Week 25: Fast (52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks – 2023 Version)

The theme for Week 25 is "Fast." I feel the need... the need for speed! (Yeah, the coffee has kicked in.) This theme might make you think of cars or horses, but it could also be an ancestor who didn't take long to find. Don't forget about names like Quick and Race! Have fun with this theme! Click here to check out all of the themes for 2023.

When I think of Genealogy, Fast is not the first thing that comes to mind. Many years ago, an acquaintance made the following statement “I don’t know why you say Genealogy takes so long, last weekend I went to do my family history and I traced it back to the 1700s. I just went online and found my tree.” My response to her was “How do you know it’s correct? Did you verify everything? Other people’s trees can have errors in them? Are you sure it was really your family?”. She gave me a blank puzzled look. You know the deer in the headlights look. 

Anyway, Genealogy isn’t fast. You might get lucky and find lots of information on a person you are looking for. You know those “green leaves” from Ancestry. Those hints. I had to remind a genealogy friend, a beginner that those Ancestry green leaves are just hints. They have not been verified; they just match your search criteria. A look of horror came over her face as she said, “I just have been accepting all those hints because I thought they were for my person.”

I have also reminded people that Ancestry trees have not been verified by Ancestry or by any employee of Ancestry. That those trees are only as reliable as the person who is doing the research. I stated that I could put anything in my tree, a TV family, a made-up family, just random records that I attach to people in my tree. I am amazed by how many people never stopped to think about this. 

I have gotten some things “Fast” in genealogy. For example, an obituary can provide lots of details about a person, their parents, their spouse, their children, their siblings and in-laws, their grandchildren, and so on. Now usually in an obituary, it just a matter of gathering names and perhaps places where the survivors are currently living or who preceded the person in death. However, with that information, I can usually find more records to expand on the names, birth dates, marriage dates, death dates. But is it fast? Not really, researching the people from an obituary can take me anywhere from an hour to several days. 

Have you followed a line through Find A Grave, you know the links to the parents, siblings, children, and so forth. Keep in mind, that those links are only suggestions from other people. Also, those people who create memorials from obituaries of strangers might even have them listed in the wrong cemetery. This happened when my brother died, someone created a Memorial and placed him in the wrong cemetery. A cemetery by the same name, located near the proper cemetery, but still the wrong cemetery. Plus, obituaries might have wrong information because in my mom’s obituary it listed this same brother as Tom when his name was Tim. A typo can really change everything. Even if there is a picture of the stone, the stone could be wrong. My paternal grandfather has the wrong year of birth on his stone. How do I know, because I did research and found out that he was born in 1899 and not 1900. He was born in Aug of 1899 and appears on a census record for April of 1900. His World War I draft card has Aug 1899 written on it. Thus, I know the 1900 date on his gravestone isn't correct.

So basically, I am saying Genealogy isn’t Fast, we might find an ancestor or relative fast, but seriously, was it fast? How long have you been doing genealogy? I might finally get the names of the next generation on a marriage record, but I might have been trying to figure out where and when they really got married to find that record. I have added 100 people to my tree in one day and on other days, only a handful. 

Seriously, if Genealogy was Fast, won’t everyone be doing it. I enjoy that it isn’t fast. That it is a big puzzle that I must take my time to make sure every piece fits. It not a race for me or to force the pieces to fit.

Remember to have fun and Just do Genealogy!

June’s Theme and Week 23: So Many Descendants (52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks – 2023 Version)

The theme for Week 23 is "So Many Descendants." Sometimes when we're researching, we'll come across a set of ancestors who seem to have a gazillion descendants. Who is that in your family tree? Click here to check out all of the themes for 2023.

What I love the best about the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, is the fact it makes me look at my family tree with a new set of eyes. 

I decided to look at my DNA matches and which ancestor(s) seem to have the most descendants who have tested. I decided to look at AncestryDNA and use ThruLines. Now with my disclaimer: You get ThruLines when ancestors from your tree are also in a match’s tree. However, Ancestry will look at other peoples’ trees and build out your matches tree to find common ancestors. Therefore, your match must have a tree attached to their DNA results. Then common ancestors need to match, you might not get a match because they have a different birth, death, or marriage date for an ancestor. Perhaps you use the birth name of an ancestor and your DNA match uses a nickname. Thus, ThruLines are just hints, and I have found lots correct and a few incorrect things. However, the better your tree is built out, the better the ThruLines matches become.

I have a couple, my 4th great-grandparents through my maternal grandmother’s line, Lorentz Hilts (1782-1850) and Margaretha Wartenbach (1785-1850) which have 60 DNA matches. The Hilts/Hiltz line is quite huge. The immigrant ancestor, my 7th great-grandparents Christofel HÜLS and Eva Catherine Engel came to America in 1710. They have at least 10 children. They were the second group of Germans that England invited to populate the new World. However, the lineage between Lorentz and Christofel is not totally proven. It was given to me by a relative, however, I can’t absolutely prove each generation. At least to my satisfaction. 

ThruLines shows 6 descendants for the couple, I only have four of the 6 children. My ancestor has 20 matches, the next child has one that I need to evaluate, the third child has 17, the fourth has 15, the fifth has 5 and the last child has one that I need to evaluate. This branch of the family has a lot of descendants and with repeat names, children sometimes get attached to the wrong parents. This is why I need to evaluate James and Elizabeth. Also, even though it states that Susan needs to be evaluated, I already have Susan in my tree, so perhaps there is more to evaluate. 

I have a custom fact in my Family Tree Maker program for tracking my DNA matches. I noticed I only have 8 DNA matches documented. These are people that I can prove their line down from Lorentz and Margaretha. Therefore, I see another project in my future on verifying the DNA matches for this line. 

I decided to see how many descendants I have for Christofel and his wife Eva and when I export that branch of the family, I get 5362 people. This does include spouses of the descendants, still this is quite a large branch of the family.

If I check how big the export file would be if I choose Lorentz and Margaretha, I get 891 people. This is quite a drop of people. It just shows how quickly a family expands with each generation back we take our trees. 

Thus, if the set of your ancestors seem to have a gazillion descendants, is it because they are your 7th great-grandparents or more? 

Remember to have fun and Just do Genealogy!