Revising your tree
 

I'm slowly putting a tree online at ancestry, building it from scratch, not uploading a GEDCOM as it's just the main lines not all Tom, Dick and Harry's in my tree.

I know my line quite well so I'm finding it very easy using the green hints to add already known details. What I am particularly enjoying though is finding new records that have been added since I last looked at some people which is adding more details to the person or family involved.

Ancestry also looks at other online trees and offers suggestions based on them. I'm quite good at hitting ignore but I did break down a brick wall by 2 generations by checking a tree that I thought was total fantasy only to discover they had relevant information. I'm not sure the rest of their tree is any good but that one piece of information was very useful to me.

I also added my 2g grandfathers marriage parish register entry and realised his missing brother was a witness. I can't locate him anywhere else but another tree has a marriage for him which I'm still trying to prove or disprove but at least now I know he didn't die in infancy as I had long suspected.

Anyway the moral to my long winded story is to go back over your tree as you may have missed something or there may be more information available now.

(You may also want a glass of wine handy to help you cope with some of the green leaf hints and others trees)

That's interesting, Toni. I've never had a tree on Ancestry but I've recently been toying with the idea of uploading a gedcom of my direct line just so the research I've done doesn't disappear when I pop my clogs.

I've just worked out how to get the info out of FH in the format I want, but building it from scratch as you're doing might be a better idea.

I did have a system of going through all the people in my tree periodically and checking for hints, searching for new records, etc but have put that on hold while I go through my DNA matches. May be some time!

The tree hints are useful, although you need patience for the rubbish ones which still turn up.

I also get FMP hints as I use Family Historian and the program synchs with FMP.

DNA matches was what prompted me to start doing this, so people could find me and hopefully work out how we were related and make contact.

It's always satisfying to look at new records made available or just with fresh eyes and add more information. Sometimes I just look at some old info and the penny drops!

I don't have a tree on Ancestry either, but quite a few of the public trees are great entertainment.

You either laugh or cry at some of the ancestry trees.

Or both at once. I've discovered that the portrait of my 3xg grandfather that I shared to a cousin's tree has turned up in some unlikely places. (Cherokee, North Carolina is pretty far from Yorkshire.) One other tree has given him an identity that is not even remotely his, and I also see that this man's father was born 9 years after the man himself. Nothing to do here but shake my head and walk away, I think.