Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
whose outrageous fees.. ancestry.com? I only pay a one time fee per year for mine.. I think its around 200 dollars.. if your referring to this yes the fees are kind of high but gives you access to almost everything possible. You can go to the Library for research and other sites out there that let you research stuff for free.. such as rootsweb.com, familyresearch.org is free, cindyslist.com and several more.. your public Library is free unless you want copies of stuff then they charge but not much.. You can do lots of researches without paying fees.. One of the best ways I found information was my getting burial records.. you can do this for free! You can always post out here and others will help in your research or other genealogy forums. I would be glad to help you find what your looking for if the information is available, sometimes families didn't keep very good records so this makes it difficult to find. You sometimes have to result to other research methods for this such as the library or burial records.
Good Luck..
BTW For privacy's sake, I don't want to post my first ancestor's name.But when I have googled his name coupled with the town to which he immigrated, he shows up all over the place. Some of the information I find matches what is in my old book, and some of it doesn't.
I'm sure they're dead by now, they won't mind. OH! I'm sorry, it for your protectiom, my bad . Just havin a little online fun.
Was your Tree done professionaly? I did mine through Ancestry.com and I don't know if I "buy" everything I found.. For example I got back to the 600's Some of the names I did try to verify and am pretty confident, but some are just "too good to be believed"
I think they are great, especially as they cover many countries and have a large number of records. I have done extremely well with their Canadian site.
My caveat would be to take other people's family trees with a great deal of caution if they do not cite sources. Without a source I don't take anyone else's research as credible. However, on the other hand, I do use these unsourced trees as a direction to research, and quite often they have turned out to be correct.
Why anyone would not indicate the source of their information is a puzzle to me, but I am assuming that many people just blindly copy other people's trees.
The Family Tree Maker software and their tie in with ancestry.com makes finding and adding people to your tree a breeze. "I got a leaf!" Thanks to those leaves I now have a body count of 650 in my tree.
And that's where people can get into trouble -- which is why you have to backtrack ALL their sources.
I know I've found that one of my husband's female ancestors has a maiden name that is the same as someone of some small renown, and a lot of people online sourced a census with the maiden name and just plunked it in as a source.
But it was wrong. Back in the day, Annie Smith would marry John Jones and become Annie Jones. After John died, she's STILL be Annie Jones. And people were finding Annie Smith in later censuses and using her.
And that's the other problem with the Family Tree Maker/Ancestry.com tie in -- it's TOO easy to ignore the evidence, and just willy nilly add improper source stuff.
But their search function from the program is just AMAZING.... and I've also found stuff that I couldn't before. And not having to make copies of this stuff and keep binders of it -- HEAVEN....
Just remember -- BACK UP YOUR INFO!!! Don't want to do one of these !
So what you're saying is that I'm not really related to Charlemagne???
Actually we are all related to Charlemagne or at least those of us who have ancestors from Europe. All Europeans descend from a most recent common ancestor who was alive circa 1000 AD. Hey cous!
BTW
when I have googled his name coupled with the town to which he immigrated, he shows up all over the place. Some of the information I find matches what is in my old book, and some of it doesn't.
Sometimes there are a surprising number of people who have the same names whether related or not.
If it is coupled with his town you could be picking up the relative he might have been named for as well.
I've been doing my family's genealogy since I was a teenager. I can used "old-fashioned" sources like books, microfilm and independent vital records searches, as well as teh internet.
The internet has to be taken with a grain of salt. Anyone can upload anything whether it's real or not. I once found a line of my family traced to Odin and Freya, the Norse gods.
Congratulations! I have also done research the old fashioned way by going through books, microfilms, visiting cemeteries and court houses. Outside of census records or the SSDI, I don't trust the internet for accurate information.
I enjoy spending a little time tracing my line. Decendent of John Alden.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
. Just havin a little online fun. 
