Ancestry

[237SJ]

I have finally signed up to this after getting the 2 weeks free deal. I find the site rather messy and a lot of the info seems to come from Free BMD anyway. I don`t know what I expected really but you seem to need quite a bit of info yourself before you can search for anything. What do people think of it - do you get the hang of finding your way around the site?

[jno]

yes, I find it useful. It's by far the biggest of the genealogy sites and has lots of stuff that the others don't. Of course if it's stuff you don't actually want, that's not much help. But I need non-British details, and it's good with worldwide families; I also need stuff from before 1837, when official registration began. It's pretty good with 18th-century parish records and so on.

Searching under Family Trees is often a good idea as people who know their families well provide details not available anywhere else. (Others of course just upload rubbish without checking.)

[237SJ]

Thanks jno - hopefully I`ll get familiar with it. I only really looked at it last night and have already had 2 messages from someone in America who turns out to be my forth cousin. He is of a line who married into my family (my great grandmother) and wants photos, stories etc of her descendants who would be my grandfather and father. I want to give him some but I don`t want it plastered all over the internet. Maybe he will just keep them for his personal records.

[237SJ]

*fourth* doh

[Old_Geezer]

I don't do genealogy so much now but it's fair to say the format has changed over time and I find it less instinctive than I used to. Even so you just put in what you know or a portion of what you know and can adjust tolerance and filters and suchlike, making for a more flexible user interface.

The data does not come from Free BMD. That is a separate project that relies on volunteers tuening microfiche data into computer data files. Last I heard it still had data to transfer. Naturally, though, BMD is the same source data. However Ancestry has other data too.

[jno]

only give out information that you feel comfortable with. Personally, I don't mind who knows things about my grandfather but I'd sooner keep my father's life quiet. (If I even gave out his name you could find some of the more disreputable elements of his past online.)