Have you ever researched your family tree?

[bowies]

I'm curious if Ancestry is actually a good resource. I'd really like to do this. I know so little about my family other than my dad is first generation American and my mom's family is from Ohio. If you've signed up with an online database, how did it work out for you? Did you find out anything cool?

[timorousbeastie]

I haven't done it, but my sister has. She has found some (I think) pretty cool stuff. She has told me, though, that it's nowhere near as simple as the Ancestry commercials make it look. When she first started out, she just clicked every time it showed her a leaf, assuming there was an actual family connection. Well, when she went back to look at it, she realized that many, many of the supposed links were either duplicates with slightly different information (different name, date of birth, etc.) or not actually family members. So she had to start over and do a lot more research on every leaf that popped up (looking at the census reports, for example, or comparing to a particular second cousin's family tree who does a lot of genealogy work, so she trusts what she has). She admits it's a total time suck, but she loves doing it. I love that she's doing it, too, because I get all the info without doing all the work

I will say, if you decide to do it, just be prepared to find that cousin marriages were all too common back in the day. I could have lived without seeing the branches crossing on my family tree!

[Deleted]

All my grandparents have been into it. I think they've had a lot of luck with ancestry.com and I think genealogy.com. I know one grandfather has done blood test confirmations, etc.

[AmyRI]

I use My Heritage instead of Ancestry because it's cheaper and has a decent desktop application so you aren't forced into doing it online all the time. It uses the same file format and you can export the tree at any time if you want to switch.

I haven't found anyone famous or anything, but old census records lead me to figure out that my maternal grandfather was raised by his great uncle, his dad was a deadbeatime with a second family halfway across the country, and his two sisters were really half sisters. Then my grandma fessed up that his middle sis was raised mostly in foster care and baby sis was placed for adoption.

The most rewarding thing I've done with it was to print a big 2'x6' poster of my grandmother's entire family for her 90th birthday. People loved seeing it and helped add the next generation(s) of cousins that I didn't have info on.

[Ashley&Scott]

Ancestry.com is an awesome resource. My family tree was my honors project in college. I traced back 13 generations.

My advice, start with what you know. Gather every full name, dates & locations for birth, marriage & death. Then in put it all into their online tree maker. Talk to everyone in your family to gather as much info as you can. Then after you have it all entered pay for a subscription & dig further. Once you have the subscription print the records You find. (Census, birth/marriage/death certificates, war draft cards, etc)

[jln]

I use Ancestry.com and can't rave about it enough. I've gone back to the 1700's on both sides of my family. I discovered that I'm directly related to one of the first Texas Rangers. I've found pictures of my family's farm on one side and several photos of family members generations back.

I started with myself, my parents' and grandparents' information. From there I got the hint "leaf" and went from there. I currently have 1,316 family members in my tree.

[drloretta]

Yes, I've used it. I was able to find other researchers who were able to link their trees to mine. I only have one stubborn great grandfather who remains a mystery, but I filled in a lot of gaps.

MIL is a genealogy junkie, and has an international Ancestry membership

[SJ]

Yes!

I have done a decent amount of work on ancestry.com and start and stop the paid subscription when I feel like working on it.

I have multiple ancestors via which I qualify for DAR, and am currently debating whether or not to join. My South American side is much harder and only goes back a few generations.

I got DD a really cool round family tree from Etsy that we treasure. She is in the middle and the ancestors form rings out from her.

[Cicero]

My mother's family has always been really easy because everyone lived in the same small town in Germany until my grandma emigrated and my great uncle was the town's archivist. So we have her family's records all the way back to when the church was built there and they started keeping them--so the 14th century.

The rest of the family is difficult. The local library and websites like ancestry were helpful in determining who lived where and when, exact immigration dates, etc., but the problem is that we can't really go beyond that since we're talking about Germans from modern day Poland and any records we would be looking for are long since destroyed.

Do you have any older relatives whose brains you can pick? The random things they might know about their great aunt Millie or whomever might give you a good lead to track down.

ETA: Depending on where he is from Ancestry likely won't be that great of a resource for your father's family since they don't have access to a lot of foreign local records. It's mainly about American census and other national records.

[LoveTrains]

Aug 31, 2015 21:39:36 GMT -5 SJ said:

Yes!

I have done a decent amount of work on ancestry.com and start and stop the paid subscription when I feel like working on it.

I have multiple ancestors via which I qualify for DAR, and am currently debating whether or not to join. My South American side is much harder and only goes back a few generations.

I got DD a really cool round family tree from Etsy that we treasure. She is in the middle and the ancestors form rings out from her.

You can join any DAR chapter - it doesn't have to be local - so please join mine.

I love ancestry and have used it to do my family history back many generations. I joined the DAR. I have been able to trace mine back to the 1400s. If you get lucky you link to a known/well documented line.

[SJ]

Aug 31, 2015 21:58:37 GMT -5 LoveTrains said:

Aug 31, 2015 21:39:36 GMT -5 SJ said:

Yes!

I have done a decent amount of work on ancestry.com and start and stop the paid subscription when I feel like working on it.

I have multiple ancestors via which I qualify for DAR, and am currently debating whether or not to join. My South American side is much harder and only goes back a few generations.

I got DD a really cool round family tree from Etsy that we treasure. She is in the middle and the ancestors form rings out from her.

You can join any DAR chapter - it doesn't have to be local - so please join mine.

I love ancestry and have used it to do my family history back many generations. I joined the DAR. I have been able to trace mine back to the 1400s. If you get lucky you link to a known/well documented line.

Yes! I barely have to do anything for my application. Just certificates for myself, mother, and grandpa who are all living.

