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showing a family tree.

Genealogy, Local, General
didds
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showing a family tree.

#382381

Postby didds » January 31st, 2021, 10:35 am

Hoping you top people may be able to help.

Having been handed a family tree on paper, the only copy, Im looking to "write it up" in a digital manner so it can be easily promolgated amongst those interested in it.

my request is quite a limited one so bear in mind the following

* i do not need a geneology "find my past" style site/service/help. the tree is known
* there is no budget for this. (well, maybe a tenner fIF the solution 99.9% fills our needs)
* I merely need something that will enable me/us to
* input known information in the tree
* connect the various people together in that tree
* be able to share the infomation in very srandard faormats.

So Im looking for somehting like a website, or a free wordpress plugin/template, a word/openoffice doc template to manage all this.

Any ideas? Please as above dont suggest "ancestory" style sites witgh monthly fees that are about searching lineage etc. I just need a very basic inpuit method to then display what we have. Id rather avoid having to to print stuff off on A4 sheets and then sticking it all together carefully TBH as well! (which is what we have currently).

cheers

didds

staffordian
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Re: showing a family tree.

#382393

Postby staffordian » January 31st, 2021, 10:58 am

Legacy Family History offers a totally free version which might do as you wish. It is not time limited, but some features which the program offers are only available in the paid for version.

https://legacyfamilytree.com/downloadlegacy.asp

A bit of a learning curve, but not too bad, and there is a good help file and a great Facebook group who answer queries from users with all levels of skill.

Facebook group here...
https://m.facebook.com/groups/372110202 ... oup_browse

The only thing I'm not certain of is whether the free version includes the tree making 'add on'

The basic program enables you to start by adding what you know (as little or as much as you wish to record, bearing in mind what you wil want to display on the tree)

You then add linked people, eg children or parents and go from there.

You have two basic options for sharing.

You can export the file in the form of a gedcom which is a file type which any genealogy program will recognise, and can therefore be imoorted by anyone with such a program. It can also be uploaded to sites such as Ancestry or Find my Past, which often allow free accounts for this purpose; the cost comes when you wish to use their databases for reseach.

The second sharing method is to produce one of the many trees available in the Legacy Tree add on (subject to the reservation mentioned above about the free version). This can be physically printed (but bear in mind a tree of any complexity will probably be spread over several A4 pages), or printed to a pdf file which can then, of course, be sent to anyone electronically.

Staffordian

staffordian
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Re: showing a family tree.

#382399

Postby staffordian » January 31st, 2021, 11:24 am

Just a thought...

If you wish to email me a copy of what you have I'd be happy to produce a file and a tree pdf.

yorkshirelad1
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Re: showing a family tree.

#382404

Postby yorkshirelad1 » January 31st, 2021, 11:36 am

didds wrote:Hoping you top people may be able to help.
Having been handed a family tree on paper, the only copy, Im looking to "write it up" in a digital manner so it can be easily promolgated amongst those interested in it.
(snip)


I looked around for similar to you, wasn't that impressed with what's available (free sites leading into chargeable packages, or having to share your data with others and having no say in who changes what later etc), so do my own thing.

However, a couple of sites you may want to look at

https://www.wikitree.com/
https://www.geni.com/

which seem mainstream and well thought of.

Also in terms of sofware https://gramps-project.org/ is free and well supported by a user community. There's a bit of a learning curve, but you can export to many formats. I have seen people use this software, export in one of the formats, and host the information on github.

If you've been given the documents, but don't intend to advance the data much, but just want to share it, why not scan the pages, and share them on a free hosting site somewhere. Minimum work for maximum exposure. Do anythng else is going to involve you in a little (?) bit of headscratching and work for not a lot of extra benefit. In the first instance, scanning might be a quick fix while you get going, and as a result, you might find someone else picks up on your data, and is already researching/sharing it, so might save you a bit of work if you can add/contribute to theirs in a collaborative project, saving you a fair bit of work, but getting a lot of exposure?

dealtn
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Re: showing a family tree.

#382456

Postby dealtn » January 31st, 2021, 3:14 pm

didds wrote:Hoping you top people may be able to help.

Having been handed a family tree on paper, the only copy, Im looking to "write it up" in a digital manner so it can be easily promolgated amongst those interested in it.

my request is quite a limited one so bear in mind the following

* i do not need a geneology "find my past" style site/service/help. the tree is known
* there is no budget for this. (well, maybe a tenner fIF the solution 99.9% fills our needs)
* I merely need something that will enable me/us to
* input known information in the tree
* connect the various people together in that tree
* be able to share the infomation in very srandard faormats.

