Most wildly inappropriate Ancestry Hint

[andrewalston]

Can anybody beat this for being wildly out?

In the tree I'm currently dealing with, there's
     Martha Towers, born c1813, Preston, Lancashire, England
Hints for her, admittedly under "Other Ancestry Trees", is
     Margaret, born 1570, Bacup, Lancashire, England

Incidentally, NONE of the 10 tree hints was for a Martha; all were for Margarets!

[Finley 1]

I have noticed a 'slackening off' with Ancestry's OWN dates  being way out..   searching today for Gunns in around 16 -1700's  it keeps throwing 1800's at me.. crazy


But yes that lucky lady lived a heck of a long time --- Oh  Maggie May .. maybe    margaret Martha.. sorry shes off again.   xin in need of r and r.

[Ayashi]

DNA hints aren't much better. I've got a couple where the woman they think was our shared ancestor must have been a bigamist if she managed to marry both her husbands and another one where the name of the supposed ancestor isn't even the same on each of our trees so I don't know how they came up with it! I wish these hints came with a button to press labelled "this is baloney".

[Finley 1]

Yep --  me and the DNA pages are definitely NOT SYNCing..... fgs.


xin

[coombs]

Seems the most irrelevant results are suggested in these hints. I ignore them anyway. I think many Anc trees which are compiled by sloppy researchers are hints that they just take as gospel and add them to their tree.

[LizzieW]

As I'm going to do my Ancestry DNA this week (I've had the kit for a few weeks now), I decided to put my tree on Ancestry, but keep it private.  I keep getting these so called hints.  It's amazing how some are half right, they will have my ancestor being born in the correct place etc. but then dying in a place with the right name, but wrong country, usually USA.  It seems many of these trees are just copied, but as the person doing the copying doesn't actually know anything about the "ancestor" they are quite happy to accept the default American place.

[Pheno]

Actually, as I have said on here before, quite often it is not sloppiness but being too detailed that causes ancestors to be relocated to America on Ancestry.  I guess the algorithm for place works from left to right and being US based its default is there.  If, therefore, you put the name of a street before the name of a town in place, if there is a place in US with a name the same as the street name you have put, it will ignore the country and default to that place in the US.

Try it, by putting only a county and England that fact then locates in England and not to a place in US.

I agree that one should check once entered but, particularly when looking at the location tab of DNA, several of my English ancestors were shown as located in US simply because I had included a street name for the event.  Without that detail they whizzed right back across the Atlantic to England.

Pheno

[medpat]

I have a baby girl who died at about 6 months in the 1880s, I have her birth and death registered on her page and last week I had a census for her 20 years before her birth, her aunt, a marriage WW1 era of someone similar name resulting in  a 1939 register reference for that person with a DOB about 10 years out and a new death date.

I have had some trouble searching for people - e.g. a man with an unusual name and finding his DOB and MMN on GR knew the year of birth. Restricting to that year and exact name - no such data. 1 year adrift and not exact name there was several pages of births, on the third page I found him - full name as I had it with the year I asked for 

Ancestry seem to have altered something and it's not for the better. I have over a 1000 hints at the moment over half of those that I have dealt with over the last few days have been rubbish, many being electoral rolls for babies.

I will keep on sorting it out because there are some gems there but what a waste of time some are.

[Finley 1]

Switch em OFF -- bin the hints.. use the old fashioned research.. and when you have.. then see what the 16 trees have copied from each other..

I just found one lady Christened in 1730 -- something .. thing is she died in 1630 something. 
Maria Pycroft.. bless her.. must have come back for a dip in the font.


i hate the hints.. they get you all excited .. and they are very very rarely anything other than - people latching on to a tree that bears a similar name to the research they are doing.

I am far from perfect.. I have and do KEEP checking, I havent had a lazy day and just copied.. someone who is my 17th great aunt 12 times removed...

No seriously, it is easy to attach a hint that seems feasible  and then dispair, when you realise SO badly WRONG..

I am attempting to complete one branch and the amount of name changes.. (spelling) and county movement is crazy.. and that is with me -- Knowing the area well.. then along comes a tree collector from   deep in the Mid west of some unknown country -- havent got a clue  where Hinckley should be .. so when Ancestry says it is in Main  or something... thatll do.

ooops she is off again..

well its raining and the internet is busy busy busy and note on telly.. OH gone off to work ... so miserable .. and struggling..   with fh.   what a pleasure this hobby is.



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