[bowies]

Aug 31, 2015 21:40:33 GMT -5 Cicero said:

Do you have any older relatives whose brains you can pick? The random things they might know about their great aunt Millie or whomever might give you a good lead to track down.

ETA: Depending on where he is from Ancestry likely won't be that great of a resource for your father's family since they don't have access to a lot of foreign local records. It's mainly about American census and other national records.

Unfortunately I come from a very small family - both sets of grandparents were older when they had kids (WWII got in the way) and thus both my parents were only children. My last grandparent passed in 2004.

My dad's side of the family is from the section of Germany that switched back and forth between Germany and France over the years so I'm resigned to finding a dead end there. I know my mom lightly researched it a few years ago and found my dad's half brother (long story). I actually know less about my mom's side and there's no indication they are recent immigrants. There's a rumor that a sitting U.S. Senator is a cousin of ours and I'd like to see if I can prove it. I do have names back to my great-grandparents and a maiden name matches so it's plausible.

I'm interested in tracing my H's side too. He knows even less than I do. We're assuming British roots based on our last name so if we're royalty, he's our best chance.

[auntie]

Ancestry allows you to work pretty quickly compared to the old school library and Yankee magazine classifieds. It's not perfect and can get expensive pretty quickly if you need to step up to the International level.

[patbutcher]

I did it last year for my grandmas Christmas gift. I used the free trial on ancestry to make it mm. Then I printed out the trees and framed them. She always talks about it, she loves that she now knows where her family came from.

The thing about Ancestry is that it is easy to go down he wrong path and mess it up, I feel. Luckily I had a lot of info from my gran so I knew I was on the right path

I did find that names she had given me were not quite right or dates didn't always match.

[bowies]

Alright I signed up. It got sad quickly.

I have found that my son shares a name with my great uncle though. I'm pleased that we chose a name that appeared on both sides.

[pooh8402]

I personally haven't, but my grandpa has. I have an ancestor that died at the Alamo, so that's pretty cool.

[LoveTrains]

Sept 1, 2015 4:56:23 GMT -5 SJ said:

Aug 31, 2015 21:58:37 GMT -5 LoveTrains said:

You can join any DAR chapter - it doesn't have to be local - so please join mine.

I love ancestry and have used it to do my family history back many generations. I joined the DAR. I have been able to trace mine back to the 1400s. If you get lucky you link to a known/well documented line.

Yes! I barely have to do anything for my application. Just certificates for myself, mother, and grandpa who are all living.

In all seriousness if you want to do it just to do it, send me a FB message and I can get you started.

[Cicero]

Sept 1, 2015 6:25:12 GMT -5 bowies said:

Aug 31, 2015 21:40:33 GMT -5 Cicero said:

Do you have any older relatives whose brains you can pick? The random things they might know about their great aunt Millie or whomever might give you a good lead to track down.

ETA: Depending on where he is from Ancestry likely won't be that great of a resource for your father's family since they don't have access to a lot of foreign local records. It's mainly about American census and other national records.

Unfortunately I come from a very small family - both sets of grandparents were older when they had kids (WWII got in the way) and thus both my parents were only children. My last grandparent passed in 2004.

My dad's side of the family is from the section of Germany that switched back and forth between Germany and France over the years so I'm resigned to finding a dead end there. I know my mom lightly researched it a few years ago and found my dad's half brother (long story). I actually know less about my mom's side and there's no indication they are recent immigrants. There's a rumor that a sitting U.S. Senator is a cousin of ours and I'd like to see if I can prove it. I do have names back to my great-grandparents and a maiden name matches so it's plausible.

I'm interested in tracing my H's side too. He knows even less than I do. We're assuming British roots based on our last name so if we're royalty, he's our best chance.

You might be surprised. Alsace and Lorraine weren't really destroyed en masse so if you know what town he came from you might be able to find something by Googling that town's historic archives and contacting them

[bowies]

So far it looks as if the famous cousin was all rumor.

But I found out my great aunt was a pro dancer in Chicago where she met my uncle, a saxophonist for a jazz band. <3

[satsuma]

Check your library, too, for any free resources they might have that would otherwise be behind a pay wall. FamilySearch is free. I think Ancestry is better overall, but I've found some European baptismal documents on there that were not on Ancestry. The other place I got interesting info was from Google books. I would find stuff like "History of X County" that would give more background such as when the family moved to the area or the name of the ship they sailed on. One of my gg-grandpas was a total deadbeat, but his brother was the toast of the town and I found more family information looking him up, so knowing siblings of direct ancestors is also beneficial.

[dale]

I used it and was able to trace my mother's side back to the 1600's in NY. Once I made the connection I was able to find entire books on the family.

[pinkdutchtulips]

Not me but my uncle (dad's side) and one of my mom's cousins did extensive family trees - like back to 1100 (dad's side) and 1500's (mom's side) mostly done through church records

My uncle had a field day w his ... Viking farmers to vassals to distillers in Scotland then back to Norway

[halfpint]

Inspired by this post, I signed up for an Ancestry trial - wow! In an hour of clicking, I learned my dad's side is pretty fascinating - some of the earliest Massachusetts colonists, a Revolutionary War veteran, and even an earl from Essex! I always sensed I had noble blood...bahahaha. I even found a scanned copy of the handwritten passenger manifest from the Port of New York when my great-great-great grandfather came from Prussia in 1855. It lists his name, his wife, and his three children (my great-great grandfather was only 11). Lists his occupation as "farmer" and his destination was Illinois.

Best lunch hour I've had in a long time

[Deleted]

Family members have. We can't go back much farther than 1880 on either side when they came to the U.S. I'm not sure my mom's maiden name or my maiden name were even the actual family names. Neither are European last names that much could be found on. And for dad's family, they came through Galveston and all of the records from the time were destroyed by a hurricane.