Do you use any sites like ancestry.com etc

lauren grier

lauren grier

you're like stars
Mom and I have been curious (our combined entire lives) about my great grandfather. He came and went before either of us were born.. during a time when these things were pretty taboo. We don't even know when my GGparents were married. In the 1925 census my GGmother was listed by her maiden name, her first son was born in late 1925 (or early 1926. we're sketchy on that) and by the 1930 census she was living alone (well boarding with another family) with her now 2 sons, and in the 1940 census she listed herself as widowed (but we know he wasn't deceased, mom says this was because of the taboo). He left in late 1927 or early 1928 when she was pregnant with my grandfather. mom casually digs around -- and I truthfully haven't looked hard for anything since I was a teenager. I randomly stumbled upon some old census info today and it reignited that spark in me. My grandfather never spoke about his father (or his brother.. which I somehow forgot existed until today, he passed away when i was very young- like 2, so this is understandable. My GGmother passed away around this same time, and never spoke of the father either according to mum )Now that my grandfather is also deceased.. there's no one alive in my family that knows anything about my GGfather. I can never find ANYTHING about him.. he's not listed in the 1925 or 1930 census.. either with or without my GGmother so it's weird. He's literally a ghost :p I am really hesitant to pay for a site like ancestry.com but we've, like I said.. been curious our entire lives. We know nothing about him other than that he came from scotland --> nova scotia --> america. He may have left the country again after he abandoned her and that's why we can never find info.

So have you had any luck?

PS.. he has a .. uh.. very common Scottish surname.. so that helps .. not haha.
 
Ancestry.com is great. You can pay for just one month and get a lot more info than if you do the free version, but even the free version might give you more info.

We've been working with it for a few months gathering information on both sides of our family because I just lost all the links to my Mom's side with my Grandmother's passing. I haven't purchased the membership, yet, just have been working in the free part and still found tons of info. I'll sit down for a month or so to do the paid version to see how much more it can get me.

But definitely go play in it - you'll be surprised at what you can find out!
 
La I have a few family history accounts. I have accounts at familysearch.org, and ancestory.com. I actually teach family history classes at my church and I am WAY into this kind of stuff! If you want, I'd be happy to search in my account to see if there was anything that I could find. If you're interested, PM me with details and I'll see what I can find out for you! :D
 
My husband has accounts at ancestry.com and familysearch.org so he's always digging into his family history. I think my maternal grandmother's side is pretty complete. I'm not into it too much because I'm still trying to figure out how to map out my family tree.


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I have had subscribed in the past. In a lot of ways it's great -- you can obviously search a lot of records like the census, city directories, SS death index. It can be tough though if you have a very common name in a big city -- it can be very difficult to confirm that, say a particular John Smith is YOUR John Smith. I've run into that problem with some of my ancestors -- especially when you get back to prior to about 1920. Also, not all the records are accurate -- I've seen some that were clearly either mistaken (e.g., person answer the census gets someone's birthday wrong) or the person was not telling the truth (e.g., immigrants saying they were born here when you know they weren't). Finally, I guess the most frustrating thing to me -- which isn't really Ancestry.com's fault -- is that the dates, places etc don't really tell you who the person really was or provide a whole lot of color about their lives. That's why I wish we had more family historians who had recorded family stories -- not just names and dates.
 
NellahBean said:
La I have a few family history accounts. I have accounts at familysearch.org, and ancestory.com. I actually teach family history classes at my church and I am WAY into this kind of stuff! If you want, I'd be happy to search in my account to see if there was anything that I could find. If you're interested, PM me with details and I'll see what I can find out for you! :D
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That would be so awesome <3 I'll pm you in a little bit.. I'm supposed to be working on a collab.. LOL
 
DawnMarch said:
I have had subscribed in the past. In a lot of ways it's great -- you can obviously search a lot of records like the census, city directories, SS death index. It can be tough though if you have a very common name in a big city -- it can be very difficult to confirm that, say a particular John Smith is YOUR John Smith. I've run into that problem with some of my ancestors -- especially when you get back to prior to about 1920. Also, not all the records are accurate -- I've seen some that were clearly either mistaken (e.g., person answer the census gets someone's birthday wrong) or the person was not telling the truth (e.g., immigrants saying they were born here when you know they weren't). Finally, I guess the most frustrating thing to me -- which isn't really Ancestry.com's fault -- is that the dates, places etc don't really tell you who the person really was or provide a whole lot of color about their lives. That's why I wish we had more family historians who had recorded family stories -- not just names and dates.
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Yes.. LOL I already saw my (Great) nana lied on the census at one point saying she was born here hahaha.
 
