New in Ancestry Trees – Potential Ancestors
I’ve been seeing references to this new feature on Ancestry Trees in online social media groups to which I belong. I kept checking my account and couldn’t seem to find what they were accessing.
Until this past weekend.
I finally saw it show up in both my public and private trees. This is what it looks like when you are looking at your pedigree view.
Ancestry Trees – Pedigree View
In this example, Ancestry is suggesting a possible mother for my four times great grandfather, Johann Adam Greulich (18 Feb 1751-21 Feb 1808). I had already located this information through FamilySearch—they’ve extracted vital records from some German church books, but I hadn’t entered the information in my private tree on Ancestry.
According to the information I found on FamilySearch, Johann Adam’s parents were Hans Adam (aka Johann Adam) Greulich (1721-1797) and Anna Elisabetha Gerich (1728-1758). What did Ancestry find?
Potential mother for Johann Adam Greulich (1751-1808)
It’s a match!
The question I now have is from where did Ancestry get this information? Their records? Family trees? A partnering website? That information is not provided. No source citation is added if you claim that potential ancestor as your own. In this case, they may have even pulled this information from my public tree. The locations are exactly as I entered them, not Ancestry’s suggested location.
According to posts online, these potentials should also show up in the profile view of an individual in your tree. So far, I haven’t seen that.
What do I think of this feature?
I think it’s pretty cool. If it’s accurate. As with any information you find, you need to be able to assess it and verify it. Without context, without knowing where the information comes from, you can do neither. I’ve already seen some that I can dismiss just by date and location alone.
I’m going to consider these potential ancestors—as I do a lot of what I find—a research suggestion. This means I’ll add the individual(s) to my research to-do list for further digging. Once I’ve verified that it’s correct, I can analyze the source and the information within the context of what else I know about the family, comparing it to other information I may find. Hopefully, this will be enough to determine whether or not the relationship—as displayed—is accurate.
I hope that these potentials turn out to be correct. I like adding ancestors to my pedigree chart. I like fitting the pieces together and making connections between families and places in far-off countries.
Ultimately, however, it’s just a start. Names, dates, locations alone are not all that interesting in the long run. There’s so much more to learn.
Cite This Page:
Kris Hocker, "New in Ancestry Trees – Potential Ancestors," A Pennsylvania Dutch Genealogy, the genealogy & family research site of Kris Hocker, modified 19 Jun 2018 (https://www.krishocker.com/new-in-ancestry-trees-potential-ancestors/ : accessed 26 Apr 2024).
Content copyright © 2018 Kris Hocker. Please do not copy without prior permission, attribution, and link back to this page.
2 Replies to “New in Ancestry Trees – Potential Ancestors”
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The mobile app has been sharing these hints for a while. The phrasing on the app hint is “Another user has a tree with a father for (name)” and then the rest. The “review” option brings up the tree of that other person so I should be able to find out which tree has it. I’m leery of accepting these hints though. The app makes it sound like we are merging trees.
I found your post via Randy Seaver’s Genea-Musings. I noticed this a couple of days ago – a known 4th cousin of my husband has their common third great-grandmother’s name as “unknown” which appeared as a Potential Ancestor in my tree. This is a Jewish woman who lived and died in Galicia (now Ukraine) in the early 19th century. I don’t know if we’ll ever determine her name. Not helpful if Ancestry is just sending you to someone else’s tree. I agree with you – use this ONLY as a clue, not as the truth!