Familysearch.org vs Ancestry.com (surnames, distinctive, heritage, test)

[cjseliga]

I like how Familysearch tries to assign every person a unique/specific "ID", is it perfect, no, but you don't have that with Ancestry.

[treemoni]

Pretty sure I'm not using familysearch to its full potential, but I can't complain about a free service. I would expect something free to be less efficient, but I'm able to get a lot of helpful information from the site. It's a bonus because it is very difficult to research if most of your ancestors were enslaved.

I think I've found my first ancestor with European heritage. I'm excited about it only because it's going to make research sooooo much easier.

[PA2UK]

Originally Posted by Sparrow_temp

I've got a lot of locations that are the same as the county names and townships that are the same as other county names in the same state. Both Rootsmagic and Ancestry handle this terribly compared to Familysearch. They also seem to conflict on how they handle the country -- is it USA or United States or United States of America or does it just leave it empty?

I know what you mean on the USA vs United States vs blank - Ancestry's records seem to be indexed opposite to what the standardization is in the tree. But that shouldn't influence mapping so it doesn't bother me much. Ancestry actually recently (well, within the last few years) updated their locations to use commas to indicate unknown more specific locations.

To me, it was a night and day difference how well Familysearch was handling locations. Having a database of facts with standardized locations that are all properly geocoded has been amazing. I'd much rather have images of the source materials with whatever arcane location data that they contain for reference but have modern location data for geocoding. I want to be able to see things on a map whenever possible.

But then you might not realize that it was a different jurisdiction at the time, not without looking at the original documents every time you research that individual. Some of my ancestors lived in what is now Montgomery County, PA, but at the time Montgomery County didn't exist yet and it was instead in Philadelphia. I would waste a lot of time looking for records in Montgomery County.

As for Ancestry's search engine, I wouldn't call it more advanced.

It is more advanced because it has a lot more options, which is pretty much the definition of more advanced. One of the big ones for me is that you can search with "exactly this location and adjacent locations" - so if I want to restrict the search within a certain county, and also the surrounding counties, I can. I can't do that at FamilySearch, I only have the option of "exact" or not and if I want to search surrounding areas, I have to manually change the location multiple times. I use this Ancestry.com option so much that when I try to use FamilySearch, I feel like I'm working with one hand tied behind my back.

There's also more event/fact options you can include at Ancestry on the main search of all collections, and they normally have a "keyword" field that FamilySearch doesn't. Some collections at Ancestry allow you to search by address/street name whereas the same collections at FS don't. At Ancestry you can include parents names in your search, as well as spouse, siblings, and children. At FamilySearch, the only options are parents, spouse, and "other" - which isn't of much use if you're looking for a sibling called John and you get a boarder named John.

The only thing I've found that FS's search has that Ancestry doesn't is the ability to put in whatever year range you want. Ancestry only allows you to put in one year and then the option to +/- 1, 2, 5, or 10 years. So at Ancestry I can't search between the years 1882 and 1890 (I'd have to put in 1885 and then do +/- 5 years, covering 1880-1890 and including 2 years I don't need), but I can at FS. I find this much more limiting than FS. However, on the flip side, FS doesn't allow you to search by specific dates, only by year, which I find just as limiting in some cases - Ancestry does offer this option for some collections. And best part is, I can specify a certain date but still +/- the year so if I know the month and day, but I'm unclear on the year, I can do a search like that at Ancestry, but not FS.

I will say that I do find Ancestry's search engine has frequent bugs in it which they are slow to fix, but they just have too many options I've come to rely on that I find the lack of them at FS to be so limiting and frustrating. Of course, FS is free, so it's not surprising that it's not as advanced.

It also seems to handle wildcards better.

How so?

Ancestry has more overall records but that doesn't mean that its search engine is any better.

I think I said more advanced, not better. Personally, I do think more advanced makes it better in general, but not everyone might agree.

[PA2UK]

Originally Posted by Mircea

Both Ancestry and FamilySearch are products of Mormons.

Ancestry was founded by Mormons but it was sold so long ago that this really has no influence on their company today.

The Mormons have two fetishes: baptizing everyone and tracing the genealogy of mankind back to Adam.

