I’m a newbie regarding this site. I can see some of it without joining, but in order to see more, I have to join. I’m leering of doing so, because I’ve read some message boards complaining about how impossible it is to get off their billing system once you join.
Can anyone tell me their experiences about ancestry.com? Are their billing practices on the up-and-up? I’d appreciate any input, both positive and negative.
I never went beyond the free 14-day trial, and I had no problems. ($30/month is a lot to me right now…)
Ancestry is kind of like the Rocky Mountains of genealogy- there’s no way around them. (I pay $19.95 per month; some months I don’t use it enough to justify that and other months I do.)
If you have a membership/access to Sam’s Club, sometimes they sell a version of the genealogical software program Family Tree Maker for around $30 that includes a 3 month membership to Ancestry.com.
PLEASE see if your library subscribes, first. (Granted, this is the only database we get that doesn’t allow home access.) It may have already been paid for for you, so don’t waste your money!
Also, be aware that there is not yet a name index for the 1940 census, so don’t do it for that if that’s what you’re looking for. Great information there, sure. But check your library! Please!
What does Ancestry.com have that other, free or cheaper, sites don’t?
Incredible numbers of digitized city directories.
Some digitized scool yearbooks.
A search engine which works better than free/cheaper sites.
Unless you’re from Nevada or Delaware. (Those they’ve completed; they hope to have the initial index up by next week and then spend the next few weeks perfecting it.)
I used to be a Federal Government documents librarian and went to several meetings and conferences in D.C. that were dedicated to federal information. At one a Census Bureau executive- one of the big men in that bureau- gave a seminar on historical Census information and how to find it.
He used Ancestry.com. That’s what the Census uses when they need to find info fast. Simply put, Ancestry is the best at digitizing and navigating the Census.
In addition to that they have literally thousands of other databases that include ship records, marriage records on the state and county level, and gazillions of documents and photographs and records uploaded over the last 15 years or so by millions of users, and the ability to connect your own family tree to the research done by generations of other people (caveat: check their sources, but even having to do this it’s a lot quicker than having to find these things from scratch).
I just went there and tried to do the 14-day free trial to see how I liked it, and they wanted my credit card number right off the bat. I halted and backed out of the signup process at that point, but they still sent me and e-mail saying I was signed up. Now what?
I don’t think I’ve ever used the site, so I can’t comment on how useful it is or why it’s better than other sites.
But if getting them to stop billing your credit card is a problem, can you use a prepaid credit card with a balance of say $50 on it? That way, if they won’t stop billing you, you can simply wipe out the balance on the card with a nice dinner, and let them flog that dead horse all they want afterwords.
I have been an ancestry.com member off and on for yours. It is a completely legitimate business that also serves as a serious reference compilation of the largest number of genealogy records in existence. It is pretty awesome if you like genealogy. I have never had a problem cancelling my subscription when I wanted to take a break. They have so much information that you can literally never be finished. I have spent several thousand hours on mine and I am still only scratching the surface. I don’t know what I am going to do with the information either. In the smallest printed format, mine is already well over 1000 pages long.
You’ve printed your stuff out? I just save it and back it up on DVDs, flash drives and an external drive.
I’m not really sure how much stuff other places have. The only real other place I’ve used is Family Search. While sometimes Ancestry gives really strange results, for the most part I’ve been able to find what I needed if it exists.
I feel like I must be doing something wrong. I signed up a few months ago and have made a very small tree that includes my mom and dad, my uncle, and my maternal grandmother and grandfather. I don’t have much in the way of relatives around now to ask questions about our family tree.
So is ancestry.com relying on me to be providing them with more information about my family to help out other people? Or should I actually be able to discover more information on my own family there? For example, I know my father was one of 13 kids. It would be interesting for me to be able to see all of them in the family tree, along with their kids, etc. Not because I want to get in contact with any of them, but just because I want to see where all the branches go. Am I missing the point?
I’ve been thinking for quite some time that I need to kill my subscription and stop paying them, but perhaps this thread will change my mind about that.
I’m not sure what it is you’re asking here. You have to do the searching yourself in order to find more information and more family members. A census search is a good way to do that, if you know your grandparents’ names and if they were in the 1930 or earlier census. There are likely other family trees that contain your family, also, but you have to do the searching on your own.
Re: unsubscribing from Ancestry. I’ve never had a problem doing this. You just go to your account and select the option that says something along the lines of “no automatic renewal”, or uncheck the auto-renewal button, whichever option they have. I’ve done this multiple times. In fact, I think you may be able to sign up and check ‘no auto-renewal’ from the get-go.
Don’t sign up.
Ancestry.com has a free site calledfamilyseach.org. It probably doesn’t have as much available, but you can find all sorts of things there without having to pay anything.
I’ve been using it (and have been inputting data for them – they work on a volunteer system) and have discovered all sorts of things, like:
Give it a try first. If you need more, join Ancestry.
Ancestry.com and familysearch.org are not affiliated. Familysearch is owned and run by the LDS (Mormons). It’s to do with identifying their ancestors so they can posthumously baptise them as Mormons, I believe. Ancestry is owned by a for-profit, publically traded company.
If you were considering buying the Family Tree Maker software at all, it comes with a free trial of Ancestry. It will give you a chance to identify if the site is worth the subscription fee to you.
Family Tree Maker also links directly with Ancestry. If you call up an ancestor on the program, it will display every other tree on Ancestry that mentions that name, along with other documents such as census hits. The listings will indicate if the information is sourced by the submitter, and provide that source. It’s a nice feature and I’ve found a lot of information that way.
familysearch.org frustrates me.
It only shows one census for someone. :mad: I can’t get the blasted thing to show me all the census a person was on.
for example, in 1930 my uncle was 20 and he was living with his dad. Search my uncle’s name brings up only the 1930 census.
I can’t figure out how to see him on the 1920 census
If I search his dads name it only shows the 1930 census. That guy should be on at least three or four earlier ones. :smack:
why do they make these web sites so damn confusing?
Is ancestry.com easier to us?
If I put in a name will it give me his birth certificate, marriage, death certificate, and all the census he appeared on? You should be able to get links to all the records on that person.
I don’t want to get teased with one stinking entry like familysearch.org gives.
Ancestry makes it easier because they are bringing in a lot of money to pay people to make it easier. Familysearch is run by a church, and is free. They’re not quite apples and oranges, maybe more like oranges and tangerines? And you will find different information on them. Ancestry has only indexes for old Chicago births and deaths, while familysearch has copies of the documents. However, on ancestry I’ve been able to go back a little further with my family, and I’ve been able to find other relatives much, much easier.
You * will get all the censuses that he’s in, but you might have to weed through some false hits. But it’s usually pretty easy.
Most birth certificates aren’t on line. Maybe just a simple listing from the Department of vital records in the state. Same with Death certs–although some states have them. Marriage certs are spotty, but that’s because they mostly aren’t on line anywhere.