Genealogia Illuminatus

By Geoffrey Slinker, Ancestry Employee The postings on this site are my own and do not reflect the views or opinions of Ancestry. Searching for Records in User Contributed Trees User Contributed Trees are also known as Public/Private Member Trees or Family Trees. These are the trees that Ancestry users build. Users may or may not be correct in the data they enter. Finding records to support a birth date or some other event is important. To search the "public" member trees go here https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1030/ . I would like to find some records for Abraham J Lincoln. https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1030/?name=Abraham_Lincoln&birth=1873&death=1890&count=50&father=Robert+Todd_Lincoln&mother=Mary+Eunice_Harlan&treePerson=28812485_12099156925 Consider the first result. Click the link "4457 trees" or the link "View all", either will go to the same place. Notice the

What  makes a "Good Search" on Ancestry? by Geoffrey Slinker, Ancestry Employee The postings on this site are my own and do not reflect the views or opinions of Ancestry. The audience of this post is those that are new to searching, inexperienced, and those just learning.  If you have tried to find something and you didn't find what you are looking for have you considered: Do you know what you are looking for? Information of someone that is completely unknown, such as, I have no information about my great grandfather and I would like to find out his name. Information about someone that you know something about, such as, I know my great grandfather's name, but I don't know when he was born. Do you know where you are looking? What does this mean? Do you understand that when you are searching "Historical Records" you are looking for a "piece of paper" that has information on it matching your search? Are you searching for your

Historical Places - Cities that Change Name by Geoffrey Slinker, Ancestry Employee The postings on this site are my own and do not reflect the views or opinions of Ancestry. Locations change name over time. A city's name can change. A city's state can change. It is important to know this when searching for data on Ancestry.com. Renamed Places For example: North Carolina Hamburgh changed to Glenville. 1827 Hamburgh (later Hamburg) 1891 Glenville Hamburgh -vs- Glenville Let's try to find this record. If you were to type in the place of death, "Hamburgh, North Carolina", and you do not choose from the drop down "place picker", that is you type in the value and click outside of the typing area you would probably expect the search to find the record. However, there are no results. https://www.ancestry.com/search/?name=Hoty_Bowman&death=1916_Hamburgh-North+Carolina&count=50&death_x=0-0-0_1-0&name_x=s_

By Geoffrey Slinker, Ancestry Employee The postings on this site are my own and do not reflect the views or opinions of Ancestry. Disclosure The purpose of this post is to give insights on how I use the new searching experience for member tree data, how I construct searches, and how I interpret the results. Maybe my explanations will help you find what you are looking for. Searching Public Member Trees https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/pubmembertrees/ Ancestry recently changed public / private member tree searching. Be aware that you can only search for non-living persons. So, searching for yourself isn't expected to give results, and the same is true for any living relative or person. Person Centric Searching Even though the search is called "Public Member Trees" you are not searching for a tree. A member tree search would have fields for searching by a member's name or by a member's tree name. https://www.ancestry.com/search/collect