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  1. #11
    Join Date
    30th March 16
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mike S View Post
    Be careful relying on the information posted there. Privately submitted family histories are often ripe with errors and inaccuracies. Several such submissions managed to absolutely butcher branches of my family tree with their incompetence, and now it has sadly been disseminated by dozens of unsuspecting and less than diligent researches within their collateral family trees.
    I whole-heartily agree. At one point my g-g-g-g-grandfather was his son. I used the Mormon site and some others to find marriage, birth, and death records to help verify. That got old g-g-g-g-grandpa out of his bind but it took some digging. You just have to question every link and try to check with other trees and other sites.

    I started and stopped this work several times in the past because I could not go any farther back than about 1810 on my fathers side. Then some census/church records were opened/made available here in the US and in England and Scotland and that got me a little farther. It was only until earlier this year that I had the patience to find those sites that had this new treasure of information to sift through.

    The thing that caught my eye was how a name would become so well liked to be passed down over many generations, especially for the ladies. For my family, Lydia was the name passed along to many, many girls.

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  3. #12
    Join Date
    25th December 15
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    Quote Originally Posted by sbroomheadsr View Post
    I used the Mormon site and some others to find marriage, birth, and death records to help verify.
    You mention the "Mormon site." Could you elaborate on just what exactly that is? I've used Mormon libraries in the past, but in almost every case (except in Salt Lake) you had to place an order that had to be sent to Salt Lake and they had to ship the microfiche or whatever to the local library. I didn't know they had a specific site (but that makes all the sense in the world). They are indeed the experts in the field, so if they've got a site, that has to be a gold mine!
    Regards,
    Tom

  4. #13
    Join Date
    30th March 16
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    Quote Originally Posted by slothead View Post
    You mention the "Mormon site."
    The site I found associated with them is http://www.genealogy.com.
    Another site I used was https://familysearch.org

    I hope these help.

  5. #14
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    3rd January 06
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    Dorset, on the South coast of England
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    My uncle had been trying to locate his father's family and any male relatives with his surname for decades. He even engaged a private detective to help in the search. I got a free trial of Ancestry and asked all the female relatives I could find if there were male relatives.

    Two weeks before he died my brother took him the news that direct male descendants of his uncle are living in California.

    The family tree I made is still there in Ancestry, as is the one my uncle made, plus all the messages and records I collected up.

    There were lots of incorrect entries - granddad changed his date of birth, his middle name and married a second time without benefit of divorce from his first wife, but that is all part of the fun - and I found I had a cousin I knew nothing about living only a short distance away.
    It helps to be able to read 'secretary hand' as many of the people changing the written records into typed ones can't read what is there - and they obviously didn't care much about accuracy.

    I still haven't paid anything for the access I have had, but they do keep informing me of offers they have - it might be worthwhile to watch for free trials or cheap deals so as to be able to have access and see what you can find.

    Anne the Pleater
    I presume to dictate to no man what he shall eat or drink or wherewithal he shall be clothed."
    -- The Hon. Stuart Ruaidri Erskine, The Kilt & How to Wear It, 1901.

  6. #15
    Join Date
    19th May 11
    Location
    Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
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    When I chased my tree years ago almost all the sites were free.
    I found that I needed all the data from each generation from multiple sites to cross check the previous and next generations. Tracking children and wives names and data as well as the places and times of a subjects life events gives you the multiple connections to ensure correctness. It has also let me bridge a lost generation and enabled vetting it from the other direction.
    The computer acronym GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out) applies to the data accuracy and errors were rampant on all the sites. Never accept any site suggested generation linkages unless you can vet it multiple ways on independent sites.

    Finding someone else's tree is nice but like your prime search it still needs vetting the same labor intensive way for every step.

    It was an adventure and I found a lot of real "characters" in my tree - good and bad. Open Google searching names and dates you have found can come up with some memorable kin stories and biographies - as well as vetting.
    Last edited by tundramanq; 20th August 16 at 07:00 AM.
    slàinte mhath, Chuck
    Originally Posted by MeghanWalker,In answer to Goodgirlgoneplaids challenge:
    "My sporran is bigger and hairier than your sporran"
    Pants is only a present tense verb here. I once panted, but it's all cool now.

  7. #16
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    22nd July 08
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    Pretty sure that Ancestry.com has links to the LDS (Mormon) church, for good or ill. I don't know the full details, but I've always been uncomfortable with the potential that my ancestors might (figuratively) dug up by others, only to be baptised by proxy into the LDS church.