So Im looking for somehting like a website, or a free wordpress plugin/template, a word/openoffice doc template to manage all this.

Any ideas? Please as above dont suggest "ancestory" style sites witgh monthly fees that are about searching lineage etc. I just need a very basic inpuit method to then display what we have. Id rather avoid having to to print stuff off on A4 sheets and then sticking it all together carefully TBH as well! (which is what we have currently).

cheers

didds


Sorry to piggy-back on your enquiry.

My father-in-law has been doing his (our) family tree. Over several years, and on paper (and of course features very little of "my" side of the family).

It has encouraged me to give it a go and do mine (ok also partially his!) too.

Unlike you, and him, I am happy to both do it online, and very happy to pay to do so on the right site. I would much rather pay a fee, and have access to a full service, and do it right, than to have free access to a basic, but limited option.

So almost the exact opposite enquire to you, but possibly to the same knowledgeable people!

Any suggestions?

staffordian
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Re: showing a family tree.

#382466

Postby staffordian » January 31st, 2021, 3:39 pm

dealtn wrote:
didds wrote:Hoping you top people may be able to help.

Having been handed a family tree on paper, the only copy, Im looking to "write it up" in a digital manner so it can be easily promolgated amongst those interested in it.

my request is quite a limited one so bear in mind the following

* i do not need a geneology "find my past" style site/service/help. the tree is known
* there is no budget for this. (well, maybe a tenner fIF the solution 99.9% fills our needs)
* I merely need something that will enable me/us to
* input known information in the tree
* connect the various people together in that tree
* be able to share the infomation in very srandard faormats.

So Im looking for somehting like a website, or a free wordpress plugin/template, a word/openoffice doc template to manage all this.

Any ideas? Please as above dont suggest "ancestory" style sites witgh monthly fees that are about searching lineage etc. I just need a very basic inpuit method to then display what we have. Id rather avoid having to to print stuff off on A4 sheets and then sticking it all together carefully TBH as well! (which is what we have currently).

cheers

didds


Sorry to piggy-back on your enquiry.

My father-in-law has been doing his (our) family tree. Over several years, and on paper (and of course features very little of "my" side of the family).

It has encouraged me to give it a go and do mine (ok also partially his!) too.

Unlike you, and him, I am happy to both do it online, and very happy to pay to do so on the right site. I would much rather pay a fee, and have access to a full service, and do it right, than to have free access to a basic, but limited option.

So almost the exact opposite enquire to you, but possibly to the same knowledgeable people!

Any suggestions?


The two which are most popular are ancestry.co.uk and findmypast.co.uk

There are pros and cons with each, and things to be aware of with both, and it depends where most of your ancestors are from

I find fmp have more useful records, in particular parish records for England. Both sites have the basics, such as census records, and basic birth marriage and death records.

Both sites encourage you to keep your family tree online, mainly because it ties you to some extent to their subscription, but it also means others can see it and if you wish, help you develop it. And conversely, you may find others users trees which tie in with yours.

The key thing I cannot stress enough is that they make it too easy to add to your tree without the rigour of certainty that what you are adding is correct. I find Ancestry in particular will bombard you with hints which may well be correct, but equally, may not be, and it is beguilingly easy to simply click on these hints and not realise the John Smith in question is not your John Smith.

I prefer to maintain a basic tree online but keep my 'proper' tree on my own computer, using Legacy (see my first post). Doing it this way encourages me to check and source my information carefully and the act of inputting it helps me to visualise the tree and the people or facts I'm adding and think about how they all link in.

As far as other websites are concerned, as I mentioned, it really depends on the country you are interested in. Scottish records, for example, are held by the Scottish government and only truly available through their Scotland's People website. The records are superb, but only available on a pay as you go basis by buying credits to see (and download) the records. Where they excel is that these records areimages of the original birth, marriage and death entries, giving much more detail than you can get for English ones. To see full details of English registers, you have to fork out a tenner or so and buy whichever certificate you want. That can soon get expensive, especially if you need to order ten for John Smiths in the hipe one is yours...

There are several very good free resources worth a mention, including freeBMD (free access to English birth, marriage and death indexes, useful as pointers but in themselves not especially useful, Family Search (a Mormon site with some god records and trees, again, the latter to be used with caution, FreeReg, an increasingly useful source of transcripts of old English parish records, especially useful for pre-1837 research, as compulsory registration only started then, so parish records are one of the few basic sources of earlier information.

