Ancestry.com?

[chicagolaura]

Has anyone used it? Love it? Hate it?

I'm thinking of getting DH a subscription to it for his bday because he always says it would be cool to know more about his family tree/bloodline. Not sure if it actually helps or if it is the equivalent to a Google search.

How many months did you use it? You can pay monthly or for a year. Not sure if it takes a year to get all of the information available. That seems unnecessary? Maybe I just don't really get what it is?

Thanks for any help!

[cadien]

Most public libraries have a subscription so you can try it out for free there. You have to be physically in the library but again, free. Also they tend to give evening classes on how to navigate it.

[caloneis]

My mom does genealogy and uses Ancestry (and complains about it all the time). Ancestry works best when you know your family tree reasonably well including birth and death dates. You can find others whose share members of your tree and possibly build out your tree from their info. One of the issues is bad info, another is other people making their trees private. They also offer genetic ancestry information now through a DNA test. That might be interesting for him. You can also use this info to look for people you might share a great great grandfather with, for example.

[mrsbeachcat]

I've had a subscription for about five months... Maybe a little longer. It's pretty cool. I thought the project (researching my SOs family and my family) would only take a month or so but it gets overwhelming fast. I haven't logged in for awhile but eventually I hope to create a little book with all the info. One cool thing is that I've gotten to see pictures of relatives from like 150 years ago and a painting of some dude from the 1600s. I also found out that my great grandparents are burried a few miles from me which is weird because I always thought they lived in Missouri (I'm in California).

Anyway, I think it's a fun gift and I bet he'd like it.

[beenandgone]

My mom has a subscription, so I've played on it before. It's really neat! Most of my family is European, but from Basingstoke not yet added onto ancestry, so some of my branches don't go back very far.

But. My mother can trace some of her ancestors back to England and Scotland in the 1600s. We even have one church record branch that traces back to the 1400s!!!

It's REALLY amazing. Anything back more than 200 years, of course, I take with a grain of salt because records just aren't that reliable, but still. Fascinating.

[chicagolaura]

Thank you. I just ordered the DNA kit and will have him open that on his bday (if it comes in time). I can then feel him out if he is up for the research part of it and then sign up for that too if he is.

Thanks again!

[Deleted]

I've used this site. My lineage is limited to what other family members of mine have posted. So, for me it was pointless. There wasn't any new information.

I'm Aleut, and our ancestry is not widespread so it's difficult to track.

But my cousin did do the DNA testing and that was interesting. It showed Asian descent, which makes sense.

That's a good idea for a gift though, I know I would like it.

[badwolf]

I'm a regular genea-holic and I use Ancestry regularly. As long as you remember that most of the trees on Ancestry aren't actually verified information and that there's a very small percentage of records which have been digitized and are available online you'll be okay. I won't bore you with the philosophies of current genealogy practices but tracing your family can get really interesting, even if they're just average people. The DNA tests through Ancestry are fine if you want a general idea of what areas of the world your family is from. If you want to add some tools to that you can upload your Ancestry results to a couple of other places that will let you do things like compare your results to others who have uploaded their results, look at segment information and see some more in-depth reports.

[kimandhuck]

I was able to get back to the 1400's on my dad's side (mainly only because apparently some people in my family were important back in the day, so there's a whole website on them).

I will warn you, if you cancel, watch your credit card statement. They'll still charge you. Then when you try to get a refund, they'll be too busy to answer for 10 days (no lie), but if you hit the option to sign up, you'll get right through and they can do the refund.

I obviously have a lot of feels about this site.

[supertrooper1]

I did the DNA test with Ancestry.com and it was amazing. I was adopted and have only met the maternal side of my family. It was great to see the breakdown. I haven't registered for the genealogy side of the site yet. The DNA kit will be a good start for your H, and then he can decide if he wants to sign up for the rest of the site.

[saraml13]

DH and I have done a fair amount of genealogy research. We got started with Ancestry, but stopped our subscription after a few months. We found we went through periods of time when we were too busy to really use it and didn't feel like we were getting our money's worth.

Since then, I've moved to doing most of my genealogy research through familysearch.org, which is free. They don't have as much user submitted data, but they have access to the mainstays of genealogy research: census records, birth and death certificates, marriage records, some church records, etc. They also have good tools for mapping out family trees.

I would recommend getting started at a free website, like family search. He should be able to make a lot of progress there. Then, if he's still into genealogy, get a subscription to Ancestry for a limited period of time to fill in the holes that he wasn't able to find elsewhere.

[abvintage]

Love it they have a limited free version. My suggestion: Get the DNA test for him to do and see how far he gets on the free version. If he loves it then buy him the subscription.

[amma]

My SIL just did the DNA kit and thought it was pretty cool. Let me know what you think, I may be interested sometime.

[akafred]

DH got into it for a while several years ago. It's pretty cool. We traced my paternal grandfather's bloodline back. Just kind of one branch (we "turned" occasionally). I thought I was Irish but nope. That line we took back went all the way across the pond back to Europe. Apparently there is a way to pay to cross the ocean, but since someone I am related to already unlocked that, I was able to go back to the 1500's. One of my great great greats was actually a minstrel for the King of England. He came over with his son from Italy. So I am "more Italian than Irish" (at least in the branches we followed).

My only complaint was that someone I know I am related to (semi-famous WWI hero) doesn't appear to be related to me. I found his dad on my tree and I found his dad on HIS tree, but for some reason there is a disconnect between his tree and mine. There are some quirks for things like people using their nicknames as if they were first names and changing it between censuses and stuff like that. But it is pretty impressive anyway.

[KMW08]

Aug 10, 2016 18:13:26 GMT -5 mrsbeachcat said:

I've had a subscription for about five months... Maybe a little longer. It's pretty cool. I thought the project (researching my SOs family and my family) would only take a month or so but it gets overwhelming fast. I haven't logged in for awhile but eventually I hope to create a little book with all the info. One cool thing is that I've gotten to see pictures of relatives from like 150 years ago and a painting of some dude from the 1600s. I also found out that my great grandparents are burried a few miles from me which is weird because I always thought they lived in Missouri (I'm in California).

Anyway, I think it's a fun gift and I bet he'd like it.

There's a great site, findagrave.com that has an extensive database of cemeteries and photos of the headstones.


My mom uses ancestry. I think it's a bit challenging to navigate. I usually get sucked in on things that aren't even pertinent to me, it's cool to see old records and logs. Also agree with pp that knowing birth & death dates help tremendously.

[wibblywobbly]

I have a subscription to Ancestry and use it a lot. I like it but can see the issues with it. As it has been mentioned before, be aware that user submitted trees can/do have a lot of mistakes and false information. I'd stick to using the actual records for your info.

You can get a free subscription for a month to test it out. Or libraries and the LDS churches have free access to the records on Ancestry.

Family Search is a free site that has a lot of records and information too.

I did find new family members by doing a combo of Ancestry research and googling names.

[lilki]

I actually found the DNA test a lot more interesting than the subscription. I think it costs $89 or $99 and I don't *think* you have to be a member to order the test. I found a ton of relatives I never knew I had.

I've found ancestry works ok for the records found in the US, but if his family has recently immigrated you'll need the World subscription. I didn't find it very helpful. If he likes geneology, though, it could be a lot of fun.