which is best value family history site?

Mojisola

pimento wrote: »

What type of help are you expecting?

I've seen trees with whom I share ancestors that have the most howling errors in them. So what? My ancestors don't belong to me, they're in the public domain and you can't libel a dead man.

Take a chill pill. If their tree is wrong, it's their loss, not yours.

And if other people copy the trees with the wrong information without checking it for themselves, that's their problem.

Ancestry are usually pretty good at sorting it out if living people are posted on other people's trees. You can't expect them to decide who is right between two members' trees because they'd have to pay people to check the research on both.

There are some terrible examples of bad research on the public trees - people becoming parents while aged 2 or 3, people dying and then having several more children, etc - so always check information carefully if you think a tree may link to yours.

pimento

That's why my tree is private and I don't take anything at face value.

Mojisola

pimento wrote: »

That's why my tree is private and I don't take anything at face value.

It's a shame that the "name collectors" have caused a lot of people to make their trees private because it reduces the chances of linking up with relatives but it's understandable when you read some of the stories of people's trees being attached to others who have no connection at all with them. It's not so bad when it's distant relatives but seeing your parents in someone else's tree - especially when it's copied on at random - can be very annoying.

Grumpelstiltskin

Mojisola wrote: »

It's a shame that the "name collectors" have caused a lot of people to make their trees private because it reduces the chances of linking up with relatives but it's understandable when you read some of the stories of people's trees being attached to others who have no connection at all with them. It's not so bad when it's distant relatives but seeing your parents in someone else's tree - especially when it's copied on at random - can be very annoying.

I've had that, my mother in a totally unconnected tree. I know that it is my mother she was the only person born with her particular name in that particular year. Mind you I ignore them now, I've contacted people about their trees being a load of rubbish but they don't change them.

It is a shame as by someone putting their tree on Ancestry a whole new line that no one knew about - a well kept secret for 100 years - has been found, but I won't put anything on there.

spidersandsprinkles

Grumpelstiltskin wrote: »

You are very lucky to trace your family that far back with proof.
Parish records only date from the 1500s, any some churches much later.
Before that time surviving records only tend to be for the rich and landowners, not the big majority of ordinary people.

The tree goes back to around 1600, after that a lot of it is educated guesses. But interesting nonetheless! I'm quite lucky that on my dads side the family have lived in Yorkshire for a very long time (Although some may say unlucky haha) with branches off to america and such.

netti

If you buy family tree maker - platinum edition - currently £39.47 on Amazon - you get 6 months premium access to Ancestry included. You don't even have to use the software if you don't want to.

yellow_dog

free trial with findmypast and ancestry at the moment!

WildRedHed

I started with MyHeritage as I`d seen someone elses tree built with it and its very user-friendly and colourful (!), but found I was using Ancestry to actually get the info from its colossal database, then input into my MyHeritage tree. Mmmm...

One thing about MyHeritage is it will not let you put the same person in twice without warning. It also warned me when I entered my Great-grandmothers age as 15 when she had her first baby - "Are you sure about that?"

ScotlandsPeople is pay by search, but you do get a printable download of certificates for about £7 each.

Fantabulous

If you go to https://www.lds.org.uk and have a look for a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints near you, then look for their Family History Centre.

You can book into a session for three hours at a time totally free of charge. You will have access to ancestry, findmypast, genealogist, etc, etc, via their computer link.

You do not have to be a LDS Church Member in order to use this service.

dasophster

Out of the two main genealogy sites available in this country, findmypast is superior, the search function is much better than ancestry and on the marriage records you can find exactly which person someone married; as opposed to the free GRO records (the same ones available on ancestry) where before 1912 there are several couples on each record. Also if you have maritime links, findmypast wipes the floor with ancestry. Findmypast even has more complete passenger list and immigration records than Ancestry, one of my great-grandmothers moved to Australia towards the end of her life and the record of her voyage wasn't on ancestry at all, yet it and about 5 other trips she made were on FMP. Another ancestor of mine was with the merchant Navy and if we trusted ancestry we would have thought he dropped off the face of the earth.

There is one major drawback with FMP and that is their inbuilt tree software is rubbish; its really slow and like something you'd get off a CD-rom you could buy in the Co-op in 1995. Hence we really stick with ancestry purely for the fantastic tree software. We have a year or so ago purchased their family tree software but its nowhere near as good as that which is on the site.

If you get back to before around 1830, familysearch.org is far superior to either site; and its free. Bear in mind though there is still some incorrect info on familysearch.org in the member created trees. Familysearch's search facility is incredible; far superior to ancestry or findmypast; and easily finds misspelled names, ancestry does have a wildcard search option but half the time it doesn't work and says too many matches.

Good luck to anyone looking to trace their ancestry! I enjoy it so much now that I do trees for my friends for free. I do bite off more than I bargained for though as I find around 50% of people of British origin who I have done trees for have at least one branch of their tree that goes back to nobility (and can be proven) and sometimes its like opening a can of worms. One of my friends her tree is just ridiculous so I gave up now, as at least three branches of her family go back to royalty eventually. My tree is mostly very poor people but I've managed to trace back at least 5 generations on every single branch of my tree, and up to 12 on most of them. It turned out 3 of my mum's grandparents are quite closely related blood relatives of each other with the 4th being related via marriage and they never knew. A couple of people knew that my mum's maternal grandparents were related but thats about it I know it was common in the past for people to marry their cousins on occasion but these particular folks only married people with maybe 4 or 5 surnames. So my mum has turned out to be descended from some minor nobility several times over and in several different ways, they are quite famous so once you get back to pre-1500 there are quite a few books written about them and their various descents. Anyway I joked to my mum I was renaming the tree 'inbreds of Derbyshire' that didn't go down too well xx