Is anyone on Ancestry I need some help

I've come across this on some of the public trees I've viewed on Ancestry. On a couple of occasions I've been compelled to correct the person who created the tree. You can send a private message, a bit like here on Gransnet.

You can contact the tree owner via ancestry. It is private. They may or may not reply of course ! I once had someone with an old auntie I knew well married off with a couple of kids. I know she never married. Hate to say it but many of the trees on there are pretty inaccurate and you need to check everything yourself!

Open a page and look for the id of the creator of the tree. Click on the name and it will open to show a page where you can message.
Hope that makes sense?!

Yes to all the above. I'm not sure it's worth the effort. I've found mistakes in trees, ridiculously obvious mistakes. I used to DM the tree owner, but nowadays...
Never take other people's trees as accurate. Always check records for accuracy.

Oh thanks it’s just they have my Nan on their tree with a different husband and a son she never had and of course descendants
Poor nan would turn in her grave
Thanks I ll try and connect with them
I knew someone would know

Some people are happy to import information from other trees without checking - this is how mistakes are duplicated many times. This person may be pleased to receive correct information from you - but they may not!
As you go further back it really is essential to see documentary evidence. This might involve buying certificates which some people see as an unnecessary expense but you'll get a lot of additional information from them

I messaged someone about an error on her tree but although she thanked me, she did not update the details.
You can click through to the profile of the person you are working on and view the sources of information used. If there are none, I don’t import the information.

I have this problem. A great-aunt of mine appears on someone's tree in the USA as married with children.

Since my mother grew up in a household that included her aunt and the aunt died when my mother was 15. I know without a shadow of a doubt that she never went to the US, never married, nor had children.

Have you contacted them M0nica?

Someone in the USA had loads of mistakes on a family tree. She was the wife of a distant cousin but insisted she was a very experienced genealogist. She had even attached incorrect photos to trees. She said my grandmother was one of 2 but she was one of 3.

I nearly died laughing when I saw she had named an extremely famous man as my father’s Dad. I emailed her and said that was crazy because he had Italian blood and my father’s DNA had none. Also he would have been about 13 when he fathered my Dad. She grudgingly accepted she got that wrong. 🤣

There are thousands of errors! So if you get a hint, check, follow through all the sources.
It is hard to be sure you only have 100% accurate information on your own tree if you have imported Hints, so always distrust, but following up hints is the way to get information on more distant ancestors and grow your tree.
For example, through doing so I was able to be certain which of three people of the same name in the same village was my gt gt gt grandfather.

eddiecat78

Some people are happy to import information from other trees without checking - this is how mistakes are duplicated many times. This person may be pleased to receive correct information from you - but they may not!
As you go further back it really is essential to see documentary evidence. This might involve buying certificates which some people see as an unnecessary expense but you'll get a lot of additional information from them

Definitely

There's a woman in Canada who is sure she is distantly related to me. I couldn't convince her she was wrong so I just shrugged my shoulders and let her get on with it.

I'd echo everyone else's advice. Never add anything to your tree without thoroughly checking that it's correct. Definitely not if it has no source to verify it by.

Always cite your own sources, even if it's just 'family knowledge' because that is so helpful for other people who might have someone from your tree in their hints.

And don't get carried away by those flipping hints. You can end up with a massive tree full of people who have no blood relationship to you at all

Is there a way of stopping hints on certain people? Eg on the non-blood relatives

I agree with what everyone else has said. Someone has given my family a Scottish Lord with a castle and another was best pals with Charles2.
Please don't take any notice of the through lines either I have people with the same sername on both sides of my family and Ancestry have amalgamated them. I have phoned and they do nothing about it.
I find the Americans usually put all and sundry on their tree.
I was annoyed at Christmas when a photo of my grandparent's grave popped up and someone remarked that it looked unkempt. My cousin had not got there to do her pre-Christmas tidy.
Use it for your research and my tree is now such a mess I keep paper copies.
Still a fascinating hobby though.

Bluebelle I'm on Ancestry and yes, it is very frustrating to find an ancestor in someone else's tree when it is wrong, completely inaccurate with a load of misinformation attached to them just because some people are not meticulous in their research.
They find a name and think "Must be him/her" and add them to their tree, right or wrong. It then gets copied into other trees by people too lazy to research properly.

You can message them but you may find that they are insistent it is correct when you know it is not!!

My advice would be to make your tree private so people have to request to see it and can't just copy yours. Double and triple check everything and ignore other people's research or thoroughly check it.

Apart from that, enjoy, you might be very surprised what you find out!

Bluebelle if you can afford it, send for birth, marriage and death certificates which will reinforce your research.

It is much cheaper to do that through the General Register Office rather than ordering through Ancestry.

Sometimes, if you Google, you can find trees online and whole websites about families but beware. It was one of those who had my Great-great-Grandmother in an online family history but I know it wasn't her! Although I contacted him and even found the correct person for him, he refused to change it.

I find the Americans usually put all and sundry on their tree.

Apparently, according to an American site, I'm descended from Anne Boleyn 😂😂😂

Has any one used ancestry’s DNA testing
Least I think they have one

There are so many errors on Ancestry trees - people just seem not to be able to think that someone with the 'right' name in one part of the country would be marrying (in 17th and 18th century) hundreds of miles away. I have found that even if I message people, they often don't reply or make changes. On one tree, someone has my (deceased) sister having a child before she married (she didn't) - and within a short time this information was appearing on other trees. I have been researching my family history for almost 50 years and keep 'paper copies' and copies in 'word' which I am happy to share. Its much easier with on line genealogy sites and transcripts but in my view people need to 'think is this likely' to be correct

Send the owner of the family tree a message and ask for an explanation. I had someone get in touch with me through ancestry and it turned out that her granddad and my granddad were brothers. That was last September 2023 and sadly I haven’t heard much from her since.

It’s very complicated, distant families had many children and had been given their father’s first name.
Some of my close family, who live in the USA, know the real history but chose to live in their dreams.
Do you treat legal documents eg adoptions or real blood lines?
My half sister’s son was adopted by her/ my mother. Is he my half nephew or half brother and then there are his children?

Not an Ancestry one, but I once saw online a complete stranger whose alleged family tree would have made him my dad.

If you go to a member’s profile you can see when they last visited the site. If it is not recently, they are unlikely to reply or to change their tree if you contact them, Purplepixie.

I find it annoying that my father is shown as the son of his step- mother even though I have input the correct information. I can’t find a way of correcting my own tree.
Gwyllt, Ancestry do DNA, but there is no way I am going to get into that. The results are not necessarily accurate, and it releases too much information to goodness knows who.