Ancestry.com...worth it?

[slothead]

Is it worth the money? Also, does it only really trace your ancestry in America unless you pay more to see foreign?

It is my opinion that the cost is worth it, at least initially (and you can usually find a cheap starting price), and it is true that you won't get international searches without paying the extra price for that extra service.

If you hit the searches hard up front, it is likely you can find answers and contacts within your first 6 months and then you may be able to work outside Ancestry to get more data. I think the secret is to message folks a lot and watch for their responses. Only one in a dozen will be of help (if that), so it pays to do it a lot. There are a lot of false alarms in the searches, so you have to watch the details carefully.

My biggest disappointment is that the early US census records (1790, 1800, 1810, 1820) only included the householder's name and only listed the ages of others in the household.

[Liam]

Although I have not used our Calgary Public Library has a subscription and Library members can use it on the Library computers for free.

[Richrail]

I purchased a subscription for 3 months during the winter and researched like crazy. I found a bunch of information and even some pictures. But unless you are going to use it all the time I believe it is pricey. I then took all the information and in put it in to a family tree I created on www.myheritage.com for free.

[cessna152towser]

if you don't keep paying for it, you lose your tree. Apparently it is on a proprietary format that can't be saved on your computer. So... even though she does very little with Ancestry anymore, we are still paying for it every year so she won't lose her tree.

I paid for several years then when I decided not to renew they said they would keep my tree and I would still have access to it.
That was two or three years ago now and I can still access it.
Ancestry continue to send me lots of "hints" but of course when I click on them I am taken to a link inviting me to rejoin as a paid member. I think their attitude has changed. Maybe at the beginning you would have lost your tree but nowadays you don't seem to lose it as they need the bait to hopefully sign you up again as a paying member.

[Mike S]

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.

[sbroomheadsr]

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.

[slothead]

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!

[room2ndfloor]

Lydia[/B] was the name passed along to many, many girls.

In my family, too, there is a Lydia in every generation. The name honors Lydia, who was the first European Christian, baptized by St. Paul near today's town of Philippi in northern Greece. She was a merchant, trading in the costly purple dye extracted from cochineal shells.

I was baptized at the same location as Lydia, at St. Panteleimon's Church in Philippi.

Many families have traditional names. Among Scots, the names James, Robert, and Alexander are popular because of historical importance.

[ItchyTick]

It was definitely worth it for me. Most of what I knew about my Scottish ancestry was in the form of oral history from my grandparents.

One of my Scottish ancestors who came to the US in the 1700s, married a French Quebec woman, who was one of the original French families on the continent and part of the aristocracy. I was able to get all of the documentation from Quebec databases. Following her European genealogy I was able to determine my ancestry (documented) literally going back one thousand years, which includes Scottish royalty as her ancestors married Scottish royalty. Even some Viking in there.

I was able to follow two other Scottish ancestry grandparents genealogy back to Scotland and Ulster Plantation to about 1700 or slightly prior.

Ancestry DNA was also quite interesting.

Just my two cents.

In contrast, my wife's Italian ancestry was an absolute dead end.

[dcommini]

I've used Ancestry.com with a little success tracking my mother's side of the family. The real problem is that her maiden name is so very common, as are many of the first names of my ancestors that it is entirely possible that you get a few different matches for (for example) a Robert Fairchild who was born to Samuel Fairchild in or around 1835. My family claims Scottish ancestry, and yet when I track what is available on Ancestry I get all the way back to Thomas Fairchild around 1610 somewhere in England - and it seems that most of the Fairchilds you can find all somehow go back to Thomas if you're using Ancestry and other sites that pull information from the same area.

But, those problems aside, it has been a useful tool to tracking down some other parts of my family after they came to America. For example a movie based on true evenets came out sometime ago that starred Matthew McConaughey that took place during the Civil War - well I found out that I am slightly related (through marriage) to the character Mr. McConaughey portrayed in that movie, and I found that out using Ancestry and verifying records that corraborated with my own. So not only did I get the excitement of having a movie made about my home county, but also that a movie was being made that told the story of one of my relatives.

The real problem with Ancestry.com is that most of their records come from the US, and the UK, so even with a paid membership it can still not be that useful if you're trying to track down family out of that area. For example, my father's side is Italian. With Ancestry (and even with the international membership) I can only trace my family back to around 1850 when my great-great-grandfather was born, and that comes from his ship manifest (given the date and the age he put down) and his Ellis Island record. But going further back than that is almost impossible if using Ancestry because they don't have as complete records for Italy as they do for the US, also many records would be kept at the local parish, and then lost if the parish ever shut down or mergered. BUT!!! I at least have somewhere to start looking should I ever get the money to hire a geneologist to track my Italian side.

I recommend using Ancestry, because the family tree is at least free to use, and you can upload your own records and pictures, so your children and their children can look back at these things as well (there is a privacy thing in place so other people can not view living people that aren't in their tree). And I recommend downloading your tree (which is also free) and uploading it to GEDCom (as another user did) and finding matches that way. If you do the DNA test you can download those results and upload them to GEDCom as well and find DNA matches all for free (save the initial cost of the DNA test).

Now, 23 and Me has an interesting thing where they will show you if you are related to famous people from history. My father did this and it showed a relation to Naploean Bonaparte, Charlemagne, and St. Luke. Keep in mind that this just shows possible relation, not necesarrily descent.

All of these can be great tools to use, but as with all tools, you have to put in the work to use them.