Darcy Baldwin said:
Ancestry.com is great. You can pay for just one month and get a lot more info than if you do the free version, but even the free version might give you more info.

We've been working with it for a few months gathering information on both sides of our family because I just lost all the links to my Mom's side with my Grandmother's passing. I haven't purchased the membership, yet, just have been working in the free part and still found tons of info. I'll sit down for a month or so to do the paid version to see how much more it can get me.

But definitely go play in it - you'll be surprised at what you can find out!
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yeh I get to about the same point (dead end) with the freebie side. It's mind boggling that he just really vanished. He was here for a blink and gone and we can't find him.. obviously he didn't want to be found :p
 
I haven't but I have a cousin who has gone all out on my dad's side, and somewhere floating around my mom's mom's house is like a binder tracing both sides of my mom's family back to like the 1700s. I think my cousin has my grandfather's side pretty complete, but as my grandmother's mother and her family came to America from Russia in the very beginnings of the 1900s that side is tough to track down. I think he said he had almost no luck with her side on Ancestry.com at all.
 
Yeh my great nana didn't come over till maybe 1920. But she left a nice clear paper trail. That and we knew her hah. GGFather .. No idea when he came over. Somewhere near then- he was obviously in the country for the conception of the first son lol. So at the latest 1926. I know for sure that's contributing to the difficulties though.
 
Oh we also found out when John's grandmother died that John's dad - her oldest - was well, illegitimate. lol! Something none of us ever knew. So we could never go that route on finding out his information. We always wondered why John's dad (and John and his siblings) look NOTHING like the rest of the family. Everyone else clearly looks like his grandmother or the pictures of her first husband. The only way we found out was in the bottom of her jewelry box was a picture of his grandmother holding his father and had them both listed as her maiden name. Then we hunted up her very old records and found out he'd have been one when she married her first husband. It was all very funny to us because she had his dad at 16, but she always said that didn't matter because SHE was married then. The old liar.
 
I have an account with ancestry and LOVE it. It's so interesting.

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My grandma is huge into genealogy so I've got my lined traced back as far as it will go through her lifetime of working it out. It's really amazing what she's done! I'm pretty sure she used Ancestry.com for part of it. I"d give it a whirl!
 
So, tell me about ancestry.com I just signed up, but I can't see where you can find much without paying for a subscription. All the "free" stuff I see is just a generic sample preview with a "subscribe for more info" kinda vibe. Am I looking in the wrong place?

Do you guys have any tips for getting started?
 
You might want to check and see if you can access the full ancestry site at your public library. I can't access it at home (let my subscription die out), but go up to the library and access it all through them.

Genealogy used to be my online obsession before I started scrapping. I'm stuck on mom's side...found where my family came over from England to Virginia in the 1600s, but I am stuck there. And dad's side...yah, totally stuck at my grandparents (both were orphaned in Louisiana and the courthouses that held their records burned to the ground)
 
I haven't because someone on my father's side of the family spent 5 years totally dedicated to tracing the family all the way back to the early 1600s and then made it into a hardcover bound book and gave a copy to every member in the family.

On my mother's side we can't trace her family back further than her parents - many have tried but both her parents were German Jews who managed to get out of Germany during the holocaust. Both of them lost all their family to the chambers/camps and we've never been able to recover any records. They came in through Ellis Island and changed their names here and then got married a couple years after arriving here (they didn't know each other in Germany).
 
