Ancestry Hacks: Ancestry Hints by Specific Record Collection

I make research plans and I carry them out...for awhile. I tend to get restless and bored doing the same thing day after day.  I like to switch up how I'm attacking my research, and I generally like to keep working on all branches of my tree (backward and forward) at the same time. Some days, I work on a specific person until I'm done with all the green leaves and suggested hints. Sometimes, when I'm pressed for time, it's working through a few photo hints or other user trees. When I have good mental energy, it's attaching census records or obits (though they tend to take longer). And some days (like today) I choose to concentrate on a specific record collection. When I'm "in the zone" on a specific set of records, I feel like I can fly through hints (while still making sure each is correct and documented). 

One of the best "secret genealogy hacks" (ok, maybe not super secret) I've come across is Mining Ancestry.com Hints by Specific Record Collection - Updated by Randy Seaver on Genea-Musings. This tip has been around years, and it still works! It's a trick I use quite frequently. He outlines how to search a specific record collection on Ancestry.com to find the people in your tree who currently show hints available in the specified database. This is done by using your Ancestry member tree number (treenumb) and the database number (dbas) in a carefully crafted URL. I won't go in to the specifics. Randy does a brilliant job of explaining the steps and I encourage you to read his post. It's a very simple trick to use. I want to tell you some of the reasons why I like it searching this way.

Have you ever wished, for instance, you could find all the yearbook hints? Those are fairly quick and easy to attach. Working thru quite a few in a single sitting is liberating (though still requires diligence to be sure you have the right person). Or Social Security Claims and Applications? Often a way to verify the child for a set of parents, along with the birth date, birth location, death date, social security number - and for females, potential other husbands surnames (from the notes). With a confirmed Social Security Number it makes working with SSDI records a breeze (cause you can easily confirm the SSN matches) and you often get the added state where the number was issued (and when) as well as the last residence/benefit address. Social Security records are some of my favorite record sets to work with when I want to make a small dent in my ever growing list of hints! Or all the FindAGrave entries or draft cards or....ok, ok, you get the idea. You can search for any database you want, so long as you know the number.

Any record set can be extra useful when narrowed down. Are you working on a specific branch of your family and want to see all the census records for a specific year? Perhaps you want to see who lives near who...or who moved away since the last census. Once you've narrowed to the specific database of interest, you can further narrow your search by first name, last name, or most recent hints (just like you can from the main list of all hints). This is a great way to focus in on specific parts of the family within a given dataset. Even public records, with the numerous addresses, when narrowed down, can help you figure out if the various people are all falling into the right place (pun absolutely intended). This isn't a magic solution to find elusive hints. Everything this search returns is already shown somewhere in your "all hints" listing. It just makes it easier to find the hints by filtering out the noise and letting you focus on a specific database for a period of time.

Randy provides a really good list of various database numbers to start you off. As I work, when I encounter a new database I'm running across frequently, I'll add the database number to my running list so I can go back and use it whenever I want. This "trick" has been around since at least 2013, and with a few tweaks to the original method over the years, it still works extremely well. It's definitely something you want to have in your genealogy toolbox. If you've never tried searching using this particular method, give it a go and see how you like it. Personally, I'm as excited about it now as I was when I first discovered it. Connect with me on social media (or leave a comment) and let me know how it works for you.

Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay

Ancestors At Rest: Potentially Some Unique Documents

Certainly, when you're looking to place those DNA matches in your tree, you're most likely working with the challenge of placing living people. But to find where those people fit, you have to look at those who came before. As uncomfortable as the idea of death is for many, much of our research focuses on people who have passed away. Ancestors At Rest is a site dedicated to records and information about deaths.

The site contains links to all kinds of various resources, from the expected death and cemetery records, to unique resources on items like coffin plates. Many of the resources are organized by state (but the list and areas are far from all-inclusive). They also have articles and tutorials on tombstone inscriptions, causes of death, funeral customs and more! According to the site, there are some databases not found elsewhere...but they don't actually detail the specifics on these databases. But some items are clearly not on other sites....items collected and scanned (presumably) personally by the site owner.

I was particularly interested to check out the ledger books, journals and diaries. It appeared to be a pet project the site owner was working on to scan and provide free PDFs of these original sources he had collected. I wasn't sure of the contents of these sources, and unfortunately, I still don't know. The link doesn't actually take me to any PDFs. I'd like to think it's still a project in process, but the site hasn't posted any updates.

Interestingly though, when I Googled "Ancestors At Rest", in addition to bringing up the current site, there was also a link to an older version (through 2017) when it was a Blogspot blog. The blog has a brief bio of Brian, the site creator. More interesting, some of the ledger book links on the blog DO work and take you to documents on the current site. If you're willing to do a little work to get to them, it's possible you might find some interesting tidbits! I noticed there was one ledger from Bucks County, Pennsylvania where my paternal line is from. A quick look shows it would take some time and determination to read the documents, but it's possible they may be worth the effort at some point. I actually prefer the old blog to the new site. 

Ancestors At Rest has been around since 2004, and somehow seems to be tied to Olive Tree Genealogy. Clicking on the privacy policy of the site takes you to the privacy policy for Olive Tree Genealogy. However, the sites don't actually appear to be run by the same person. Many of the links simply drive you from one site to the other. There's no information on when the site was last updated, but in and of itself, this isn't really important. Our ancestors died long ago, and if any site happens to have information on them, the details won't change with the passage of time.

By no means is this a "one stop shop" for everything death record related - far from it! But, if you're curious to learn more about our ancestors funeral customs you may find some of the articles interesting. And if you have an elusive ancestor (and who doesn't?!) it could be worth a quick peek to see if anything turns up. Sadly, I didn't find anything on the ancestor who launched my genealogy journey, but I'll keep looking whenever I find a site with potentially new information!

Image by Michael Kauer from Pixabay