Never Finished Pt 2

A comment was made on me previous post about sourcing. I totally agree that if I only count well-documented ancestors, then my % decreases drastically. I recently discovered the ability of the Fan Chart on the Family Search tree to display status of sourcing.

When I view my tree in regards to sourcing, it becomes obvious I have lots more work to do!

This is a little deceptive thru my great-great grandparents, since I haven’t uploaded a lot of my sources. However, it is an accurate depiction for my ancestors further back!

 

Never Finished

Last May, we started a home improvement project to replace broken and damaged concrete. Since the concrete was under our screened-in-porch, the project included tearing down our the screened-in-porch and replacing it with a room addition. The project quickly expanded to include new siding and windows. In July, I jokingly commented to our contractor that I just wanted to be done by Christmas.

Well, the tree is up, and we aren’t finished yet. Unfortunately, they ran out of siding. We are on the list for new guttering, but the weather is affecting that contractor’s ability to work. Thus, our remodel project is still a work in progress — a lot like my genealogy projects.

Today, someone tweeted Crista Cowan’s 2012 blog post, Family History All Done? What’s Your Number? Curious, I decided to ‘calculate’ my number.

Now, when people question why I’m not finished, I can honestly say:

I’ve only discovered 39% of my ancestors back 10 generations!

What’s Your Number?

Jackpot

About a month ago, I ran across another Thompson tree on Ancestry.com that had an article from the Belleville newspaper attached to Ulysses Grant Thompson.

Curious as to what was in the newspaper, I decided to do a search for Grant Thompson in the Belleville, Kansas newspapers on Newspapers.com.

Instead of backing up a step and doing a more focused search, I opened many of the articles in new tabs. Thus, I had a browser open with who knows how many tabs.

I not only found an obituary for Ulysses Grant Thompson, but also for his wives.

In addition, I found news items related  Grant Thompson’s siblings and his children.

This newspaper search took quite a few hours (days) to complete. However, the information contained in all of these articles was genealogy GOLD.

I hit the JACKPOT!

Bearded – Not!

 

A recent #52Ancestors prompt was bearded. In thinking about that prompt, my first thought was I don’t have anyone to right about since the majority of pictures I have are of men without beards. So instead of writing about someone who was bearded, I’m going to show my unbearded family tree.

My Family Tree

Parents

Eugene David Crawford and Roberta Adell Briles

Grandparents

Leon Russel Crawford (1894-1976) and Winnie Letha Currey (1903-1992)

Edward Osmond Briles (1891-1956) and Pauline Edith Mentzer (1896-1984)

Great Grand Parents

Judson Foster Crawford (1894-1949) and Josie Winifred Hammond (1874-1954)

Hiram Miles Currey (1866-1943) and Winnie Mae Hutchinson (1871-1913)

Edward Grant Briles (1869-1951) and Frances Artlissa ‘Artie’ Ricketts (1868-1947)

Charles Oliver Mentzer  (1869-1955) and Nettie Addell Wells (1873-1939)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Issues Searching Trees

Do you wish that everyone who took a DNA test had a tree attached going back to at least their grandparents? Do you ever search public member trees hoping to find a cousin with the family Bible or family photographs? I have a lot of family photographs, documents and even a Bible that I want to share with family members. I have a public member tree and I want others to be able to find my tree.

As I discovered yesterday, the vast majority of my tree may now be found. However, there are parts of my tree that still aren’t indexed. Randy Seaver reminded me of this possibility in his reply to my comment on his blog, Has Ancestry.com Indexed Ancestry Member Trees Yet. It appears that the entire tree isn’t indexed. Instead only individuals with Ancestry.com sources are indexed.

In order to verify this, I had to go to a section of my tree where I had not worked the Ancestry hints. I selected the John Minnick family to test this theory. My Heartland Genealogy tree contains Ancestry sources for John Minnick.

When I did a search of public member trees for John Minnick with a death date of 1903, my Heartland Genealogy tree appeared in the results.

I then looked at one of John Minnick’s children, Wilson Minnick. Even though I have sources attached to Wilson Minnick, they are all OTHER sources and not Ancestry sources.

I then tried a search for Willson Minnick with a death date of 1914. My tree did not appear in the list of results. This supports Randy Searver’s finding, ‘an individual must have an Ancestry.com source attached to be indexed‘. (Until a person is indexed, the tree they are in won’t appear in the results of a search for them in a public member tree.)

Having found some issues with searching public member trees, I wanted to see if I could use a different search to find the trees containing my CRAWFORD family. Thus, I tried a search for my grandfather, Leon Crawford who died in Dodge City, Kansas.

This search returned a total of 3 trees, including my Heartland Genealogy tree. Even though the other 2 trees contain my CRAWFORD family, they are not close cousins. The trees for my close cousins are not listed in these search results.

I then searched for Leon’s father, Judson Crawford who also died in Dodge City, Kansas.

Again, three trees are listed including my tree, Heartland Genealogy. Missing from these search results are the other two trees that appeared in the search results for Leon Crawford: McNeil Family Tree and McCutcheon Murray Family Tree. Thus, the question, why does a search for the son show different trees than a search for the father.  When I looked at Leon Crawford in the Wells Family Tree and Michael Borck’s Family Tree, they both had Ancestry sources attached to Leon.

Thus, the question, why did the Wells and Brock trees show in a search for the father, but not in a search for the son?

Even though most of my tree can now be found in a search of Ancestry’s Public Member Trees, I believe the inconsistencies in the search results hamper my ability to connect with other’s researching the same lines.

 

Finally Indexed! But ?

Due to my husband’s fight with pneumonia, I have been away from genealogy for a couple of weeks. This evening, I decided to see if my tree would show up in a search of public member trees. (See Ancestry Indexing Update from Aug 2018)

To my surprise, my tree, Heartland Genealogy, appeared in the results.

Since I’ve been waiting over a year for my tree to be indexed and thus show up in a search of public member trees, I should be celebrating. Unfortunately, I’m not sure the search mechanism is working correctly. For the past year, I have been using this same search (for Judson Foster Crawford EXACT all fields) and getting 24 results. Thus, I believe there are at least 25 public member trees with Judson Foster Crawford in them. Thus when the same search provided me with 104 results, I was very excited – until I scrolled down a bit and realized that the EXACT part of the search did not work.

Even though the search produced 104 trees, it did NOT find all of the 24 trees that had been showing up in my search results for the past year. Thus, I tried another search to try and find these 24 trees: Judson Crawford with a death year of 1949 (EXACT). This time, the report indicated 1 result but showed 3 trees (including my tree).

One of the 24 trees that isn’t showing up in the results list is the tree maintained by my dad’s first cousin. I found that tree and verified that it contained Judson Foster Crawford with a death date of 1949.

So, Ancestry, thank you for indexing my tree.

BUT, could you fix the issues with searches pulling trees that don’t match as well as not pulling trees that do match the search criteria.