BengeBoy 

I thought maybe some of you folks might have played around w/Ancestry.com.

Seems to me that folks who are 50+ often seem to be the people who start pulling together fragments of family lore to create a family tree. I've sort of avoided this in the past because it seems like it could be a huge time sink....but as my own parents get on in years I'm realizing I'd like to start documenting some family relationships that I can't keep straight in my own head; seems like a service like this would be helpful.

Anyone here use it?

Like it; hate it?

bruce19

I've used it. I find the site a little difficult to maneuver through. Could be just me but I haven't had all that much difficulty with other sites. Not sure I'd do it again.

outwest5

I am a member and have an extensive tree on there. It is an awesome data base that just keeps getting better. Once you learn how to access all that is on it, the sky's the limit. I love research and am good at it. Some people get overwhelmed and confused because it is so extensive. I have gotten so good at using it that others have asked me to do their trees. I have found out so much coolio stuff. I have even uncovered some scandal. Honestly, it is the very best geneaology data base out there- incredible really.

I also belong to the New England Historical Genealogy since it has additional info that ancestry doesn't have. For example, I have access to loads of 18 and 19th century newspapers, which are full of all kinds of stuff. I belong to it mainly to have access to those old newspaper archives (really great sources for first hand info on people from a long time ago). Footnote is a good site for finding National Archive documents like revolutionary war records. I found the pension file of one of my ancestors on there and the full military file of another from the civil war. I don't belong to that one anymore because I exhausted their data bases.

This is off topic, but I am a genealogy nut. Everyone has a story to tell and some of them are fascinating. Be careful, though. You will often find out things that maybe you didn't want to know...

ancestry also has recent info on it. I found a friends birth parents through that, but it didn't end well, so like I said- be careful with that. Sometimes you find out things that were buried for a reason.

Doohickie

Ancestry.com and several other related entities are basically outreaches of the Mormons. Part of their theology includes baptizing of the ancestors of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. (i.e., when you become a member, they will baptize as many of your ancestors as you can name to make sure all end up in heaven together or something.)

They provide a service to you and charge you for it, but as you build your family tree, that's information they will charge other people for and not pay you a dime for your work. I found a relative that has done extensive genealogy investigations and provided me with information about my direct ancestors. He asked that I not provide that information to Ancestry.com or any other site because then they will turn around and charge others for his work. You may feel it's a fair exchange; my cousin didn't.

BengeBoy 

Yes, I knew about the Mormon connection. The perspective on how it works is interesting.

I already know of several (somewhat) distant relatives who have done a *huge* amount of research (one self-published a 1,000-page book that goes all the way back to the Middle Ages). I guess my hope was that by pulling together a family tree that went out a few branches I could "connect" with somebody out there who had already filled out some of the past stuff.

I haven't checked out the fees/costs/etc., but I guess on the surface it seems like a fair exchange -- I fill out the bits that I know, and then make a connection with distant relatives who have done the same for their part of the world.

I'm cool if all of my dead ancestors get turned into Mormons in heaven. Don't they get 80 virgins or something like that? Or am I confusing my religions?

miss kenton

Benge,
Check your local library. I work in the reference dept. of a county library. We have a subscription to the Ancestry.com database. Library card holders are able to use it for free and for an unlimited length of time. It is the most popular database at our library and a number of serious genealogists come in daily to use it.

Additionally, if you use the online Social Security Death index to determine the month and year of a person's death, you can contact a library with newspaper microfilm holdings within the vicinity of the decedent's domicile. A staff member will be happy to search the microfilm to find that obituary for you at no charge. Well, she will if she is anything like me. You can make online requests for that service to libraries all over the country. I just did one for a lady in Scotland.

Doohickie

Yeah, we used to be able to log in from home at our library's website. It was cool. They cut that access a while ago and now you have to go to the library to use it.

outwest5

What ancestry has that hardly anyone else does is original scanned documents. That takes time and money to do. It is the documents that are so invaluable, not the trees. The trees are just names, there is nothing to sell, so I disagree with your friend. Mormons are not the only ones interested in their ancestry history. They were just the first major group to start diligently gathering the info.
PS Nobody is baptising me.

The other place to find a lot of good info is through historical societies based in individual areas. I have received a lot of info from those sources. They charge a fee to copy and mail the documents to you. The Arizona archives will send you a digital copy, for example. Some just send xerox's. Many documents are stored in colleges and their libraries will send info to you. ALL charge for it, some more than others. Google books has a lot of genealogical books on line for free download. Those are good sources, too.

Be careful with using other peoples trees. Many are accurate, but some of them just gather and plop in names from other trees and errors get filtered down. Always do you own check of the names before adding the to your tree.

I really like ancestry.com.

B. Carfree

My grandmother was mormon. Her idea of a hot Saturday night was to spend it at the Oakland temple doing whatever it is mormons do. Before she died, she did our entire family genealogy. It was somewhat facilitated by the fact that a previous wing of the family had published "The Book of Farnsworth" which traced our ancestors to the first Farnsworth to come over in the first decade of the seventeenth century. There was some interesting stuff there, including cousin Philo (inventor of the electronic television), and one female ancestor who was part of the feuding McCoys. There was less definitive evidence on the circumstances of my great-great-grandfather (paternal) and his exit from Scotland. Either he was a thief who fled to avoid hanging or he had some religious dispute with the local clan. All we know for sure is he fled to England, changed his last name, and then sailed away to start over in America.

