Findmypast hints

[kiterunner]

I just received an email from FMP trying to get me to re-subscribe by telling me they have found over 5,000 new hints for my family tree. When I've looked at the hints on there before they haven't looked to be of much use and they only seemed to cover a few of the people in my tree.

This is the first hint they show in the new email - it actually has my name and place of birth in it but I have removed them for this post.

Have we found your family?

[my name]
Born: Hint1BirthDate[Unknown]
Place of birth: [my birthplace]
Place of death: unknown
Country: Great Britain
Record set: Births & Baptisms

I would be very worried if they knew my place of death!!! :d Though at least I would know to avoid that place.

Has anyone found their hints useful?

[Lindsay]

I very rarely look at them as it's almost always info I already have.

However, I did once have one which highlighted a marriage licence I hadn't suspected existed, as the marriage record said the couple in question had married by banns. The licence application contained the useful info that the groom was a widower and allowed me to trace his first family and origins two hundred miles away.

I now check occasionally in the hope that I might find another gem like that!

[Kit]

I'm quite relieved for you that your place of death is unknown, and assumedly not yet occurred.

I've not used the FMP tree. Can they be searched like ancestry and/or marked private? I don't have a tree on ancestry either but occassioally it is useful to have a look at someones tree and maybe contact them or see if they have sources.

[kiterunner]

As far as I know, you can't view anyone else's tree on FMP and nobody else can view yours.

[Kit]

Thanks Kate. Sounds like it might be worth uploading then for a backup

[anne fraser]

I once had a matching hint from Ancestry to myself on the U.S.A. find a grave site. Luckily I can vouch that not all hints are accurate!

[ElizabethHerts]

I use Family Historian which is synched with FMP, so I get hints on my tree. Out of the hints for one person, there is usually at least one correct hint, but also hints for people that couldn't possibly be correct (born over 100 years later, etc.).

[Kit]

I once had a matching hint from Ancestry to myself on the U.S.A. find a grave site. Luckily I can vouch that not all hints are accurate!

That's a relief. :d

[kiterunner]

They have just announced the addition of "tree-to-tree hints", i.e. hints from other people's trees. I think there was a separate thread about this when they announced it was on the way some time ago, but I haven't found that one. Anyway, here is a link to the latest info:

https://www.findmypast.co.uk/blog/family-tree/tree-to-tree-hints

These hints will be "free for a limited time on all Findmypast family trees" but they won't be auto-generating them for everyone in your tree (as opposed to people who you add or update, or open up their hints page) until October and November, so let's hope the limited time lasts a few months! Also, they say that not everyone will even get the hints for new / updated people right away.

[Kit]

If you don't want the tree to tree hints you can opt out.

There was a thread about it previously.

[kiterunner]

I have just seen a tree hint for someone who I looked at the other day, so I think you have to view the person's hints first, and then check back a bit later to see if there are any tree hints added. I can't say that the one I saw was any help - it looked as though the other tree was copied from mine!

[Phoenix]

I've had a wierd email on the lines of: we have monitored your searches, and think you might be interested in this record, pointing me, in this case, to a census.

It feels very Big Brother.

[kiterunner]

I get "Record hints" emails from Ancestry and something similar ("Record matches") from "My Heritage", but in both cases those are based on my family tree. It does seem strange to send hints related to your searches instead of your tree, especially since many people are now doing "quick and dirty" trees for people on their DNA match lists to figure out how they are related, and unlikely to want such hints for those. Anyway, shouldn't the search on FMP have come up with that record in the first place?

[Phoenix]

The person concerned had about four Christian names - some given, some self-bestowed. It's probably an accurate hint, but my butterfly brain has moved on.