I think that's enough for now...

yorkshirelad1
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Re: showing a family tree.

#382472

Postby yorkshirelad1 » January 31st, 2021, 4:02 pm

staffordian wrote:Family Search (a Mormon site with some god records and


I very much enjoyed your typo :-)
I must go and visit to check out those records :-)

staffordian
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Re: showing a family tree.

#382477

Postby staffordian » January 31st, 2021, 4:14 pm

yorkshirelad1 wrote:
staffordian wrote:Family Search (a Mormon site with some god records and


I very much enjoyed your typo :-)
I must go and visit to check out those records :-)

And I also forgot to close a few brackets. So much for my prof reading ;)

GoSeigen
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Re: showing a family tree.

#382495

Postby GoSeigen » January 31st, 2021, 5:24 pm

didds wrote:Hoping you top people may be able to help.

Having been handed a family tree on paper, the only copy, Im looking to "write it up" in a digital manner so it can be easily promolgated amongst those interested in it.

my request is quite a limited one so bear in mind the following

* i do not need a geneology "find my past" style site/service/help. the tree is known
* there is no budget for this. (well, maybe a tenner fIF the solution 99.9% fills our needs)
* I merely need something that will enable me/us to
* input known information in the tree
* connect the various people together in that tree
* be able to share the infomation in very srandard faormats.

So Im looking for somehting like a website, or a free wordpress plugin/template, a word/openoffice doc template to manage all this.

Any ideas? Please as above dont suggest "ancestory" style sites witgh monthly fees that are about searching lineage etc. I just need a very basic inpuit method to then display what we have. Id rather avoid having to to print stuff off on A4 sheets and then sticking it all together carefully TBH as well! (which is what we have currently).

cheers

didds


To didds and the hijacker

Don't dismiss ancestry.com out of hand. It's a myth that there are subscription fees for building your tree. The hosted tree facility is free of charge, just ignore the subscription suggestions. It really does the job very well and their support is telephone superb, and accessible even for non-subscription users. The trees can be downloaded in GEDCOM format so the notion that you are "tied in" is also a myth. Having busted the myths, here's a disclaimer: any of the above can change so stay on your toes! I export my tree regularly which is good backup practice in any case, and I keep local copies of all the important photos and documents I have put on my tree.

So given the product is free, does it offer anything more than a very poor/basic service? No! Because many people do pay to access their records, they are well-funded and the whole platform is really superb:

-The tree editing is simple, flexible and bug-free and you can export your work.
-There are at least three views available with the online browser-based interface (the one I'm most familiar with): an excellent family view with generations orientated vertically showing all siblings and their partners plus both parent's pedigrees; a horizontally orientated pedigree view showing ancestors; and a superb "profile" view showing a full timeline of an individual and his immediate family plus his parents, siblings, spouse and children AND all linked records on a single web page.
-All this is available for your family members to view online themselves without you having to do any extra work with various levels of privacy and sharing.
-Photos, documents and other artifacts can be uploaded free of charge and linked to the individuals they relate to.
-You can document the tree with your own citations free of charge.
-I've never had trouble with Ancestry security, whereas some other sites like myheritage are the wild west.
-If and when you or any of your family get the urge to use or link to Ancestries records you can pay the subscription fee and do so. Under the current business model there is no compulsion to do so.

[For those interested in records: others have mentioned that there are limitations to Ancestry's record coverage. For the UK I'd agree. If you are going to need records from other countries then I think it's really hard to beat Ancestry's offering and their UK coverage is actually not that bad. They have good coverage of major censuses, civil registration records, 1939 register, shipping records and a host of others AND are integrating with FamilySearch's records IIANM, so really even for the UK they are not to be sniffed at.]

Other paid services offered by Ancestry include DNA and linking to other users' trees, both these features are integrated with the free tree hosting. So altogether a really good package even if using the free version, I strongly recommend both Fools try it unless parish records and other records only available on FMP are critical. For the record, no connection beyond being a happy long-term user.

GS

dealtn
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Re: showing a family tree.

#382504

Postby dealtn » January 31st, 2021, 5:53 pm

GoSeigen wrote:
So given the product is free, does it offer anything more than a very poor/basic service? No!


Did you miss the bit where I said I wanted something more than poor/basic, and was very happy to pay for such?

I really don't want a poor, or incomplete service.

I can't work out if you are saying it would be suitable for me or not.

staffordian
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Re: showing a family tree.