This is not true. They only baptize the dead when one of their church members requests it for their own ancestors - they don't go around baptizing or trying to baptize "everyone". Likewise, they do not try to trace back to Adam, as they are aware that is impossible. Friends of my family are Mormon, and I go to my local Family History Center a lot (at the LDS church, where the family history volunteers are Mormon), so I talk a lot of genealogy with a lot of Mormons. Your perceptions on their goals are incorrect.

One thing though, the Mormons will probably start doing their own archeological research, which means they'll be doing DNA testing and publishing it for everyone to see and compare.

Why do you think they will probably start doing archaeological research? Have you read something about this?

Consider that both your federal and State tax dollars fund archeological research, which includes DNA testing.

Tax dollars would only fund archaeological research if it's government funded, and not all archaeological research is. As far as I know, it's often funded by universities.

Where is that info?

You paid for that with your money, so where is the data for the Y-DNA or mt-DNA Haplogroups and the autosomal DNA?

That info should be freely available on the internet for anyone to make comparisons, but it isn't.

Write your congress-critter and voice your objection and complaint.

You mean where is the data from DNA extracted from remains found at archaeological digs? It's often published publicly in journals published from the studies done on them. There are many archaic DNA kits on Gedmatch from archaeological digs which you can compare your own DNA with. Haplogroups from various unknown remains as well as famous individuals have been publicized and can be found just by googling it. I share an mtDNA haplogroup with Jesse James, for example.

There's a cool map showing the locations of many DNA samples from archaeological digs here (some of which are found on Gedmatch): https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer...3900000013&z=8

The plus factors for FamilySearch:

1) it is free
2) you can build a tree
3) you can collaborate on trees

You can build and collaborate on trees (with people of your choosing) at Ancestry too, and for free.

4) the records are more extensive than Ancestry's

Incorrect, as I think I mentioned in this topic already, Ancestry have billions more records than FS.

5) the records are far more accurate than Ancestry's with far fewer transcription errors

I don't agree, I think they're about the same.

6) the records can be easily searched through a friendly interface

Same at Ancestry.

7) the search results are better than Ancestry's

Disagree.

The negatives for FamilySearch:

1) anyone can edit your tree. So long as the people collaborating on your tree know what they're doing, that's fine, but 90% are blithering idiots dumber than a box of rocks and you may end up correcting the same mistakes over and over until they give up in frustration.

That can be both a negative and a positive - I would just recommend not keeping your sole/working tree at FS, then you can benefit from the collaboration but if someone messes it up, it hasn't screw up your actual work, just that one copy of it.

The plus side of Ancestry:
The negatives:

4) the search engine interface is horrid.

5) the searches are unproductive and bombard you with irrelevant records.

I totally disagree with this. Apart from the occasional bug in the system, I find Ancestry's search engine's interface very intuitive, and productive. Perhaps you just haven't learned how to get the best out of it.

On FamilySearch, enter a woman's name, State of birth and birth year or range of birth years and up pops the birth certificates of all of her children, marriages, census records, death records and address records, then you get a list of name variations and associated records. You can't do that on Ancestry. In order to find the birth certificates of a woman's children on Ancestry, you have to already know the name of each child born and where and when they were born, and search on each child individually.

That is so NOT true. I have found countless birth/baptism records on Ancestry of someone's children by searching for the parent.

6) Ancestry boasts more records, but those records are useless yearbook and public address records.

No, they are really not. There are vital records on Ancestry not available anywhere else online, and the city directories (not the more recent "public records") can be extremely important for research, especially when ancestors can't be found on a census. And by the way, FamilySearch have recent public records too so that is not what makes the difference: https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/2199956

And those "useless" yearbook records gave me pictures of my grandfather's half siblings that he never knew and never had pictures of before.

7) Ancestry's transcription errors are legendary. I couldn't find the 1940 Census records for that woman on Ancestry, but I found them on FamilySearch. Then I finally found the record on Ancestry, which had been incorrectly transcribed as "Cale" instead of "Cole" but I wasted a lot of time looking for that record. That's why you spend more time on FamilySearch than Ancestry.

