I love ancestry.com. I started with the free trial as well, and graduated to a full account. I was able to learn and record a lot. I had to end my subscription due to decreased finances, but I hope to start it up again someday. Another great place to start is this website, sponsored by the Mormons: https://familysearch.org/ It's free to the general public, and it got me started with my ancestral research.
I was really tempted to sign up there but a quick search of a couple of names produced no results at all. On my Dad's side of the family there's not much more information I can use to search on, so I'm not sure this is going to work out. I tried using free information at another site years ago and had the same problem. It doesn't look like there's much point in joining the site after all.
@Brittany Houser, thank you for this site. I visited it yesterday and found some information on my father's side that I had the most difficult time searching for on ancestry.com. The correct spelling of my grandmother's maiden name. I will definitely be using this site as a resource for my family tree.
You're welcome. I'm glad you is of use to you. I was amazed to find my Great-Grandfather, who was a Civil War veteran. I hadn't been able to find info about him anywhere else!
Oh, what a great picture! Thanks for sharing. I have enjoyed this thread immensely. Tracing my family tree lines has been one of my passions for about the last ten years. It is such a thrill, when I come across an old photgraph or letter written by one my ancestors. I agree with Mal about how this tradition of passing along verbal stories has diminished over time. Therefore, I am in the process of creating a great big family tree book for my future grandchildren. Actually, my mother and I do this activity together. It is not only important for me to preserve the family names, but a wonderful way to learn about history. I think, when you can add a personal touch to an event, it is more relatable and significant. It also provides a greater perspective, appreciation, and understanding to historical events. Here are a couple examples. 1. Salem Witch Trials I have relations that were hung as a witch, and others who judged the condemning the so called witches. 2. French and Indian War I have Indian relations (some even ended up on Reservations up in Michigan, a picture is packed away, somewhere) and I have touching story about other members of my family being scalped my Indians. Just yesterday, I was on my way to the airport with my niece to pick up her boyfriend from England, low and behold we drove right past this little church and cemetery that I told my mother I wanted to stop by to visit a new found relation. Since my niece was anxious to be on time for her boyfriends arrival, I did not stop. But you can bet your bottom dollar, I will be back! Actually, I am up in my home state for the summer, so I have a big list of cemetery's, and houses I want to go document for my book. As I am working on my parents flower farm, I am going to wait until the flowers really start to pop. This way, I can lay flowers down at the gravesides, too. Here is one of my many favorite pictures found recently. Part of the family from Scarborough, Yorkshire, England. Husband a fisherman lost at sea.
Let me tell you that I tried Ancestry.com in the very early days when I first came online near 16 years ago! I was curious about my maiden surname of Greek root, and intrigued because nobody else but my father and his brother were the only men in town (and the whole country) who were given with this surname. I didn't succeed finding any genealogy trace at Ancestry.com, so assuming that my surname probably resulted from misspelling the original name, as happened to many Russians immigrants, the most famous of them --as far as I know-- Moe, Curly and Shemp Howard, from the famous Three Stooges. The fact is that I quit Ancestry.com hopeless to find my family roots, but installing eventually a content management system called Family Connections (https://www.familycms.com/) on my own hosting space, with the hope to complete my family tree some day. Curious fact with this personal project, is that by the time I stopped digging on the family's past, many distant relatives began to appear but on Facebook! Interesting to know my surname was not misspelled, and seems not to be so uncommon in Greece, but sad because Facebook people are not necessarily willing to participate in genealogy research as people at Ancestry.com do.
Hey all. My real last name is the same as an American Pop singer for whom I have little respect. Kids in my classes would always ask me if I were related to her and I just got tired of it and decided to draw up my family tree to show them that there was no way in hell I was related to this singer. (I actually made a joke about her.... based upon her stupidity, maybe I'll leave it in the joke section later....) So, I used the free version of Ancestry.com, as well as a free family tree maker called "Legacy" (excellent program, really helps keep information in order when that tree branches out!). One of the most useful resources, though, was the LDS ancestry page. As that organization seems to believe that ancestors should be "baptized" into the faith and also believes that such baptism can take place after death, they have a very extensive, searchable data base that is not restricted to those who belong to the faith. I never paid for the service (I think my brother did take a subscription to Ancestry when he tried to outdo me on the family tree) and I was able to trace my family back to the early 17th century on my mother's side (Campbells as well! but that's like saying "Smith" or "Jones" ha!) and the 18th century on my father's. Even found out that the family legend of having Native American blood was somewhat true (great-grandmother was Native American) but that my surname had nothing to do with that connection but was rather a fairly common name among Irish and Scottish immigrants to the US. Also had family who died on the Oregon trail. Nobody famous, though. Just regular farm folk, almost all of them. Not subscribing to Ancestry may limit a bit the resources available; however, I never did so and was quite pleased when I "finished" the tree to my own personal satisfaction. peace, revel.
Oh, thought I would add another tidbit on my insight into ancestry.com and my general findings with other sites, too. As Jorge mentions, the LDS has contributed immensely in their research via their belief in baptisms. Thus, there is a wealth of free information out there. I just seem to run into a stumbling block when any of my relations are of a Catholic Faith from a country; such as, Germany or Italy Sure, I get lucky, sometimes. However, if I am doing a line from the United Kingdom area, there is a gold mine of information. I can usually go back to the Norman conquest. I find a lot of useful, entertaining stories from online old history book; such as,the records in Domesday Book, along with other peoples published work on their family history or historical events.
I was a member on there for one year. I didnt bother to renew it. It was too overwhelming for me. Each family branches off so many times, combined with me having no idea what I was doing, was too much. If I follow just one of my grandparents back I ended up with a few hundred possibilities of where to go from there.
My wife has been doing Ancestry.com and she was notified that I had died in Oklahoma in 1976. It's the same name and birthdate but, other than that, I don't think I'm dead.
Died young whoever that was ....that's the year my son was born and some poor mother lost a son then...makes me sad.
FamilySearch.org is a free website for searching family history documents. If you find that you have the patience to spend hours and hours poring over endless pages of dates, names, places and various wild goose chases and are eager to go back for more... THEN you are a person for whom the Ancestry membership would be worth the price. They have an extraordinary range of resources, as well as many guides and tutorials for how to go about conducting research. I have been a member for about 16 years and still love the riches it provides. Many public libraries have institutional memberships allowing library patrons to access Ancestry for free, which is a wonderful perk worth using if you are unmoved to join personally.
Ancestry.com is having a $69 Father's Day sale on DNA kits if anyone's interested. Actually, they are having the sale whether anyone is interested in not. I think I paid just short of $100 when I had it done.
@John Brunner but they want to get paid for their time. I can't blame them either. It's a lot of work just trying to figure out which one of the several same names is the one you're looking for.
Gotcha. I thought maybe they had publicly available resources that you were unaware of and that you could personally wade through, not necessarily have the do research. One would think there would be an Ancestry dot com for African Americans stood up. Or Ancestry dot com would at least have an area dedicated to the subject. Maybe there's only marginal interest. A friend whose is a local here is the "go to guy" when folks from elsewhere are doing research tracing their ancestry. He says he never fields inquiries on any of the black folk in the county. My sister tried to trace our ancestry once, and had no luck. As I said, my mother was British and my father's parents were German. Many of my mother's siblings were still living when my sister tried to trace things, and I believe could only go back as far as my mother's grandparents on one side of her family. There was some strange stuff going on. My mother claimed to never be sure what her real surname was, but never gave details. I know her mother died when she was young and was refused burial in the Catholic cemetery. We chalked the "confusion" up to the way she was, but when she died we found old documents that seemed to validate what she was saying.