#382511

Postby staffordian » January 31st, 2021, 6:16 pm

dealtn wrote:
GoSeigen wrote:
So given the product is free, does it offer anything more than a very poor/basic service? No!


Did you miss the bit where I said I wanted something more than poor/basic, and was very happy to pay for such?

I really don't want a poor, or incomplete service.

I can't work out if you are saying it would be suitable for me or not.


I think the gist is that you should sign up to both, have a look at which suits you better, then go with that.

Can't argue with any of GS's post, and if I were you and wish to build your tree online, I'd go with ancestry, but also have a sub with fmp to access records not available on ancestry (assuming it's mainly English ancestors you're researching.)

I'm a cheapskate and having had an annual sub to fmp in the past, got much of what I could from it, I now tend to wait for their and Ancestry's occasional free access weekends to download anything I need.

And I still prefer my stand alone program to record it all :)

yorkshirelad1
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Re: showing a family tree.

#382513

Postby yorkshirelad1 » January 31st, 2021, 6:28 pm

It probably won't suit the OP, but some county library services provide access to FMP and Ancestry which may be of use. Obviously, it won't be possible to store a private tree as the login will be shared across library users, but if you want a quick test to see what's on offer, or get some records, it may be of use.
I am in North Yorks, and the country library services provides library users with access to FMP and Ancestry. Normally, it's only accessible in each library, but during the pandemic, NYCC libraries had the enlightened brain wave to make it available from home (which has the downside that the monthly quota attached to the library subscription on FMP expires pretty quickly), and it's been really useful.
FMP also provide a 14-day free trial which I have used as a quick fix.

GoSeigen
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Re: showing a family tree.

#382543

Postby GoSeigen » January 31st, 2021, 7:51 pm

dealtn wrote:
GoSeigen wrote:
So given the product is free, does it offer anything more than a very poor/basic service? No!


Did you miss the bit where I said I wanted something more than poor/basic, and was very happy to pay for such?

I really don't want a poor, or incomplete service.

I can't work out if you are saying it would be suitable for me or not.


Oh I wasn't saying it was poor or basic, the opposite in fact. I was just countering the usually correct observation that "if you pay peanuts you get monkeys". The reason this free Ancestry service is good despite its nutty price is that it is piggybacking on a large paying subscriber base (plus maybe the support of the LDS Church).

If you're happy to pay as well, then you get access to all Ancestry's very extensive collection of records and associated images, their tree linking, so you can benefit from collaboration with other users and (optionally) their DNA services. The paid service needn't be expensive either, but that's for another post perhaps.

A quick comment about DNA, in some ways I think their DNA offering is still a bit unpolished and possibly not the best out there. But again you can download and upload your DNA, so also use it on other perhaps fuller-featured sites.

And a point I forgot earlier: in the past Ancestry have regularly developed new features to enhance their offering and (as is not always the case with new features) in a way that doesn't break or hobble stuff already there. I even suspect that they have implemented one or two of my suggestions to my delight because they are very very useful; whether it was solely because of me or they had many users asking I have no idea, but the implementation was so close to what I asked for that I was shocked when I saw it for the first time. Needless to say I have a high opinion of their competence and have set myself up to look a fool now!!!


GS

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Re: showing a family tree.

#382551

Postby GoSeigen » January 31st, 2021, 8:07 pm

staffordian wrote:
dealtn wrote:
GoSeigen wrote:
So given the product is free, does it offer anything more than a very poor/basic service? No!


Did you miss the bit where I said I wanted something more than poor/basic, and was very happy to pay for such?

I really don't want a poor, or incomplete service.

I can't work out if you are saying it would be suitable for me or not.


I think the gist is that you should sign up to both, have a look at which suits you better, then go with that.

Can't argue with any of GS's post, and if I were you and wish to build your tree online, I'd go with ancestry, but also have a sub with fmp to access records not available on ancestry (assuming it's mainly English ancestors you're researching.)

I'm a cheapskate and having had an annual sub to fmp in the past, got much of what I could from it, I now tend to wait for their and Ancestry's occasional free access weekends to download anything I need.

And I still prefer my stand alone program to record it all :)


I'll add to this: I'm a cheapskate too and get the maximum I can out of these services for the minimum I can get away with paying.

-For FMP, I'm lucky that my county's library offers FMP for free. I have a free FMP account, so I search their records at home and save a list of the ones I'm interested in. Then, when I visit the library I access and download all the images from my list. It works pretty well.

