Anyone ever tried Ancestry.com? Or do any kind of ancestry work?

[Senzo Tanaka]

Tips:

I recommend researching your father first. The male is easiest to research since the surname rarely changes. You need to know your father's full name and his father's full name. If you can at least get those, that should be able to trace all of the way back to your ancestor's original country of origin.

Once you have your grandfather's full name, chances are, he's in someone's tree on ancestry.com. From there, you should be able to easily find his father's name. From there, his father's and so on and so on.

While you add each grandfather, it's usually going to tell you their wives name. I would definitely add them as it really helps in narrowing down further ancestors.

 

[Shokushu Goukan]

So after a long time of being curious about it, I finally succumbed to ancestry.com's free 14-day trial. I've been interested in my family history for a while, as I know virtually nothing about my ancestors beyond my great grandparents (and even they are essentially shadows).

Anyone here used ancestry.com before? Or do any kind of ancestry work?

If so, what inspired you to learn more about your family tree? And what kind of tips can you give me to get the most out of this?

I had to use it one time to prove so someone I was not black at all.

 

[Guestx]

I always thought these ancestry sites rely on YOU to do your family tree research for them, so that your family members and future family members can pay for the service.

You do have to put some work into it, but based upon the information that you provide it can help you find public records, grave sites, yearbooks and the like.

I was able to find a 1971 college yearbook my dad was in. As well as the grave my grandfather is buried in. Those were kind of interesting. Tonight I'm going to start trying to go beyond my immediate family. But honestly, it's been a bit disappointing as almost everything so far has just been death certificates, social security applications, etc.

I guess for me, my real question is how do I find out not just names and birth and death dates and the like, but who these people really were? You know, learn about them. I guess unless they were famous in some way that's pretty hard.

Anyway, my family lineage is impossible to trace as my parents are from a part of the world where things like this are of no importance.

What part of the world is that?

 

[Guestx]

Tips:

I recommend researching your father first. The male is easiest to research since the surname rarely changes. You need to know your father's full name and his father's full name. If you can at least get those, that should be able to trace all of the way back to your ancestor's original country of origin.

Once you have your grandfather's full name, chances are, he's in someone's tree on ancestry.com. From there, you should be able to easily find his father's name. From there, his father's and so on and so on.

While you add each grandfather, it's usually going to tell you their wives name. I would definitely add them as it really helps in narrowing down further ancestors.

Cool, that makes sense. Thanks for the info.

 

[Guestx]

I had to use it one time to prove so someone I was not black at all.

Do the DNA test. It'll find something. Maybe just 0.00001%, but it will find something.

 

[Avenger]

My fathers family lineage can be traced back to the 1490's in Leon, Spain. My first ancestor in the western hemisphere arrived in the early 1500's. Lineage is huge in my family and records are constantly updated.

 

[TSO]

Do 23 and me if you want to know where you came from.

My family has a rather interesting history on ancestry.com though. Apparently if you go back to the 1480's my mom and dads families were neighbors on the Scottish/English border.

 

[Mondo Freaks]

dam Moors

 

[Shokushu Goukan]

Do the DNA test. It'll find something. Maybe just 0.00001%, but it will find something.

Oh, I don't even think so. I won that bet fair and square I says.

 

[GSP_37]

So they don't collect birth/marriage/divorce records from all over the world and translate them into English? It's only for white people... who already had people input their family tree data?

 

[Guestx]

So they don't collect birth/marriage/divorce records from all over the world and translate them into English? It's only for white people... who already had people input their family tree data?

I'm pretty sure there are records from all over the world, but you're asking a bit much to have all those millions of records translated. You'd need to know the source language.

In case you're unaware, Ancestry.com has ties to the Mormon Church. The Mormons are huge about ancestry because they believe that baptism is necessary for salvation. Since not all are able to be baptized in this life, they believe that the dead can be baptized posthumously via proxy. Since the Mormons have converts all over the world, of course they are interested in collecting records from all over the world.

 

[Shokushu Goukan]

I'm pretty sure there are records from all over the world, but you're asking a bit much to have all those millions of records translated. You'd need to know the source language.

In case you're unaware, Ancestry.com has ties to the Mormon Church. The Mormons are huge about ancestry because they believe that baptism is necessary for salvation. Since not all are able to be baptized in this life, they believe that the dead can be baptized posthumously via proxy. Since the Mormons have converts all over the world, of course they are interested in collecting records from all over the world.

Shit, just take the corpses to a water park and fix this right up.

 

[CityWithoutMen]

I have not heard about this website before.

 

[VulcanNervPinch]

Anybody else thought this was about Incestry.com ?

Had to try.
Kind of surprised there was no site with that name.

 

[j123]

I've always been curious about this but never used it (or similar services), but can they trace back your ancestry from other countries? Or is this only for North America?

 

[El Moose]

Only got as far back as great-grandparents then the trail went cold

 

[Thread]

Had to try.
Kind of surprised there was no site with that name.

For reals. Brought to you by Brazzers

 

[SMillard]

my wife did it for her brother one year so that they could get the history of both her mother's and father's family. Basically to confirm what "she already knew" which was that they were descended from a German family on her father's side and a Hungarian royal family on their mother's. Well when the paperwork came back it said both families were German. So she called up to complain that they didn't do a good job, after a number of emails it was found out that their great great grandmother was a German girl from some podunk village and some dude came through town telling all the local girls he was some Hungarian prince, when in reality he was basically just some German con-man that was boinking half the countryside. Needless to say my wife's whole family was pretty devastated, which was hilarious to me since they always went on about their "royal lineage" now their just a bunch of German bastards thanks to Fritz the con-man.

 

[TheCanadianGuy]

Yeah, I've had an interest in genealogy for years, my inspiration for researching it was that I've always thought of genealogy as my connection to history.

As far as tips are concerned, it will become harder the further back you go. Ancestors from the beginning of the 19th century onward aren't usually too hard to find, it's the ones before that which are difficult and sometimes inaccurate. To help verify your results you'd be surprised what a simple google search of that person's name will find. I use google all the time to double check my sources, the last thing you want is inaccurate information. I've seen people write a woman down as being born in 1860, and her son born in 1845. Stupid stuff like that will come up, especially from people on the internet doing their family tree.

Check out immigration, birth and death records, family census, etc.

 

[Guestx]

I've always been curious about this but never used it (or similar services), but can they trace back your ancestry from other countries? Or is this only for North America?

There are records from all around the world, though from what I understand there are a greater number of documents from Western Europe than from, say, Central and South America. But yes, the whole world is represented on there to some extent.