Ancestry parentage hints

[Stewart R]

Whilst looking at my Wifes family tree on Ancestry i was drawn towards the "potential Father/Mother" hints that were consistently appearing. So purely out of curiosity i followed them through the numerous generations. The hints actually looked to terminate eventually at a "William Wilkinson Sheriff of London 1500-1539". Naturally curious i continued a search via Google and managed to trace this gentleman to a Sir William Wilkinson, Duke of York, who's Mother was Lady Mary Plantagenet, Duchess of York,......sister of "King Richard lll" !!!

I'm pretty sure many people may also have blindly followed these links, so before getting too over excited, i need to ask the question as to how reliable the Parentage hints are on Ancestry.

Any thoughts?

Regards

Stewart

[Davedrave]

Whilst looking at my Wifes family tree on Ancestry i was drawn towards the "potential Father/Mother" hints that were consistently appearing. So purely out of curiosity i followed them through the numerous generations. The hints actually looked to terminate eventually at a "William Wilkinson Sheriff of London 1500-1539". Naturally curious i continued a search via Google and managed to trace this gentleman to a Sir William Wilkinson, Duke of York, who's Mother was Lady Mary Plantagenet, Duchess of York,......sister of "King Richard lll" !!!

I'm pretty sure many people may also have blindly followed these links, so before getting too over excited, i need to ask the question as to how reliable the Parentage hints are on Ancestry.

Any thoughts?

Regards

Stewart

If that stuff is reliable then Genkhis Khan was my grandmother.

[Biggles50]

Whilst looking at my Wifes family tree on Ancestry i was drawn towards the "potential Father/Mother" hints that were consistently appearing. So purely out of curiosity i followed them through the numerous generations. The hints actually looked to terminate eventually at a "William Wilkinson Sheriff of London 1500-1539". Naturally curious i continued a search via Google and managed to trace this gentleman to a Sir William Wilkinson, Duke of York, who's Mother was Lady Mary Plantagenet, Duchess of York,......sister of "King Richard lll" !!!

I'm pretty sure many people may also have blindly followed these links, so before getting too over excited, i need to ask the question as to how reliable the Parentage hints are on Ancestry.

Any thoughts?

Regards

Stewart

If that stuff is reliable then Genkhis Khan was my grandmother.

I have him down as my Great Aunt.

Whereas on my Wife’s tree he is her son (by a prior liaison I hasten to add).

[Annie65115]

Not very reliable at all.

Only yesterday I deleted some hints that suggested Joe Bloggs, who died in 1810 aged 70+, was the father of someone born in the 1840s ---

multiply that by a generation or two and I am the direct line descendant of Dick Whittington's cat --

[Biggles50]

Where there is doubt about a person I put a custom Fact with the same birth date stating POSSIBLE and then place an image of a Question Mark as the Profile Image.

Then when viewing the tree or the person the ? image stands out

[Stewart R]

Thank you for the replies & to be honest I’m not really surprised by the answers as I had suspected that it was all a bit too easy. Good old fashioned research is more satisfying anyway.
Not a bad idea of yours Biggles

Regards

Stewart

[Andrew Tarr]

Never mind these dubious Ancestry 'hints', there are other more obvious failings in their system, one being the ease with which UK place-names get relinked to parallel ones in America.  Or another example: in the 1939 register a person in High Wycombe (Bucks, aka Chipping Wycombe) becomes connected to Chipping, a village in Lancs.  How can any serious user take such things at face value ?