-For Ancestry, I do my work in waves -- so I spend weeks or months working on just building my tree without a subscription, from either Ancestry search results or other archives and websites like FamilySearch. Then, when I anticipate having plenty of time or an interesting bunch of work to do on some branch of my tree, I pay for a month's Ancestry subscription, then cancel when I'm done. Cancellation is easy and always trouble-free as long as you do it in good time. One benefit of doing this is that Ancestry seem to offer pretty good deals thereafter to tempt you back. For example I've been offered 4 months premium access for just £20 in the past, that's close to 4 months for the price of one which is a real bargain IMO. When your subscription is over the images remain linked to your tree and some of them remain viewable as a non-subscriber, as are most of the transcribed record summaries. So you can refer back to the records you collected while you were paying.

GS

didds
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Re: showing a family tree.

#383165

Postby didds » February 2nd, 2021, 7:10 pm

just had a look at free ancestry - its spot on for what I need.

playing aroud with it i see an entry (ie person) has possible "ancestry huints" - following them shows possible docuements etc which you then have an option (if correct etc) to attach to the record in your tree.

But that appears to need a paid membership (fair enough).

Can I confirm then that a paid membership then does not only attach such docs to a record if required, but is also visible?

And presumably if the subscription dies so sdo any linked docs and their visibility?

UPDATE: Ah sorry - missed this..
"When your subscription is over the images remain linked to your tree and some of them remain viewable as a non-subscriber, as are most of the transcribed record summaries. So you can refer back to the records you collected while you were paying."

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Re: showing a family tree.

#383246

Postby GoSeigen » February 2nd, 2021, 11:58 pm

didds wrote:just had a look at free ancestry - its spot on for what I need.

playing aroud with it i see an entry (ie person) has possible "ancestry huints" - following them shows possible docuements etc which you then have an option (if correct etc) to attach to the record in your tree.

But that appears to need a paid membership (fair enough).

Can I confirm then that a paid membership then does not only attach such docs to a record if required, but is also visible?

And presumably if the subscription dies so sdo any linked docs and their visibility?

UPDATE: Ah sorry - missed this..
"When your subscription is over the images remain linked to your tree and some of them remain viewable as a non-subscriber, as are most of the transcribed record summaries. So you can refer back to the records you collected while you were paying."


Hints are a double-edged sword. You've already noted that they need to be verified. Some of them are ridiculously bad -- the algorithms used are not sophisticated. You can turn of hints arising from other user's trees, which greatly reduces the "noise", at the cost of quickly spotting the odd useful tree. There's a lot of rubbish out there though!

Regards payment, it's complicated. While you're a paying subscriber you see all the records and transcriptions covered by the subscription. When you stop paying the things you can see depend on the contract held by Ancestry with the record repository:
-Some images and transcriptions are fully viewable for free, e.g. certain Jewish records from Poland, and a small subset of civil records.
-Sometimes the transcription is viewable but not the image.
-Sometimes neither is viewable, except for a "taster" of the transcription.
-I think sometimes viewability depends on whether you attached an item using your subscription, or attached it from another user's tree, or one of the other editors on your tree attached it with their subscription -- but there are so many variables that I haven't figured it out!

If it seems messy, then it is largely for the reason I gave above, that it depends not on Ancestry's policy, but on the agreements made individually with its various partners. So cut them a bit of slack! In case of doubt, the links to images always remain intact, and even get downloaded when you export your tree, it's only that you cannot view them unless you're paid-up.

You can always see the documents you or other contributors have uploaded to the "gallery" section.

I do a hint splurge when I get a subscription then let the hints build up again while not paying.

GS

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Re: showing a family tree.

#383297

Postby SteMiS » February 3rd, 2021, 10:15 am

I think (if I'm not mistaken) that another thing paying for ancestry.co.uk allows you to do is message other users.

As has been noted on here, one of the interesting features of ancestry is that it identifies/suggests where people in your family tree also appear in other users' trees. So you can effectively piggy back on their work. However where ancestry believes that a person in someone else's family tree is still alive (even if they aren't) then it does not show any name or details for that person. It is just shown as 'Private'. Contacting the owner of the tree can sometimes allow you to fill in the details.

I spent quite a bit of time last year trying to find a 'lost' (but now deceased) ancestor of mine and by using ancestry discovered they had had a new family, who I managed to contact and fill in some of the gaps. Whilst I'd been interested in this for literally decades, it's only with the development of sites such as ancestry that this has become feasible.

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Re: showing a family tree.

