Genealogy Chat

I've just trawled through the first three of eight pages of hot tips (that's about 160!) and not a single one has matched on place of birth. Is it really worth the hassle?

Depends. I discard all single matches without looking but another member with more patience asked if an ancestor, who she had,born Hull could be the same as mine,born Sunderland.
Now that seemed a silly question but actually she did not know where the ancestor was born.
BINGO!!! my g/gran,previously a brickwall.

I've switched my hot matches off, they are a waste of time in my opinion. I never even reached 'H' where my main surnames are, I only ever received A's and B's!

Sam x

I have a system...

For a one name match

If it not only matches for name and year of birth but also matches for place of birth-
I will 'keep' it to follow up when time allows. This will mean spending time searching Name Matches to see if the sender has a wife, parents or siblings listed that haven't yet appeared as a Hot Match.

No place of birth-
Then I send it to the bin!

I have had success with Hot Matches in the past but less so now as my tree on here is only my direct line ancestors, Grandparents, GGrandparents ect (no siblings or additional children). Having said that I have recently added 1st, 2nd wives, husbands and it is from them the most recent Hot Matches have been generated.

Chris

I've had mixed results with hot matches but I have found a third cousin I didn't know existed and another hot match gave me siome info I'd been trying to find for ages. I think it's a case of swings and roundabouts although I do agree it's really frustrating when none of the places of birth match.
Barbara

I've had a reasonable amount of success with hot matches and the way i see it, even one successful match that breaks down a brick wall is worth it.
The problem is too many people expect them to match the PoB as well as the DoB. In practical terms that wont happen. Generally computers are stupid. If you or I look at the following list of PoBs for an ancestor born in Portsmouth (as an example), you and I will see them as the same place, whereas the computer will see them as different because it just matches a string of characters:
Portsmouth; Portsmouth, Hampshire; Portsmouth, Hants; Portsmth; Pompey; etc, etc,etc.
The list is endless and that's before you bring in typos.

The only way to make it work is to force you to select the PoB from a list. Problem with that is that any list that includes EVERY place in the UK will be too-o-o long to be practical. So they will reduce that to just big towns and cities. Personally I'd rather be able to specify a village outside somewhere large, especially when (in the case of common names) there may be hundreds in the big city!!

Rob

I tend to agree with Chris if no POB it goes in the bin.
I have had success with hot matches, unfortunatley they tend to be all the same lines,I don't tend to initiate a response to these, however, I will share info if anyone requires it.
It's the brickwalls I need to hear from but never do, it's so frustrating!

Sometimes a person thinks they know where an ancestor was born but they can have it wrong. One relative (plus others who got the 'info' from him) had our gt grandmother b in Bethnal Green, when in fact she was b in Wotton under Edge in Glos. I was able to send a copy of her b cert to prove it.

My mother thought her other grandmother was b in London when she was actually b in Essex. The family moved to London when she was a small child, so the grandmother probably thought, herself, that she was b in London since she grew up there. Once again, it was only when I got the b cert that I was able to prove from the correct parents that she was b in Rochford in Essex.

I have found a lot of my 3rd cousins through hot matches, even some 6th cousins! And relatives for my OH as well.

I love finding relatives, even if they are as remote as 6th cousins.

Huia (in NZ)

I have been very lucky with hot matches.When I first joined about 3 years ago,I had some right away,and got 23 photos sent to me from a 2nd cousin.
I was so pleased,as our great grandmother and grandfather's photos were there,and they were ones that my mother had in a locket that was stolen with some other jewellery from her dressing table a few years ago.
I could identify most of these pictures for my 2nd cousin,as he hadn't a clue who they were.

I have had other matches that have proved to be correct,and although I hadn't had any for a long time,2 weeks ago,a branch of the family that had been puzzling me,came up with a match!!!
It has made the day of some of the cousins I have always known,as I printed off the info and sent it,and they have located the actual street,and walked down it.

