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Old 08-30-2014, 05:20 PM
 
Location: SC
2,966 posts, read 5,198,166 times
Reputation: 6925

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I signed in for a free trial and started typing in names of great grandparents and got zero results on both sides.

I don't see how the site can be any use to me if it cant even bring up names of my recent relatives. Am I missing something here?

Why are my recent relatives not even showing up? Is their content based solely on information that other subscribers have entered, or does the site itself make an effort to draw from, and provide it's own access to public databases?

Would love any and all feedback on the usefulness of the site and how much information it can actually provide. When you watch WDYTYA on tv, they all use the site and make it appear as if the site will magically provide detailed info on everyone at the wave of a finger - I knew this was not true, but I at least assumed that a simple search would be able to find at least one grandparent, or great grandparent.
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Old 08-30-2014, 05:47 PM
 
Location: near bears but at least no snakes
26,649 posts, read 28,528,829 times
Reputation: 50476
I use it to keep my family tree. I also use it to do research and to cite sources. I sometimes check hints from other people's trees to see if maybe they could provide a clue. You will not automatically get relatives though. You need to do your own research unless you get lucky and someone on or off the site connects with you and gives you the information.

You take the relatives that you know and are most recent and look for things like their marriage or births. You can look a lot of that up on Ancestry since they have loads of records. Do NOT rely on what other people have on their family trees--there are many lazy or careless people and you could easily be copying incorrect information. It takes some getting used to how it works but there is a wealth of information on Ancestry.

I have the American site and the British site but I don't rely on either of them 100% for information. There are many other resources and they are discussed in different threads in this forum.
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Old 08-30-2014, 06:20 PM
 
Location: prescott az
6,954 posts, read 12,015,474 times
Reputation: 14218
Ancestry mostly has given me "possibilities" of relatives. Nothing for certain. It comes up with thousands of names, all of which might be related, might not. To me it is mostly a waste of time. I go to the library and use it free there cause I don't want to pay for it. Make your own decision after the 2 week freebie !!
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Old 08-30-2014, 06:54 PM
 
15,633 posts, read 26,167,077 times
Reputation: 30922
My family has been around since before the Revolutionary war, concentrated mainly in PA. Ancestry has done wonders for me for them. I found tons of stuff -- censuses, news articles, gravesites, wills... tons of stuff -- and new stuff shows up a lot -- I've been going crazy with PA death certs lately.

BUT -- my grandfather on my dad's side jumped ship in 1911 from Germany. It's a part of Germany that is now Russia, and the Russians destroyed a ton of records. I know his parents names because I ordered his Social Security application, which is how I found out where he was from, because he refused to talk about it.

There is NOTHING on Ancestry about him, past his life in America. In the German section there's a few of "my last name"s buried in a German military cemetery... but that's it.

So there's the good and bad -- to me it is worth it very much so.

But it isn't the only game in town. I've found tons of stuff outside of it using google search.

The key there is to get creative. Sometimes the simplest way to find things gets you NO results. Recent relatives are often listed as LIVING, which means you're locked out, even if the person listing them doesn't realize the person is actually dead.

My latest example -- I was looking for my aunt and uncle -- Sam and Anne Smith. I knew where they died, and had no idea where they were buried but I figured it had to be same county where they lived. I went from cemetery to cemetery online -- squat.

Finally -- I put in the last name in the search field and asked to search the whole county.

BANG! There they were. On the other side of the flipping county a forty minutes drive from the funeral home, in a cemetery that when I called my sisters about it we simply didn't understand why they were there.

In other things -- the transcriber did their level best to read the name that was written in a squeezed in way with a leaky fountain pen so it looked far more like Blob Jones and not Chester Jones. My relative was named Reginald, and it looked all squeezy. It was transcribed as Raynod.
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Old 08-30-2014, 07:54 PM
 
Location: NoVa
18,431 posts, read 34,276,666 times
Reputation: 19814
My fiance has taken his lineage back pretty far, using the part of the site that goes overseas. I don't know what that is called.

I have found quite a few but like you, I only used the free trial. I would like to go ahead and get the membership and look further.
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Old 08-30-2014, 08:25 PM
 
Location: Georgia, USA
37,005 posts, read 41,043,815 times
Reputation: 44944
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bmachina View Post
I signed in for a free trial and started typing in names of great grandparents and got zero results on both sides.

I don't see how the site can be any use to me if it cant even bring up names of my recent relatives. Am I missing something here?

Why are my recent relatives not even showing up? Is their content based solely on information that other subscribers have entered, or does the site itself make an effort to draw from, and provide it's own access to public databases?

Would love any and all feedback on the usefulness of the site and how much information it can actually provide. When you watch WDYTYA on tv, they all use the site and make it appear as if the site will magically provide detailed info on everyone at the wave of a finger - I knew this was not true, but I at least assumed that a simple search would be able to find at least one grandparent, or great grandparent.
Very few searches are going to bring up zero results. Usually you will get thousands of hits. Problems can arise when your ancestor's name is misspelled by the person who recorded it or when the person who creates the index entry cannot read it and the transcription is wrong. I was led on a merry chase for a female ancestor whose name was misspelled or transcribed wrong on just about every record available for her. I searched based on a hunch, found a candidate family, and proved it with her grave stone, which actually gave her maiden name - which is not common for women in the years in which she lived.