#384788

Postby stevensfo » February 8th, 2021, 3:01 pm

staffordian wrote:
dealtn wrote:
didds wrote:Hoping you top people may be able to help.

Having been handed a family tree on paper, the only copy, Im looking to "write it up" in a digital manner so it can be easily promolgated amongst those interested in it.

my request is quite a limited one so bear in mind the following

* i do not need a geneology "find my past" style site/service/help. the tree is known
* there is no budget for this. (well, maybe a tenner fIF the solution 99.9% fills our needs)
* I merely need something that will enable me/us to
* input known information in the tree
* connect the various people together in that tree
* be able to share the infomation in very srandard faormats.

So Im looking for somehting like a website, or a free wordpress plugin/template, a word/openoffice doc template to manage all this.

Any ideas? Please as above dont suggest "ancestory" style sites witgh monthly fees that are about searching lineage etc. I just need a very basic inpuit method to then display what we have. Id rather avoid having to to print stuff off on A4 sheets and then sticking it all together carefully TBH as well! (which is what we have currently).

cheers

didds


Sorry to piggy-back on your enquiry.

My father-in-law has been doing his (our) family tree. Over several years, and on paper (and of course features very little of "my" side of the family).

It has encouraged me to give it a go and do mine (ok also partially his!) too.

Unlike you, and him, I am happy to both do it online, and very happy to pay to do so on the right site. I would much rather pay a fee, and have access to a full service, and do it right, than to have free access to a basic, but limited option.

So almost the exact opposite enquire to you, but possibly to the same knowledgeable people!

Any suggestions?


The two which are most popular are ancestry.co.uk and findmypast.co.uk

There are pros and cons with each, and things to be aware of with both, and it depends where most of your ancestors are from

I find fmp have more useful records, in particular parish records for England. Both sites have the basics, such as census records, and basic birth marriage and death records.

Both sites encourage you to keep your family tree online, mainly because it ties you to some extent to their subscription, but it also means others can see it and if you wish, help you develop it. And conversely, you may find others users trees which tie in with yours.

The key thing I cannot stress enough is that they make it too easy to add to your tree without the rigour of certainty that what you are adding is correct. I find Ancestry in particular will bombard you with hints which may well be correct, but equally, may not be, and it is beguilingly easy to simply click on these hints and not realise the John Smith in question is not your John Smith.

I prefer to maintain a basic tree online but keep my 'proper' tree on my own computer, using Legacy (see my first post). Doing it this way encourages me to check and source my information carefully and the act of inputting it helps me to visualise the tree and the people or facts I'm adding and think about how they all link in.

As far as other websites are concerned, as I mentioned, it really depends on the country you are interested in. Scottish records, for example, are held by the Scottish government and only truly available through their Scotland's People website. The records are superb, but only available on a pay as you go basis by buying credits to see (and download) the records. Where they excel is that these records areimages of the original birth, marriage and death entries, giving much more detail than you can get for English ones. To see full details of English registers, you have to fork out a tenner or so and buy whichever certificate you want. That can soon get expensive, especially if you need to order ten for John Smiths in the hipe one is yours...

There are several very good free resources worth a mention, including freeBMD (free access to English birth, marriage and death indexes, useful as pointers but in themselves not especially useful, Family Search (a Mormon site with some god records and trees, again, the latter to be used with caution, FreeReg, an increasingly useful source of transcripts of old English parish records, especially useful for pre-1837 research, as compulsory registration only started then, so parish records are one of the few basic sources of earlier information.

I think that's enough for now...


The key thing I cannot stress enough is that they make it too easy to add to your tree without the rigour of certainty that what you are adding is correct. I find Ancestry in particular will bombard you with hints which may well be correct, but equally, may not be, and it is beguilingly easy to simply click on these hints and not realise the John Smith in question is not your John Smith.


Yes, I found that as well. I received hints that seemed to confirm that some people were merely copying family tree data without going deeper. With a Welsh name, Price, I soon get onto Jones etc, and I'm then looking at 10 years research just to sort out incredible confusion with Census return etc. No help from the fact that boundary and name changes happened. I was a teenager when Huntingdonshire disappeared, so imagine a hundred years before that, in Wales!!!

But, as long as you back up your tree on a regular basis, I would recommend Ancestry.com. It prompts you for as much info as possible, and keeps good records.

My only gripe is a woman who was related to a member of my paternal ancestors and said she would put me in touch. She never replied to my pleas for info, and the mystery continues.

But nevertheless, I still consider myself the rightful King of the Laundry room! :-)


Steve


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