Red Flag: Ancestry and Dryden surname

Question

I still have my Ancestry account.  A lot of clean up work to do.  However, something came up today which concerns me as a Dryden family member.

All of a sudden I started to receive hints for Sir John Dryden, the poet, that are being associated with the Drydens of Virginia, (descendants of  William Dredden of Scotland.)  For you Dryden family members whose ancestors were from Maryland, Virginia and other parts of the US, there is no connection between the two families.  Sir John Dryden is not a member of the Drydens who came to MD and VA in the late 1600's.  Unless, there is new information I am unaware of and then I have a red face.

I sent a note to Ancestry but I am afraid their computer will continue to spit out these hints.  I am sure this has happened to a great number of name mix ups.  Such a shame...and what a mess.

Lynne McCurdy Robinson

McCurdy-1063

Comments

And so it goes on.  Unfortunately there's nothing to stop the situation getting steadily worse over time.

Answer 1

A hint on Ancestry is just a hint, nothing more. It is up to each individual researcher to assess the quality of the hint and whether to apply the information to a tree. If it is not applicable, then hit ignore and move on.

Comments

Deb, Thanks for the best answer star.

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Unfortunately, Ancestry gives hints for autosomal connections far further back than is possible to use with any reliability.  I have personally seen it cause disagreements over ancestry here at WT.  Ancestry does this because it sells kits and in my opinion it is dishonest.  I have never found Ancestry's hints very useful at all.

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My view is exactly the opposite of yours on that point SJ. I think their cut-off at 20 cM for showing Shared Ancestor Hints is too high. It is irritating to have to ask for viewing access to kits to have compare matches beyond that level.

Answer 2

Good luck trying to get anything that is suspect removed from Ancestry.

Best you can do is set the record straight here, source it, explain the sources, and maybe put a note at the top of the profile(s) explaining the issue.

The bad files, once they are on Ancestry, will never come off, and will be copied again and again and will appear here as Gedcom "histories" in a few years.  You'll never hold back the water at Ancestry, best course of action is to move to higher ground.