To try and increase possible matches in my Ancestry DNA list I thought it wouldm be worth going through the "green leaves" on my linked tree. So I started a while ago (I had over 600 hints listed) and have found it a useful experience once you sort out the wheat from the chaff. Generally speaking, I have totally ignored the hints from other family trees, as there are so many errors that some of them are risible. When you get a hint for someone who possibly died in 1710, it could be useful, so I looked, and found that the tree had further children born to this woman throughout the 1710's.
The process has helped though in other ways, I have found at least a couple of dozen additional people who I have added to my off-line tree after checking them all out.I have also managed to chip away at a couple of brick walls: one was that I could never find a marriage between Edward Lawrence b 1807 Hampton and Ellen Cole b 1805 Birmingham. I discovered through a hint banns for a marriage between Ellen Cole and Edward Beaney (d 1837) and then a marriage between said Ellen Beaney and Edward Lawrence. Bingo! I still have to find his first marriage as he was also widowed when marrying Ellen. I have also discovered the will of my 3 x great grandfather on my mothers side and very informative it is too.
Has it increased the DNA matches? I'm still hoping it might, but on balance it is an excercise worth doing. Now I just need to go through the remaining 331 record hints...
We welcome any query on Who When Where. If you have previously posted it on another forum (including the old WDYTYA forum), please state this in your opening post - this will save people redoing the research which has been done before: they can look at it and possibly go further with it.
Ancestry hints, DNA matches and brick walls!
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Norfolk Nan
- Posts: 506
- Joined: 16 Jun 2020, 11:54
- Location: A Londoner lost in Norfolk
Re: Ancestry hints, DNA matches and brick walls!
Your post has reminded me that I have tons of hints sitting waiting to be considered and if I don't make an effort I might miss out! I get a bit cross at the randomness of some of the hints and some of the private trees make me want to scream but I do have one amazing find via ThruLines that I dismissed at first because the info seemed too far off base. But something nagged away and I took another look working slowly through the info and actually proved a connection that had been in doubt for a long time (a question mark over a father - was he/wasn't he? Yes he was, confirmed by this one hint. Yay!