Comments on: Find More Success with Suggested Records

By: Baker

Baker — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 20:42:01 +0000

74 Vic Mockerman
i did a simple search and wondering is this your tree?
http://trees.ancestry.com/tree/2434077/family?fpid=-1742952897

you could post or search on the Messages Boroard too

By: BEE

BEE — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 17:27:38 +0000

Vic, The easiest way to follow someone is to create a “tree” if you haven’t already done that. Put in Adam’s name, his parent’s and siblings. Then search for every document you can find forward and back for each name, being sure to actually LOOK at the document to see if that person is really the person you are looking for.
Did you do a “search” on Adam’s name? It brings up a 1910 and 1920 census, a place to send for an obituary, and “Ohio Soldiers WWI” enlistment – the name also appears in city directories. After viewing each entry, you have to determine if it’s your Adam, and add them to your tree.
According to the 1900 census, Lilly was born in 1883, and her parents were born in PA, but you know that by 1883, they had moved to Indiana.
So check out that surname on the 1880 census for a couple who were born in PA and see if you can narrow down the list of possible parents. If there were other children, then you search back and forward with all those names. Hopefully, her parents – or a sibling – were still alive in 1900 and living near Lilly – there were a number of Betchel’s who were born in PA living in Ohio on the 1900 census, so you’ll have to check out each one. Have you checked out information on other “family trees”? It looks like there might be some information there. Good luck with your search.

By: Vic Mockerman

Vic Mockerman — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 13:41:35 +0000

My Father Adam Mockerman (1896-1959)told me his Mother Lilly Bechtel Mockerman-Maugherman was born in 1873 in Indiana and had 5 children. Two died before 1900. He said his Mother was killed in a buggy accident in 1903. Born in Indiana, married in Coldwater Michigan, lived in Northwest Williams, Ohio in 1900 census.
I can find nothing except Dad was adopted by 1905.
Any information would be greatly appreciated. I’m 78 now and would like to find some answers before GOD takes me home. Thanks GOD BLESS VIC

By: Andy Hatchett

Andy Hatchett — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 11:40:53 +0000

I see no reason for the screen names should be private. If you go to the actual document you are going to see them anyway.

One thing I don’t want to see is anything I have saved to *any* of my trees.

I want to see information others have found that I may have missed, I don’t need to see what I’ve done.

By: Carol A. H.

Carol A. H. — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 04:12:40 +0000

Post script: If this is a sample of the quality of this new feature, it’s down right scarey to think what will happen if you do it for all the databases. It will be a traffic jam to rival LA on the freeways. Did I say “freeways?” I won’t get into that!

By: Carol A. H.

Carol A. H. — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 04:06:57 +0000

Michel #69 said it better than I think I can do. I was searching the 1900 census and got a “Suggested Records” box. Thirteen different items were cited….or so I thought. There were 3 that were duplicated. One of the duplications wasn’t my man. Three of the citations had been “saved by 4 people.” The others were saved by just one person….me! Four were state censuses and the rest were federal.

I would do much better if I knew who saved what. Screen names would be useful, (and private) because I know others are researching the same names. I have seen some of their trees. I have to know what the other folks are doing. I’m such a snoop, but I’m not a sheep. Just because someone does one thing doesn’t mean I will follow, but I’ll certainly take a peek. Sometimes I will make contact and ask questions, and share if I can.

Back to the drawing board, people!

By: Brian Edwards

Brian Edwards — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 02:43:11 +0000

Hi Michel,

Thanks for the suggestion on noting which ones you have already saved. We are looking at this idea and trying to decide how to implement it.

(1) We could mark it only if you saved it to the person for whom you searched (similar to the way we show it in search results.) This would only work if you searched from a tree or allowed the type ahead to fill in someone from your tree.

(2) We could put a check mark on it if you have saved it to anyone in any tree. This is broad but may get confusing for folks who have multiple trees. It would be difficult to fit into the space the tree and person name since it is a narrow column so we would probably just do a check mark on it.

I would love to hear from people which way would make more sense to them.

By: Michel

Michel — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 01:50:00 +0000

To Brian – re: this feature

I tested this feature with my grandfather’s 1900 census, and immediately recognized all of the results I got on the right-hand side. All of them were saved by ’1 person’ – me.

In the main Search, sometimes the results will have a green check mark if I’ve already saved a particular record to my tree. I really like that feature, so I don’t have to bother opening up a record just to see that I already saved it.

So the system’s ‘smart’ enough to recognize that a record’s been saved to a tree, but not quite smart enough to recognize that it’s my tree, and that I’m the very ’1 person’ it’s referring to. It would be nice to be able to click on the ’1 person’ and get a listing of who that person is / people are (by screen name). I’ve made connections with other Ancestry users, and if I can see – right up-front – that one of my connections has a record that I don’t, I’d be more apt to check that record futher.

A heartfelt ‘Thank you’ from me to you and all the other Ancestry staff members. You all work hard to make it easier for us to do research.

By: Andy Hatchett

Andy Hatchett — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 22:40:17 +0000

Maybe we should start adding comments to the images…

“WARNING!!
This image has been attached in error to:
Tree Name – Member ID.”

By: Jo

Jo — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 16:47:51 +0000

To those of you who want your work made easier by this new feature, I would just like to say user beware. Someone I’m researching has 15 of these Suggested Records which were saved to him by varying numbers of 8-25 people.

NONE of them are correct! They are going by his name and year & place of birth and nothing else. I know when & where he was born & died, who his parents were, and who his wife and children were, and where most of them are buried, so I *know* they all have the wrong person. How many people do you think will pay attention and NOT save the record to their “wrong” person?

This is going to be just as bad as the trees in very short order.