I had a yr subscription a couple of years ago to ancestry and I loved it. We've always had a lot of information on my maternal grandfather's side of the family but as for my other grandparents, their history was lost to time. I wanted to make a family tree. I spent the year looking up family and I learned so much about them... some searches were easy while a few members were really hard to figure out what happened to them (like my paternal great-grandmother who in one census as an infant living in her parents house and the next she is living with a married sibling - she lost her mother before she was two). I love learning about my family. I totally plan on getting another subscription when I know that I'll have time to sit down and work on a heritage album.
 
mariewilcox said:
I haven't because someone on my father's side of the family spent 5 years totally dedicated to tracing the family all the way back to the early 1600s and then made it into a hardcover bound book and gave a copy to every member in the family.

On my mother's side we can't trace her family back further than her parents - many have tried but both her parents were German Jews who managed to get out of Germany during the holocaust. Both of them lost all their family to the chambers/camps and we've never been able to recover any records. They came in through Ellis Island and changed their names here and then got married a couple years after arriving here (they didn't know each other in Germany).
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What an amazing story Marie!
 
I have been doing genealogy for about 10 years now and actually discovered an unknown line, and a whole slew of relations, in my family tree a few years ago, which was a huge thrill. Ancestry.com is a big help, but nothing beats going to a courthouse and searching through the actual records. I am lucky in so many ways because most of my lines have been in the US, and in the same areas, since before the Revolutionary War. (Both my mom and dad had ancestors at Valley Forge and my 5GGrandfather crossed the Delaware with Washington) My Dad's family were among the first settlers in five VA counties and my mom's family help settle 4 PA counties. I am a Mayflower Descendant as well. All that means that my family history goes back a long way here in the states, which makes it easier to research. Census records are good, but honestly Tax Rolls are better. Even back then, everyone had to pay taxes. Wills are also a good source. If you can't do the hands on research, then Ancestry is a good place to start, but please make sure you take time to verify things. Too many people take information from the net at face value and don't bother to track down the real records, so there is a lot of false information out there, especially in on-line family trees. Also make sure you are checking records under different spellings. For instance my one family line is Connolly, Conley, Connley, etc....Back in the early days, very few people could read or write, so the census people spelled names however they sounded. It is tricky trying to really figure out who is who, but it is a great hobby!
 
I wish we had some sort of genealogy documentation from our grandparents in my family, but they weren't into recording it. My grandmother from my mom's side, however, told us that our ancestors came from Yunan, China. I tried looking around the ancestry.com site, but I doubted I'd find anything so I stopped.
 
So I started plugging my dads side into my free ancestry.com account.. just because the tree looked naked half filled in. We knew everyone really on that side, no big mysteries etc............. Until I added my grandfather & his parents .. and poof. mystery sibling showed up for my grandfather based on the 1940s census :p Now we're all curious on both sides :p it's fun! I asked mom and she had no clue (dad isn't into these thinsg :p)
 
I agree with Lori. Whatever you find on the net, don't take it as face value. You can also visit old graveyards, yes that is one of my passions, courthouses, libraries and even read historical newspapers.
I have found obituaries of my ancestors in old newspapers that were stored in our library. I even found an old graveyard where my 3rd greatgrandparents are buried outside of my hometown. Never give up the search though! Post on message boards. There is one on ancestry and it is free. Look for surnames, under all different spellings. I couldn't find my grandparents marriage license in the county they lived, but I did find one for my grandfather to a different lady and his divorce papers. I also found one for my grandmother to a different man and her divorce papers. There were a lot of info on both. But it was only after searching in another county in another state that I found their marriage license. My grandmother wasn't divorced from her first husband when she married my grandfather! Her divorce wasn't final yet! It was weird seeing that because I grew up thinking my grandmother was a God fearing woman!
 
yeh I've def seen a lot of misspellings already. It's craziness....... Janelle may have found a marriage record for me (ps. janelle is pure awesomeness) and it's with a church that's actually down the street from where I now live.. my old neighbors are members there, so I asked them to see what old marriage books they still keep on the premises.. if I can confirm it's actually there, I'm going to go ahead and try to order a copy of their original marriage license :] I'm pretty excited at the possibility!
 
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