# I went on ancestory.com...
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-went-on-ancestory-com/617149
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [March 29, 2012, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-went-on-ancestory-com/617149 "2012-03-29T13:35:34Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@BlinkingDuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlinkingDuck)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2012, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-went-on-ancestory-com/617149/1 "2012-03-29T13:35:34Z")
…and find out my great grandmother had 6 children but all died in infancy.
My luck sucks.
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### Author:  [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2012, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-went-on-ancestory-com/617149/2 "2012-03-29T14:21:48Z")
All of them?
But then…
How did…
You just…
…is this one of those “time paradox” things?
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### Author:  [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2012, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-went-on-ancestory-com/617149/3 "2012-03-29T14:40:19Z")
Maybe you’d have better luck if you tried _ancestry_.com. 😛
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### Author:  [@Jenaroph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jenaroph)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2012, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-went-on-ancestory-com/617149/4 "2012-03-29T14:41:35Z")
You think that’s bad, I found out my great-grandmother died a couple years before my grandfather was born. Poor guy had to grow up without a mother…
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### Author:  [@BlinkingDuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlinkingDuck)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2012, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-went-on-ancestory-com/617149/5 "2012-03-29T14:45:44Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#):
>
> Maybe you’d have better luck if you tried _ancestry_.com. 😛
I didn’t want to get sued.
Yup, that’s it.
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### Author:  [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2012, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-went-on-ancestory-com/617149/6 "2012-03-29T14:46:38Z")
I found out my great-grandfather was born only five months after his parents’ marriage. How could that be possible?
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### Author:  [@BlinkingDuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlinkingDuck)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2012, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-went-on-ancestory-com/617149/7 "2012-03-29T14:46:47Z")
> [@Max\_Torque](#):
>
> All of them?
>
> But then…
>
> How did…
>
> You just…
>
> …is this one of those “time paradox” things?
No…it just means that commercial…irks…me.
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### Author:  [@FairyChatMom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FairyChatMom)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2012, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-went-on-ancestory-com/617149/8 "2012-03-29T15:08:24Z")
All of those ancestry commercials irritate me but it’s probably envy. My family has only been in the country since the early 1900s - before that, they were all in Poland. I’m pretty sure there are no records from Poland on the website, and even if there were, I couldn’t read them. So screw you guys who can trace your family trees. 😛
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### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2012, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-went-on-ancestory-com/617149/9 "2012-03-29T15:23:13Z")
Why go to [ancestry.com](http://ancestry.com) when you have [familysearch.org](http://familysearch.org) with the same data for free?
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### Author:  [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2012, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-went-on-ancestory-com/617149/10 "2012-03-29T15:27:22Z")
> [@FairyChatMom](#):
>
> I’m pretty sure there are no records from Poland on the website, and even if there were, I couldn’t read them.
My sister has got really good at reading handwritten parish registries from 18th and 19th century Quebec. It took a while though.
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### Author:  [@tim-n-va](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim-n-va)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2012, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-went-on-ancestory-com/617149/11 "2012-03-29T15:31:11Z")
> [@Colibri](#):
>
> I found out my great-grandfather was born only five months after his parents’ marriage. How could that be possible?
When a woman maintains her virginity until marriage, God sometimes rewards her with a shorter first pregnancy.
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### Author:  [@Laggard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Laggard)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2012, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-went-on-ancestory-com/617149/12 "2012-03-29T17:00:36Z")
I learned I was dead.
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### Author:  [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2012, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-went-on-ancestory-com/617149/13 "2012-03-29T17:54:07Z")
You would not \*believe \*what I learned about my family on [incestry.com](http://incestry.com)!
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### Author:  [@FairyChatMom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FairyChatMom)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2012, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-went-on-ancestory-com/617149/14 "2012-03-29T17:56:09Z")
**Eve** , you literally made me laugh aloud. I scared my poor cat!
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### Author:  [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2012, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-went-on-ancestory-com/617149/15 "2012-03-29T18:05:05Z")
> [@FairyChatMom](#):
>
> All of those ancestry commercials irritate me but it’s probably envy. My family has only been in the country since the early 1900s - before that, they were all in Poland. I’m pretty sure there are no records from Poland on the website, and even if there were, I couldn’t read them. So screw you guys who can trace your family trees. 😛
A brief Google search turns up:
[Poland GenWeb site](http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~polwgw/polandarchives.html) on [Rootsweb.com](http://Rootsweb.com).
[Links](http://genealogy.about.com/od/poland/Polish_Genealogy_Family_History.htm) to other Polish genealogy sites.
Polish [census records](http://polishgeno.com/?page_id=10).
[Polish World Vital Records](http://poland.worldvitalrecords.com/).
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### Author:  [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2012, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-went-on-ancestory-com/617149/16 "2012-03-29T18:09:06Z")
> [@Eve](#):
>
> You would not \*believe \*what I learned about my family on [incestry.com](http://incestry.com)!
You’re descended from Egyptian royalty? 🙂
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### Author:  [@Edward\_The\_Head](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Edward_The_Head)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2012, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-went-on-ancestory-com/617149/17 "2012-03-29T18:33:47Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#):
>
> Why go to [ancestry.com](http://ancestry.com) when you have [familysearch.org](http://familysearch.org) with the same data for free?
Not everything ancestry has is on family search. Family Search sends you to Ancestry for I think the 1930 census and it’s not free.
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### Author:  [@SCSimmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCSimmons)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2012, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-went-on-ancestory-com/617149/18 "2012-03-29T19:10:42Z")
> [@Eve](#):
>
> You would not \*believe \*what I learned about my family on [incestry.com](http://incestry.com)!
Hee-hee. I remember when I was doing research for a family tree project for one of my junior high school classes, using some genealogical documents my grandparents had, and discovered that two of my great-great-grandparents were first cousins. I was sitting at the table at my grandparents’ house, charting these trees out with my mother at my side, and I started to comment on that, only to be shushed by my mother. “Grandma doesn’t like to talk about that,” she said. :dubious:
Do you have any idea how hard it is to draw that on a family tree, by the way?
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### Author:  [@Philliam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Philliam)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2012, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-went-on-ancestory-com/617149/19 "2012-03-29T20:11:49Z")
> [@Frank](#):
>
> My sister has got really good at reading handwritten parish registries from 18th and 19th century Quebec. It took a while though.
…me, too - most of my ancestors were from Quebec. It’s great that so many of the records were photographed in the 40’s so that we have the opportunity to read them on-line:)
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### Author:  [@Pai325](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pai325)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2012, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-went-on-ancestory-com/617149/20 "2012-03-29T20:17:07Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#):
>
> Why go to [ancestry.com](http://ancestry.com) when you have [familysearch.org](http://familysearch.org) with the same data for free?
They don’t have the same things. There’s a lot on familysearch that’s not on ancestry, and there’s a lot on ancestry that’s not on familysearch. And then there is some that they have in common. I use both; I keep two tabs open and go back and forth.
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