For years I have been using Ancestry data bases to do research, but haven't posted a public page on any of my lines. My early training in genealogy was definitely of the "what can you prove with documents" style, and so what others had put into a family tree (oh yes, I did have a look) without any sourcing was mostly very uninteresting.
so...
I decided to walk on the "leafy" side, and posted a small number of Rentchler ancestors. This is a family name of middling size, shows up in Pennsylvania and my section moves to southern Illinois.
and...
two days after posting about 10 ancestors, 3 generations, I now have 100+ hints - and Ancestry sent me a special email to celebrate this !!!
Most are from family trees of other people, good for finding cousins, but not new info, many are from census (got that one nailed), and most are repeating info I already have, so circling the wagons and rehashing vs. moving forward.
With this intro, I'm tempted to post a tree of another line. This line has about 20 people in the US that still carry the name. They married late, with few or no kids, and it would be interesting to see how many "wavers" that tree would generate.
Stay tuned.....