Two brothers and their father want to do some research, Could they share one account under the father’s name? They are after the same info…its just that the father isn’t as computer savvy and it takes two to walk him thru stuff when the first attempt causses excessive pulling out of hair.
Well, set up the account. Give him the user name and password. There you go. Shared account.
I would strongly advise making a backup of your master family tree in case the not-so-computer savvy partner accidentally deletes something.
Other than that, I see no reason why you couldn’t share the account.
Another thing you can do with Ancestry is each set up (and pay for) your own accounts and then you can share your trees with each other and even make them public so anyone can see them (anyone who is still living cannot be seen unless you specifically share your tree with them). But I wouldn’t bother. I’d just give Dad the password.
You can let people do limited editing which requires the Home person to ok before it becomes official.
You add them under “Tree Pages” which is a drop-down menu, choose “Tree settings” and from there you can invite specific people to contribute info , just see info on living members of a tree or be an Editor who can contribute and change info.
Next question… I was looking at a 14 day trial having never used it before. I see that after the trial you pay about $20/month or $100 for six months.
At some point, depending on how large your family is, how much info is available and how much time you put into it, you probably accomplish all that you can. At that point can you quit paying and retain all of your work?
You can find a lot of US information for free at familysearch.org - mostly transcribed census and marriage records. At worldconnect.com you can find shared family trees.
Ancestry has a lot of other transcribed books, military records, ship manifests etc., many of which can be accessed for free at your local library.
I’ve been playing with Ancestry for a while but it is expensive; use your time wisely. It can create & read GEDCOM files, the standard used by other programs. Pictures, etc., that pop up must probably be saved separately. So you can take that info with you…
There are other free sources for much of the data. Yesterday I went to orientation at my local genealogy library. Click around the site to see what’s available online to everybody & what the library offers–in person or to members online. Apparently Houston’s genealogy library is excellent but your town might have one. Also there are books and microfilm, once you narrow down your location–not everything has been digitized.
The basic Ancestry membership has only limited access to international records but I’ve been able to find out surprising stuff about my ancestors who took earlier boats. Also a few fairly recent brick walls. And User Data going Way Back is often somewhat spurious…
The cheaper version does not allow you access to international records. There is a shit ton of information on the American side, however. Ancestry has bought up most of the search engines out there, including Find A Grave recently (it remains free so far). Your tree will stay on the website forever, unless you remove it, whether or not you continue paying. It’s a community sharing website, although you can privatize your family tree, if you wish. I see that as a dickish thing to do, other than blocking access to living members.
I suggest searching for your family members on Google Books. It’s a great resource.
Recently I’ve found a lot of the census records point right back to Ancestry, which means you can’t view them.
I’m not sure if two people can share an account or not. I mean I’m sure you can, but some places I’ve seen do not allow two people on at the same time, I’m not sure if Ancestry is like that or not.
I just sent my Ancestry login information to all of my kids, who say they can access the site now. Don’t know about more than one being logged in at a time, however.
My wife and I share an account, she is working on her family, I’m doing mine.
Not only can you retain it, you can go in an edit it if you find info from a different source. Ancestry pretty much just stops you from doing certain types of searching in their databases.
I found a coupon, bought the 6 months subscription at a discount and hit the wall with my family about a month and a half in - it just isn’t documented prior to 1900. (that, and/or I don’t have the interest level to do the types of searching necessary to find anyone before then). So, I terminated my subscription, but I can still get in to see the tree. Since then, I’ve added some things when I’ve found out that names have changed, divorces have happened, babies were born, etc.
Of course, Ancestry could change at any time and wipe the info.
In the ten years I’ve subscribed, they haven’t.
You should go to your public library or call them and see if they have Ancestry.com and use it for free. I did this , I was able to do it from home too using my library card . Ancestry.com also sometime have a whole month for free , I had use this too.
Good info all, thank you! I’m hoping to get started and then let my dad have at it in his local library.
Question: How are individuals uniquely identified on a family tree… DOB, SS #, etc ?
You can enter a huge amount of information about a person, but the basics are full name, DOB, DOD, place of birth, place of death, spouse and children. It’s very important that you source all information that you can with birth/death certificates, census cites, obituaries, etc. Unsourced material is regarded as highly suspect if not downright unusable by serious genealogists.
Yes, they can. I am often logged in doing one tree on my laptop, and logged in doing another tree on the iPad.
I might be emailing a cousin about somebody on my mom’s side while investigating my dad’s side on the other machine. It’s just easier for me.
I gather that I don’t have to go thru that riggamarole while entering a couple generations of my own family.
I was doing my dad family and they didn’t have any DOB he was born in Russia
around 1892 . So I looked up the Census for the 1900’s to try and find info on dad family , and I found out that I had an uncle dad never really talked about.
There a religious web site for family research and it’s free, I wish I could remeber which religious it was . UGH !
I have a question about ancestry.com. I’ve been curious about trying it, but is it useful if all your relatives are relatively recent U.S. immigrants?
My parents immigrated here in the 50s following the turmoil in Europe of the middle of the century. I know a fair amount back to my great-grandparents, who were Hungarian Jews.
Accessing most overseas data requires the more expensive membership; check out the website for details. My father’s parents were immigrants, so I don’t have much more than names of great grandparents on that side.