Ancestry can be easier, but it can also give you a lot of stuff that just doesn’t fit. They will search for stuff based upon the name and sometimes will give people outside of the date range or place range.
Ancestry usually doesn’t have birth certificates, nor marriage and death certificates. You can find a lot of records and indexes, but not the actual certificates.
Depends - here in South Carolina they scanned in a bunch of death certificates when they were IIRC remodeling their storage at DHEC a few years ago, so they’re on Ancestry. It’s a great resource.
If anybody has family or ancestors in Washington state (or territory), this site is absolute gold. Washington has digitized all of their public records, including birth, death and marriage records.
I was able to find my ancestors on multiple censuses without a problem.
Did you do something special?
Every name I searched popped up on one census only. These are people born around 1900. They should have multiple entrys. I wasted a hour searching for some option to get the other census listings.
I didn’t create a account and sign in. Does that matter?
If your uncle was 20 in 1930, he would have been listed on the 1920 and possibly the 1910 census. Except he wouldn’t be listed on his name, it would be under the name of the head of household, since in 1920 he was only 10 years old. That’s probably why you only got the one hit on him, assuming you searched on his name. Census records are not easy to work with, unfortunately; in some cases, the census taker wrote the name down wrong, or sometimes it’s hard to tell what the name actually is because the taker used fancy lettering, believe it or not. Also, sometimes people are known by their middle name or a nickname, and they’re not listed in the records under that name. It can be quite aggravating.
Hope this helps some.
Ok, I thought if you were in the household there would be a link on the census. So that even an infant would show up by searching their name.
So head of household is the primary key then. That’s what has to be used. Got it.
Back to the web site for more searching. thanks 
familysearch.org is giving me better info since I created a login.
Got my grandfathers military registration card for 1942. He was 52 and still had to register.
I also got my dads oldest brother’s death certificate. He was a railroad switchman and got crushed between two cars in 1943. He was only 29. Amazing to have that document on my pc.
Before I join Ancestry and start getting billed. I’m going to get my mom to take me to her family’s cemetery. We have 4 generations of her grandmothers maternal family buried there. I want to take photos of the headstones and write down all the names and dates. That way I know that I have the right spelling. Some of their names are a bit unusual.
I know for sure one ancestor was Indian. I even have a photo of her from about 1940. She was very dark skinned. Nearly bronze and was from a tribe in Mississippi. She’s buried in that same family cemetery. Her name was Ocie.
I would love for the Dope to have a permanent gen thread, I know there are a lot of people here that have great info.
I would also recommend findagrave.com they have a lot of photos, so I found my g-g-g grandma’s grave and could share the photo with my mom who actually lives near that cemetery.
I found my deceased infant uncle, his siblings didn’t even know that grandma and grandpa bought a headstone.
Remember too, people weren’t all that concerned with spelling, so even official documents will be different from what your family uses.
I’m dying of laughter at the 1940 census. I was viewing the people on a tiny island off of Florida,
the census taker writes below the last person; “Here ends Little Gasparilla and said nudist camp. (Amen).”
I tried ancestry, can’t afford it. Didn’t have any problems canceling online.
I just wanted to mention that on ancestry.com people are indexed individually. The handwriting for the names of my gg grandparents wasn’t clear on the 1910 census, but I found the record because the names of their then toddlers were written clearly.
We spend far too much time researching family history. We have a full membership on Ancestry.com but find that there other sites that are as useful. Some have already been mentioned.
Ellis Island records at ellisisland.org. I believe their holdings are mirrored at Ancestry.com
FreeBMD (Births, Marriages, Deaths) For some UK searches.
Scottish connections? try scotlandspeople where index searches are free but be prepared to pay to view records
Some useful Canadian resources:
Indicies to Canadian Census data.
People who fought with Canada in WW1 I have found Scots, British and American ancestors here.
We recently subscribed to newspaperarchive.com although it is a paysite, we have found much of value there.
Once you get the hang of them, there is much to be learned from the fora at Rootsweb and Genforum. And, they are free.
I would be happy to do lookups for anyone who wants to get started.
Don’t forget the free sites USGenWeb and Rootsweb (the free side of Ancestry). Also, Cyndi’s List is a great source for genealogy links to almost any source, including overseas research and sites run exclusively for people searching for a particular last name, i.e., a “Saunders” family website.