Most of us start with the census. If you search the name (less is better: first name and last name rather than first, middle, and last) in order to not get results for middle and last name unless the person was called by his middle name. You can try various combinations: first + last, middle + last, initials + last. Narrow the search to just census. If you have name, date of birth, place of birth, and places the person lived, you should get candidates. For married people, search the male and use the wife as spouse. You should get hits for couples with those names living in your target location.

For women, you need to search maiden names before marriage and married name afterwards.

The 1940 Federal Census is the most recent that has been released to the public. If your grandparents were born before 1940, they should be in that census and going backwards every ten years to their birth years. If any of your ancestors are deceased, death certificates may have the names of their parents.

If you would like to share names and dates, we can search for you. DM if you wish.
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Old 08-30-2014, 09:53 PM
 
Location: SC
2,966 posts, read 5,198,166 times
Reputation: 6925
What do you do in the case where searching for a married and maiden name yields nothing? This is for a great grandparent, and I have the hand typed family history from my grandmother stating her names. In this case, she was Slovenian, immigrated from Austria and lived in a nearby town where my grandmother was born. I cant seem to find any sign of her in the records, even using her nick name
.
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Old 08-31-2014, 12:01 AM
 
Location: Cushing OK
14,539 posts, read 21,197,802 times
Reputation: 16938
Some things are easier to find than others. I've had less success with great something grandmothers than great something grandfathers. And when the name is more common you'll get a lot of matches which aren't yoru ancestor, but then that is how a search works. The way they show in tv where they type something in and woosh is there is a bit compressed.

On the other hand, I did find my five x great grandfather. Later I found information going some five or six generations before. But the interesting thing was he was transorted the first flotilla after the transportation act of 1718. He was loaded on a ship in 1719. The more interesting thing was someone had found and linked to the actual trial record in the Old Bailey, and the whole description of his act and claims. Wow. And I found a reference to the indentrure to a judge/plantation owner in Maryland when he arrived.

So sometimes you find some really major stuff. You just have to try different combinations and use it as a guide to see what else you can find.

On the other hand I've never found anything about my great grandmother's second marriage, and grandma's father. nada.

So you hit sometimes and you don't others.
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Old 08-31-2014, 12:37 AM
 
Location: Olympia, WA
49 posts, read 131,184 times
Reputation: 26
I've been doing my family tree for over 20 years now. Most of my relatives came over from Eastern Europe so things got weird with the way our name got translated. All I can say is this is a very long and tedious process. Try looking in the census records first to at least see if you can tell what country they came from. You might have to use a wildcard in the search. For example if the name you are searching for is Hazlestein you can do something like Haz*ein you need at least 3 characters minimum to do the wildcard. Also, you can adjust how sensitive the search is, open it up some so it doesn't just look for exact spellings. Things are going to be misspelled. People wrote things down phonetically, the way they sounded. They (the census taker) could have spoken to a neighbor to get the information on the family so there still could be inaccuracies. Some had really bad handwriting too. Whoever indexed the records may not have been able to read the writing well and had to guess.

They add more records all the time too so maybe I won't find anything for a while and then I'll find a few items that were added.

Some parts of the family I have very little on. If you are just starting out, try each of your Grandparents or Great Grandparents. Use the wildcard if you pull up no results.

Also - don't put too much info in there. I don't put dates or places in the search boxes. Just the names.

Good luck to you!
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Old 08-31-2014, 07:09 AM
 
Location: Black Hammock Island
4,620 posts, read 14,944,455 times
Reputation: 4620
Bmachina ...

You're right that WDYTYA can be a bit misleading in that for the sake of an hour-long show all the processes are compressed for time. Ancestry.com's TV ads are a bit misleading, too - one can't simply "type in a name" and get results voila! Nor will a person always find a "leaf" to connect to other researchers.

But I really like ancestry and it has been incredibly useful for finding my ancestors or giving me new leads for where else to search. When first starting out on a search, as everyone says, less is better. Sometimes I type in a last name and that is absolutely it. Usually I'll get a bazillion hits, so I start narrowing down my search by location (such as a state or specific county) or by record type (such as census only) or a year range (sometimes a wide range of 100 years).

Sometimes I restrict the search to just family trees. As everyone correctly says, you cannot rely on family trees for accuracy, BUT they can be fabulous tools as a jump-off point to head in a direction you hadn't thought of before.

gypsy88 brings up a very valuable way of searching, using a wildcard. Transcribers have a heck of a time trying to read old documents and the handwriting of some recordkeepers. As well, some of the recordkeepers had their own ways of spelling things. And, to make it more difficult, sometimes the information-givers didn't really know correct spellings of names or accurate dates and just gave what they thought was correct to the recordkeepers.

So, in addition to a wildcard search, you can use phonetic matches, names with similar meanings or spellings, or records where only initials are recorded. (Phonetic and similar are sometimes referred to as Soundex.) On ancestry's main page, instead of typing into the input boxes, click on Advanced search. Under each input box is "Use default settings" - click on that and change to "phonetic" or whichever you choose. Then type into the input boxes, remembering that less is better.
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