White Goose Flying - Royalty free from pickpic.com Whew! January has flown by.   This month I've been re-visiting old research , led by  Ancestry® Pro Tools  power to find possible duplicate profiles in my huge tree. Along the way, I sometimes do a bit of research or even prune as I go. I hope in 2026 to really make my DNA tree shine. One of my Baysinger branches caught me this week, and I've been taking it all the way down to the 1950 Census, which of course was not available when I began building an online tree 20 years ago.  As a beginner, I allowed far too many duplicate profiles to proliferate. I didn't know how to prevent that happening, or to fix it.* Also I had no clue that downloading a gedcom from MyHeritage and then uploading to Ancestry would give me many worthless "sources" which must be removed to generate Ancestry hints. I use the hints to build a "skeleton" for a profile, finding the person and their family in census and BMD (birth, marri...

Revisit Old Research   White Goose Flying - Royalty free from pickpic.com Why Rake Up Old Research?  There are lots of reasons to revisit old research. Perhaps: New DNA match New record  Questions from connections Or maybe questions you ask yourself based on new education, more experience and newly-found connections. No matter the reason, I have found that revisiting is more useful than a "do over. " We all learn as we gain experience, both in methodology and as we deepen our understanding of our families and their stories, migrations, and the places where they lived.  DNA Tools Give a Reason for a Fresh Look Recently I asked my cousin to generate a DNA cluster report for my McBee uncle, because he is one generation closer to our ancestors than any of us cousins are. If you have never seen an autocluster, see one here:  https://education.myheritage.com/article/autoclusters-for-dna-matches/ . It is fun to see the report take shape, and the groups are very useful....