Use Ancestor Projects to try to break your brick wall

 

When you upload your dna data to GEDmatch you may get an overwhelming amount of matches from just about every genealogy dna company.

There is a way to narrow down the pool and connect with those that may hold the key to your success in breaking your brick wall. GEDmatch has many tools to help you, and I like the Ancestor Project tool. 

Ancestor Projects is still marked as new though it has been around for a little while now, and there are many projects to choose from. There are DNA projects for countries, areas within a country, surnames, ethnic groups, etc. 

I have joined a few, one being the county in Ireland where my Seale family is from. I also joined a group for Lanakrshire, Scotland as I am stuck on my Thomson line in and around Glasgow.

Here's how it works.  Under DNA Applications click on Ancestor Projects. 

Scroll down to the projects available, looking at the name of the project and the description. When you find one that may help you click the Join button, answer the questions and give your GEDmatch number. You will hear back from the group within a day or two and then follow their instructions. 

Most of these projects are connected to a Facebook group or a website, where you can connect with your matches within that group. Others you may have to email the administrator. 

TIP: If you are trying to go waaay back you may try lowering the threshold to 5 or 6.

Notes and Comments on Ancestry

NOTES

On your tree at a person’s profile you can click Tools, View Notes, and you can write anything you want there. Only you can view the notes, and the people that you invite to be Editor on your tree. No other people can see your notes.

View Comments will give you the same box and you can choose Tags, Notes or Comments.

COMMENTS

Many of us have had this experience…

You know, with evidence, that a line on your tree is correct and you see other people have put the wrong people on their tree. I have seen trees with right guy with right wife and right children and right dates, but with wrong parents. Or right parents and wrong wife. Others have perpetuated these errors. What do you do?

This is how I handle this situation.

First I message the people and gently, politely tell them what is wrong, why I think so and ask if they could please make changes. After a while when I see the message is read, they don't reply, and no changes are made I will send another message saying if they want I can email them the evidence. Still no change? Then I take measures they may not like.

On their page I go to Tools, View Comments and there I write a comment detailing why it is wrong. Then a number shows up by the person’s name letting people know that there is a comment there. Anyone else researching that person can read the comment and know there is a discrepancy. They will see who made the comment and can then message them for clarification. 

UPDATE 2023: Ancestry made changes to the Comments feature and now tree owners can delete comments on a tree they own. Argh! 

The great thing about this… the tree manager can not delete the comment. Only the person who writes the comment can edit or delete it. The tree manager can hide the comment, but it is only hidden to them, not to others looking at their tree.

If the tree manager asks me to delete the comment I reply that I don’t want others copying the errors and I will delete the comment  once they make the appropriate changes to their tree. Or if they say nothing and I go back and the changes were made I will delete the comment and thank them.

Sometimes I write comments on a profile myself. I do this if I am not sure of something, or if there is a discrepancy in dates or names. This way anyone looking at my tree can see the comment, whereas if I wrote a note no one would know.

What would you use notes and comments for?