There is a notification on his record, that important research has been done on him and not to make any changes unless you are sure. The tree goes back directly to Charlemagne and his father Rollo?

I just leave it all alone. I don’t know where the people on Family Search got it all from? (I did study Latin literature from the fall of the Empire, through the Dark Ages, Charlemagne, up to Thomas More, so I know the clergy and aristocracy kept records but I only read pieces of it)

@LathkillDale It can be very helpful if you can link an ancestor to a line of minor royalty gentry, as they did tend to keep more accurate records over a long period to ensure that their huge wealth was kept in the family. Maybe look at Debretts or Burke's Peerage. I think most libraries should have copies of those.

There's a legend in our family that late MIL was told about one of her ancestors having such a connection to a landed gentry name, but she did a lot of research and could never find a link, and I've had no luck either.

Thank you @YoBetty and everyone else for your really helpful replies. I really do want to get more organised and a page for each sounds a really good way to start.

Quite possibly, this connection is an honest one but an illegitimate one. Old records won’t show anything other than connections via legitimate marriages. Hence it’s hard to trust anything past about 2-3 generations. There was no contraception. Enough said.

Wow! 1700s. I’ve been doing mine (albeit slowly) for 45 years and only one line has hit the late 1700s. I am very fussy in verifying every fact though! Since Ancestry has taken over my life I have been gripped into tracking down any old photos of my relatives on other people’s trees so tend to get waylaid looking up 2nd/3rd cousins.

Hints are bizarre, by all means investigate but be careful, half the time they are just about someone with the same name. To check on your previous hints, just go into the Hints option of the person in your tree and there will be new, undecided, ignored or accepted hints for you to refer back to. Apologies if someone has already said this, haven’t read all the posts.

Very difficult to navigate on a phone, not sure all your options are available. An iPad is much better.

Oh yes, and then those incorrect labels, captions and ‘records’ become AI hallucinations …

I've been doing family tree stuff for over 40yrs. I can't discard any info so it's wider than it is long. Also, supposedly descended from minor French Hugenots who fled to avoid the chop. Strands spread out across the globe from the Gold Rush in California to the diamond mines of SA - all verifiable. Then way back past King Malcolm of Scotland. Happy Hunting!! Watch out though - before long your life won't be your own

We haven't managed to go far enough back for that. We know the person who was supposed to be a 'Xxxxx' and identified her parents & grandparents. None of those surnames appear anywhere on the pedigree of the 'Xxxxx' family, nor do any of them seem to have ever lived within a hundred miles of the ancestral pile. More digging required when I get round to it.

@PersephoneParlormaid & @MyAutumnCrow Yeah, I wasn't talking about Ancestry 'Hints', I've heard they are rubbish. Especially when one of the surnames I'm researching is one of the top 20 most common surnames in the English-speaking world.😂

I meant use other people's research & trees as a starting point for clues to follow and either confirm or rule out. You never know until you check for yourself.

There were still parish baptism, marriage and burial records.

One branch of my mother’s family lived in a village for centuries. The church’s records are online - I’ve read them back to 1585. I struggle to read the records before that, because of the copper plate handwriting.

While there were children born out of wedlock in every generation, their baptisms may have been helpfully recorded as

May 1602

17th - Elizabeth, bastard daughter of Mary Smith

Most people still seem to have got married!

I have found with nobility, illegitimate sons at least were often recognised. If my family tree is true, and I don’t know if it is; one ancestor is called Xxxx, illegitimate son, First Earl of ….because he was rewarded by the king for his support.