[Villages Kahuna]

You’ll probably be able to create a reasonably complete and accurate family tree back 3-4 generations just by the recognition of names, with very little reliance on the Ancestry hints.

As one who spent a whole lot of time during the pandemic building a tree that from my fraternal grandmother goes back to the 1400’s. That was the same with my maternal grandmother. My maternal grandfather? No luck at all going back more than four generations. The ‘family story’ was that my great-great-grandfather who born in Finland, stowed away on a ship from Norway to New York, where he got into the U.S. with forged documents and a changed name.

But to try to answer your question.

—Typically, I’ll start with the ancestry family trees created by other members. You can pretty much tell which people have been careful with their research and whose trees might be more reliable.

—Pay attention to the surnames, dates of birth and death, and locations of birth and death. In generations long past, people tended to remain very close to where they were born. Amazingly so, actually. So if those factors don’t seem to “track”, ignore the Hint

—Pay attention to the birth, marriage and death documents. As public documents, they can be more reliable Hints. Same with the Census information. There can be mistakes in the spelling of names, but the census was an official function every ten years to count and identify residents.

—Some of the Hints are copies of family histories. Read them. They can be helpful and very interesting.

—A lot of the Hints are photographs, family crests, etc. Save them if you wish. I tend to ignore and discard them.

—Maybe the most important entries to make sure make sense are the dates of birth and marriage. There was no birth control many generations ago, so families were huge by todays standards. But does the date of marriage make sense? Would a woman start bearing children at age 12? Not likely. Can a woman still be bearing children into her 50’s? Does a life span more than about 80 years make sense?

—-And like real estate, location, location, location. Generations of families seemed to live in the same communities. Make sure the Hints reflect that,unless there’s historical proof to the contrary.

Have fun! Building your family tree is a whole helluva lot more satisfying than watching CNN, Fox News, or MSNBC.