What are files on ancestry.co.uk too prove you are related to a person?

Question

Hello What is member connect mean on ancestry.com? How do I look for files to prove I am related to a person?

Answer 1

The files you find in member connect are suggestions. But you still have to do the research to make sure what you're looking at is accurate. I've found too many records to count where the other member confused records between different people and merged them all into one person. You can tell them when there are babies being born in March and July or where you have 3 kids named Catherine all growing up and marrying different men.



So you find the file, then you need to do the research on sites like Geneanet (France), Genlias (Netherlands), etc to make sure that what you have is accurate. Ancestry has contacts with most of those sites and you can go back to the main search to make sure it's right. But shame on you if you don't. You'll create a file full of fiction because all you'll be doing is passing along someone else's bad research. But if you keep it as a clue and not as the truth, you'll get the hang out of how to follow it to the real source files and come out with clean files full of real people.

Answer 2

You may or may not find documentation (files) that will prove the relationship in the Pedigree charts on Ancestry. There are many who simply copy the chart and then reload it as their own, there are many, many that have no documentation other than other ancestry charts, which is no prof at all.

Ancestry is a commercial site and although it is gobbling up many of the old free sites, it doesn't have "all" the documentation. I use Ancestry only to seen what others have in a pedigree chart and then I research it for documentation. If I find prof I will include it and the documentation in what I have on my personal computer, I have stopped uploading public files to Ancestry because of the so called cousins who have copied parts of my charts and included them in they own, but have absolutely no bloodline connection and they have also included information about living people and some totally inaccurate information - like the death of someone who is very much alive.

Answer 3

You don't.

No matter how many persons have tried to explain, you still are not understanding the difference between a FILE and a document.

A document is an actual record of an event. Like a birth certificate. A file is not a document..it is someone's collection of names, and what THEY think the relationships are. Files have many mistakes, and you are making a huge mistake to assume that they are always correct.