    So while I've always been curious about my roots, I just can't bring myself to open family information up to sources that I'm not confident about, so I've had to basically abandon any notion of having any serious research done. I've tried out Ancestry.com, and found it really, really, really, really, REALLY difficult, borderline impossible to close my account with them and have the information I provided, purged from the site. I basically had to threaten litigation before they honoured my requests. And of course, at that point, I wanted nothing more to do with them.

  8. #17
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    27th October 09
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    Spartanburg, SC
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    I've used Ancestry.com for about seven years, and I am amazed by the number and types of records that are avialable. I have the international account, and I think it is well worth paying extra for access to records from countries outside of the United States of America.

    Yes, the transcribers sometimes make mistakes when entering the information on into the searchable database and that does make it more difficult to find the record. However, unless the searcher specifically requests an exact match to his search strategy, the Ancestry search system returns the most likely relevant records first, and then presents records that are less likely to be what you hope to find. If you do find errors in the transcribed record, you can submit corrections, which will be evaluated and added to the record if found to be creditable.

    Once you click on a link to a record, you will see a printed copy of what the transcriptionist reported, but many records also contain a link to a photograph of the record, which often contains more information than what the transcriptionist recorded. For example, some records record occupations and street addresses that are not not copied into the searchable database, but which can be quite helpful. Whether or not a photograph is included is at the discretion of the entity that holds the document. Photographs are not available for Scottish census records, but more information is included in the transcribed record than for US Census records for which photographs are available.

    I have traced several lines on my family back hundreds of years, using Ancestry.com. Many records that I found were from churches, historical societies, and local government repositories in an area where I once lived before I knew I had ancestors who had lived there. I could have found some of the records by traveling around to where the records were held, but some records would not have been available to the public before Ancestry.com contracted to digitalize them.

    The terms of use are very clearly presented on Ancestry.com, if take the time to read them. If you do not agree to the terms, don't subscribe to the service. I spent many years of experience searching online database systems before I retired, and I have some knowledge of what is involved in the construction of a database and how much it costs. I do not find Ancestry's terms or fees to be out of line; the yearly fees for many other database systems I have used often exceed $10,000. As someone has already stated, the Ancestry collects, houses, and makes the information available, but you must work to find the information and to determine if it really relates to your ancestors. You can choose to make your tree/s public, which allows other users to view them, or they can be private, which means that only users to whom you give access can view your tree/s.

    Another nice feature of Ancestry.com is that you can make contact with other users, who might be willing to share information. I have made contact with several distant cousins who have been quite helpful. One recently shared information about an illegitimate birth in the 1870s (which other users pretended never happened) that proved that a strange old lady, who attended many family holiday functions when I was a child, was a 2nd cousin twice removed. That knowledge is not really very important, but I liked the lady, and knowing that there was a family connection is somehow comforting now that she is dead.

    I download copies of my trees to a genealogical software package that is compatible with Ancestry.com, and I periodically run the update feature that downloads any information that I have added to my Ancestry.com tree/s since the last download.

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  10. #18
    Join Date
    8th January 08
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    The Bayou City - Houston, TX
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    If you are a serious amateur genealogist, it's worth it. A part of the value of a hobby is the past time gleaning small nuggets from painstaking research here and there, and some of that you may get from Ancestry.com. If you're an amateur archeologist, the fossils don't jump out of the ground to find you.
    Last edited by Jack Daw; 25th August 16 at 05:34 AM.

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  12. #19
    Join Date
    17th June 16
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    USA
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    It is my understanding that the Ancestry.com DNA testing is not all together very good.
    For example they use only a sample of 100 people from the West coast of Ireland as the "Irish" baseline.

  13. #20
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    2nd April 10
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    Quote Originally Posted by TheMcManus View Post
    It is my understanding that the Ancestry.com DNA testing is not all together very good.
    For example they use only a sample of 100 people from the West coast of Ireland as the "Irish" baseline.
    Lack of samples is a problem with a great number of these services. I think I posted it before, but I saw a TV story several years ago about three services that targeted black families and promised to find their tribal roots. The reported submitted to all three and got three different tribes back. As he questioned the companies they revealed that they all used different samples and some had exclusive agreements with tribes so the others could never have those samples. When asked why they would not combine databases for the good of the community, they all said because they were in this as a business to make profit, not to provide community service.

    I can not imagine that Ancestry.com is any different.

    Besides, don't you have to start wearing your kilt backwards if they say you are Scottish?

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