And I've found some pretty ridiculous errors on FS too, that Ancestry had correct. Lots of times I've found something at Ancestry when helping someone else with their research but not knowing if they have an Ancestry subscription for not, I try to share the link for the record at FS. But when I do the same search at FS, I struggle to find that record which I easily found at Ancestry. I'm sorry, but it's not as simple as FS is better in this regard because you've found that to be true in your experience. Many people have different experiences, yours is not the defining word on it (and neither is mine, it perhaps depends on one's research).

Big difference is that at Ancestry, you can submit alternate transcriptions, but FS doesn't. So at least at Ancestry, errors can be "fixed" so they are more easily found from then on, but not at FS.

[PA2UK]

Originally Posted by cjseliga

I like how Familysearch tries to assign every person a unique/specific "ID", is it perfect, no, but you don't have that with Ancestry.

How is that useful though, unless you have the IDs memorized? Family Tree Maker will assign ID numbers too - I've never found it useful.

[2sleepy]

I have subscribed to Ancestry for years, it's been great for researching my husband's genealogy because he's related to early settlers to the US on both sides and that seems to be the sweet spot for Ancestry, if you have Mayflower relatives you can compile your family tree relatively easily back to Charlemagne. Not so much for me though, my grandparents immigrated from France, Sweden and Norway, there's not much information on Ancestry on their ancestors but there is a ton of info on myheritage.com, I've gone back several generations on both sides of my family with myheritage and I've found relatives I had no idea even existed, I've also gotten more DNA hits with myheritage than I did with Ancestry. I think I'm going to let my ancestry membership lapse and stick with myheritage.

[Sparrow_temp]

It's VERY useful when you're doing merges on FS. FS is designed with one large global tree in mind whereas Ancestry is designed so everybody has their own private tree. Records can't be attached to more than one person on FS. This means that if a conflict occurs that you have to manually detach one record and add to another record or merge the two records. The record id's are very important in this situation. There's no equivalent that I can think of on Ancestry.

Originally Posted by PA2UK

How is that useful though, unless you have the IDs memorized? Family Tree Maker will assign ID numbers too - I've never found it useful.

[Sparrow_temp]

There's a memories tab on FamilySearch where you can add photos, documents, stories, and audio. There's also the portrait on each person where you can add a picture.

Originally Posted by Mircea

Both Ancestry and FamilySearch are products of Mormons.

The negatives for FamilySearch:

..
2) you can't add media. I like to add headstones or personal photos to Ancestry when available. FamilySearch could add that feature in the future, and they probably will eventually

[Roselvr]

Originally Posted by Sparrow_temp

It's VERY useful when you're doing merges on FS. FS is designed with one large global tree in mind whereas Ancestry is designed so everybody has their own private tree. Records can't be attached to more than one person on FS. This means that if a conflict occurs that you have to manually detach one record and add to another record or merge the two records. The record id's are very important in this situation. There's no equivalent that I can think of on Ancestry.

They have ID's and you can only attach it to one person because every person is supposed to only have one profile as it's a large, public family tree site. Ancestry allows people to have their own trees that no one can edit. A better comparison would be comparing family search to wiki tree as they both do the same thing.

I love family search, use it for their database then hand enter it in my ancestry tree

[Roselvr]

Originally Posted by 2sleepy

I have subscribed to Ancestry for years, it's been great for researching my husband's genealogy because he's related to early settlers to the US on both sides and that seems to be the sweet spot for Ancestry, if you have Mayflower relatives you can compile your family tree relatively easily back to Charlemagne. Not so much for me though, my grandparents immigrated from France, Sweden and Norway, there's not much information on Ancestry on their ancestors but there is a ton of info on myheritage.com, I've gone back several generations on both sides of my family with myheritage and I've found relatives I had no idea even existed, I've also gotten more DNA hits with myheritage than I did with Ancestry. I think I'm going to let my ancestry membership lapse and stick with myheritage.

I love my heritage for DNA but for family trees there is a limit of 200 people for free accounts. You should try to keep up your ancestry tree while using my heritage in case you decide to go back. If at some point you decide you're done with my heritage be sure to back up your tree because I'm not sure what they'll do to it being so large if you go back to a free account.