I suppose if we all look hard enough we will find that we are all descended from kings and criminals, often represented by the same person.

guybierhaus

I joined a local Genealogical Society in 1989 to get access to their library. Allowed myself to get more involved in 1995 as their "computer guy". Next think you know it's Treasurer, Vice President, President and now back to Treasurer again. The current President has his Ancestry.com account loaded on a couple Society's computers. Looks like most people use it for census records access. Although the library has census records on film and CD's. I've always been too cheap to pay the subscription fee. Was able to find more data then I can deal with for free. The rootsweb.com site is still free. Ancestry is the main sponsor of rootsweb. So while rootsweb is free, ancestry users who pay, can find them selves directed to rootsweb during a search. I too was feeling it was not right for people to pay for my info thru Ancestry, when I had it posted at rootsweb for free. So I pulled my 30,000 names. Not that it did any good, as so many copied my data when it was posted. It's like I have many mirror sites now.

John E

DNA analysis can be a useful adjunct to the usual records and documents research. My New York born paternal grandfather, whose father had been born in the Bahamas, had asked my English grandmother to promise never to try to trace his roots. My uncle's autosomal, mitochrondrial, and Y-chromosome DNA profile has confirmed and quantified what some of us had long suspected -- grandpa was an octaroon, which in the 1920s and 1930s could have excluded him from numerous economic and social opportunities. He ran away to sea at age 14, settled in Bremerton WA to work on marine engines, and moved to Kauai HI to support his wife and sons by keeping the sugar refinery machinery humming. I can only guess the extent to which his secret racial profile might have influenced some of his critical life decisions.

ciocc_cat

My brother-in-law (not a Mormon) conducted extensive genealogy research and I've dabbled in it a bit. He generated a multi-page family tree of my clan that traced one branch back to Richard Stockton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and another back to an early 18th century pirate that sounds suspiciously like the model for Disney's Cap'n Jack Sparrow. Seems that the real name of the Black Pearl was the Charles and she was a brigantine of 80 tons that took nine Portuguese ships off the coast of south America in 1703. Arrrrrrrr.

gitarzan

I use it. Also consider RootsWeb.

Major tip. Get yourself in front of all the remaining old relatives you have and get all the info you can. They can tell you more than anything. Once they are gone, they are gone.

I did that about ten years ago. I even took my grandpa on a trip to the county in Kentucky that he grew up in and left about 1938. I now know where he and all his relatives, lived, worked, are buried and some great stories. It was a priceless education and one of the best few days of my life. He died 4 years later.

solveg

I used ancestry.com when it was new, and it was fascinating. There was so much that I was somehow wrong about. Like, I found out my grandfather was a twin, and part of 7 brothers who came here to america and split up into groups to find their fortune. Imagine your own family doing that.... moving to, say, Peru and then splitting up never to see each other again. Anyway, I found my own sense of family history was not very accurate.

I thought I was french, but found out that this side of the family was considered Indian until just a few generations ago. And I'm cousins with Angelina Jolie.

Fun stuff.

Think very hard before you start telling people you're doing this, though. As older family members winnow down belongings, or as people die, you will get mountains of items. Because you care! This is very nice, and you'll get an old diary from your great grandmother where she talks about getting an egg from a neighbor and how good it tasted. You'll also get your great grandfather's long underwear and conservation corp ID.

I just put it all in a cedar chest, but I'll have to deal with it one day. People will give you boxes of photographs after someone dies, and they're never labeled. Hours of work going through them, and you won't know most of the people. But then you'll find some gem of a photo, with the names written on the back. Or some really interesting event.

But what do you do with most of it? I have no idea.

Doohickie

I knew a relative of Philo. I worked with him years ago in L.A. I forget his first name, but I remember he was deaf. A member of your family, perhaps?

Doohickie

I found out my momma was a love child and my grandparents got married in a shotgun wedding. They stayed married and had 7 kids.

Yen

I've used Ancestry.com and also the forums at Genealogy.com and found some valid tidbits of data. One day, I went to Genealogy.com and decided to try a new surname, so I searched on my mom's grandmother's maiden name. There on the main page, about 4 or 5 posts down from the top, was a post from someone else searching for the exact same descendant! We connected, and one day while visiting my parents my mom opened a drawer in a small table next to the sofa where she sat, and pulled out an old family photo from that family. I scanned it and sent it to my new family "friend" -- turned out she found the exact same photo in a box in their shed. I also found a 2nd cousin of my dad's in another forum there.

I'm a descendant of William Nickerson, an original settler of Chatham, MA (my great-great-grandmother was a Nickerson). There is a genealogical association devoted to the Nickerson family name which helped me close some gaps and verify the research my ancestors had already done.

Doohickie

Wait.... your mom's grandmother is descended from you???!!

(Are you from Arkansas?)

ciocc_cat

That would be me. University of Arkansas graduate. Woooooooooooo PIG SOOOIE!

B. Carfree

If he's related to Philo, he's related to me. Apparently Philo had high hopes for T.V. He thought it would be used to bring valuable cultural events to the entire nation. He was so disgusted by what was broadcast on it that he refused to have one in his home.

Doohickie

Yeah, I heard the same story.

Neil_B

Hmm, I've used the site for research on not only my own family, but those of others. The Census reports are useful for anyone writing biography.

cyclinfool

I think we should start a bicycle genealogy site, say how the each bicycle maker/company learned their trade from others and how one company acquired another. I may find out my Gary Fischer is descended from a Colnalgo or a cousin to a Serotta.