Although it can be a chore trawling through hot matches,I think it is no worse than trawling through parish registers etc......and is now much easier to delete than it was,when it threw you back to the first page!

My motto is...NEVER give up.

Brenda x x

Hi gang,
regarding POB matches, Would it not be possible to have the search engine weed out the ones that are not in the same country, at least ? When you get a match from England and Australia, it is taking the mickey...... :-)

Good Hunting,

Ivor Cogdell

Yes, Ivor, that sort of 'match' is really nonsensical, and there must be some way a computer could differentiate between countries. Computers can do so many wonderful things. But I just delete those ones anyway.

One hot match allowed me to find a long lost aunty who I never knew I had and put her in touch with my aunty reuniting them after being separated 60 years ago.

Sometimes the little clues work.

I have always looked at my hot matches and send out messages to likely matches

I have sent four out this time and received one reply. It is the norm when I contact People on here that they don't reply, some graciously do and I do every time.

I am not renewing at the end of the month Genes Reunited care more about quantity than quality.

Regards
Jill

They are certainly not a waste of time if you understand the limitations of how they work. I usually find one or two new leads each time, mainly distant connections, but connections all the same. As far as people not responding then this is hardly a Hot Match problem. In my experience about 75% do always respond.

This is what GR says about matching Place of Birth.

"At the moment we just match the name and year of birth. However, we may make changes to the way system works in the future and add in the place of birth as a match. The problem is that members add the place in different way, or it can be mis-spelt. Some might add the town, others the full address. This makes it difficult to match. By keeping the search broad we feel you have a greater chance of a match."

Missing matches because of spelling differences could create even more problems and complaints than it actually solves, so it is probably better as it is now.

After all if you don't want the match just discard it.

And, for those who are still not happy, why bother with them at all? Just do your searching manually.

Now that I have been doing my tree for more than 12 months, I have learned to ignore hot matches for single hits especially where I have found a bunch of siblings using IGI quite quickly, another person could and would have done the same. My genuine hot matches have almost always suddenly have to come up with 5 or more matches - and then I do get really excited. I don't waste any time on the ones and two's, but then I'm lucky in that I pretty much know my ancestry since 1901 to now, it is extermely unlikely that any close relative will pop up that I do not know about. For people without much idea of their family since 1901 the situation is different and I agree the GR search system is not useful enough...
Good Luck everybody, Hz

I found the daughter of my great aunt who was able to fill some missing bits of my tree but I agree there are lots of ones that really shouldn't even be sent to me ie place of birth - not even in the same county!!

I broke through what I thought was an unsurmountable brick wall and found my Welsh great grandmother and now have a third cousin I knew nothing about and large numbers of photos and documents for members of my father's family!
Caroline

It's worth the time and trouble- know it's a pain but through the hot matches I found a ggrandson from my ggrandfathers extra marital relationship (what relation are we ?)
Hi Ray!

Most Hot Matches are anything but. Once in a while though, one hits the bulls eye. Thanks to one hot match I was able to find which of 2 Mary's, baptised on the same day in the same church, was my g g g grandma. Reckon the occasional bit of gold is worth all the dross. If you are reading this Jason, thanks a million.

Sometimes you do find the golden nuggett, the main problem is often that a ot of the supposed matches are really based on shared information from one original tree and these can add little to your knowledge. This is more apparent when the match is for a distant relative of the matching tree owner.

For example one of my surnames is pretty rare on here but appears in around a dozen trees. Each tree has the same errors with dates/places due to the fact that there is only one "original" (and flawed) tree which has been copied about a dozen times.

None of the tree owners can expand on what i know already and a few actively dispute the accuracy of my research, i have all the certs, wills etc but apparently i am still wrong.

In a case like that i just decline the contact further information, they can't prove or disprove anything, don't have documentary evidence etc whereas i have. It takes more than a few census images to prove someone is my ancestor.