Ancestry dot com
 

I recently signed up for an account and started creating my family tree. The amount of information is incredible! There are scanned original documents for verification such as census reports and ship manifests available.

I am very impressed. Anyone use it?

My mother was researching our family when she passed away back in November. She was amazed at the things she knew to be correct that she found there. Our problem is all that information is in her account and no one knows her password.

Can't you use her email to reset the account?

I'd like to get on there at some point when I have enough spare time to actually poke around. Isn't part of their advertising about how sometimes you run into existing users that are part of your family tree? Anyone have that happen?

What's it cost to join?

It is not cheap.

Bear in mind that the Mormon church is actually the data pool for any ancestry information through their familysearch.org. They have amassed a huge database of microfiche that is slowly being transcribed into a web searchable format. Birth, marriage & death records exist from censuses that have been done in much of the Western world every 10 years since 1841 - 1851. They also have church parish records that pre-date the censuses that are gradually being copied as well. All of the genealogy websites tap into this data pool.

That all said, things get pretty fuzzy any earlier than about 1800.

Ian

I'm not sure if get anything out of it. My dad already has the family tree going back to the mid 1700's.

I'm a member and the site is incredible! Also Find A Grave - Millions of Cemetery Records is very useful as well and free!

My wife uses Ancestry and says this happens all the time and is of great benefit fleshing out little data streams.

I went to the geneaology library in Salt Lake City when I was a kid and had no luck finding anything other than some names we thought were relatives, but nothing concrete.

That's good to know. So if I pay for the service, some of the money will go to the Mormons who don't pay any taxes and I will pay w taxed $$ to find out information that is completely useless to me, possibly not even accurate.

I think I'll pass.

No, it means you can go to familysearch.org and get the same info for free, but without the nifty tree making functions.

So you were OK with it until you found out the Mormons were involved? :rolleyes:

My "family tree" is a bush, I don't want to see it...

No, I wasn't going to do it anyway. I have nothing against the Mormons.

Fhc
 

Most "LDS"......Mormon Family History Centers have this source free on their PC's.

You can also go to our Church's web site and search for the links.

I know that a not-too-distant direct ancestor of mine was hung for murder in Northern California a couple generations back. That's enough info for me, thanks.

I already know more about my ancestry than is on any of those databases

Yup, Our Son used it to work on his Geneology merit badge for BSA. He went back 8 generations on my wifes side - come to find out she is 100% German. All farmers. Go figuer.

Sign up as Barack Obama and see what comes up.

Ancestry dot com
 

Is it bad if you family tree has no branches? :)

She's only looking at her side of the aisle...my side is found at CaliPrisonry.com

I am working on mine right now too. I find it entertaining that the town my family originates from is 20 miles from Stuttgart. So close yet so far away.

+1!
My brother has done a ton of research on our family. He says the Mormon ancestry info is much better than Ancestry.com and free to boot.

Contact customer service and send them a copy of the obit. Sure that they will unlock her account for you so you can get the data out.

My Father went there when he was getting started looking up our family. Ended up getting to 1504 in Rotterdamm Holland and said "thats enough!" The Mormon center has the best all around records from what he told us.

This brings up a good point. Document everything you find & give a copy to another family member. Usually one family member gets obsessed with tracing the family roots & he/she drives everybody else in the family nuts. My brother was ours. I always had a glancing interest but he did the digging. Interviews with everybody. Trips to the gov't archives in Ottawa. Trips to the local Mormon church. He & a distant relative (a retired prof who was as obsessed) shared research. A ten year obsession. I ended up with the data.

Ian

The last thing I wanna know is who I'm related to......

I found others who had matching family members. I have found photos of some of my ancestors. I am amazed!!!

Thanks for mentioning that site. Within half an hour I was able to find info about my great grandparents from the side of the family nobody really knows anything about along with my grandfather's true name. I'll be busy researching all weekend!

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1296941917.jpg

As my family came to the US from China in the 1950s, I'm fairly confident the site has nada for us :-(

I found some family members on familysearch.org, but couldn't figure out a way to "link" to other relatives. Do you have to know their name to search? For example, if I can find my grandfather, how do I locate his brothers and sisters if I don't know their names? Or is there no way to "link" from one ancestor to another?

Thanks,

JA

win the lottery....

all your relatives will find you, and then some :D

I am glad that you are enjoying it. Beware of the false trail!

You have to hope for reasonably complete entries. And you have to guess & search.

Here is a census entry for my great-grandfather from familysearch

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1296944359.jpg

This gives me some of his brothers & sisters & his mother & potential birth year of all of them. But unless you know a name & a place, you are searching blindly. Just follow everybody back & hope for more clues.

Ian

I pretty much traced as far back as I could go which unfortunately wasn't terribly far, basically pushing what I know back a generation or two. I know the names of a lot of my grandparent's siblings and grandmother's maiden names so I could reliably identify correct early 1900s census results. Some of those I could find marriage records for and their parent's names, some I couldn't.

Does the paid site have a lot more information? I could see ponying up for that after I get whatever information my aunt was able to find out about the family back in the 1990s.

I'm surprised census results were so spotty but that's what happens when they live in a rural area I guess.

The info that is online is just a portion of what the Mormons have available on microfiche. It is very much an ongoing process. I have done some volunteer indexing for them online (anybody can) & it is tedious work. But they are as accurate as the available source lets them be. That is my concern about any independent sites. It is real info or just somebody's great aunt's recollections? Often people will input info based on family story rather than a written record.

Ian

I started with grandparents since they were all well known and worked back from there. Their siblings online matched the people I knew in person, and last names and states for a generation or two back matched what info I already knew. But into the 1800s searches mostly brought back nothing.

My problem was that records just dried up. Family on one side goes back to Missouri and Illinois and information from both states seems to be seriously lacking. That would be the draw for ancestry.com - if searches actually pull up information.

And just to illustrate bogus info . . . the above-mentioned Dugald (or Dougald) was actually born Aug 13, 1846 not 1845 as estimated.

Here he is:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1296958150.jpg

And as for family stories, I was told that my great-great grandfather (Dugald's father) was one of seven brothers that emigrated. As it turns out, he was one of eight kids - 5 brothers & 3 sisters - one of which died in infancy with no name listed in the parish record in Scotland.

Ian