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Best Ancestry Website UK

Genealogy, Local, General
AsleepInYorkshire
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Best Ancestry Website UK

#466532

Postby AsleepInYorkshire » December 16th, 2021, 9:13 pm

I've joined Ancestry UK for 2 weeks free and tinkered with it last night.

I'm struggling to get the Family Tree to show more than 6 generations at a time. Is this because as the tree grows it simply becomes too large to display properly?

Are there any better sites for this sort of research please?

Thank you

AiY

ten0rman
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Re: Best Ancestry Website UK

#466537

Postby ten0rman » December 16th, 2021, 9:25 pm

AiY,

I use Ancestry & FindMyPast, and yes, the family tree display does indeed leave something, well, quite a lot actually, to be desired.

I have had casual looks around and not found anything easy to use which allows for all generations. I have even thought about doing screen prints & sticking the sheets together, only to find difficulties in lining up the various generations and their joining up lines. It seems to me that for a simple chart showing, say, all generations from now back to 1800 or thereabouts, it might well be necessary to draw it by hand using some sort of drawing package.

Good luck with your quest, and if you do find an easy one, please let us know!

ten0rman.

AsleepInYorkshire
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Re: Best Ancestry Website UK

#466539

Postby AsleepInYorkshire » December 16th, 2021, 9:29 pm

ten0rman wrote:AiY,

I use Ancestry & FindMyPast, and yes, the family tree display does indeed leave something, well, quite a lot actually, to be desired.

I have had casual looks around and not found anything easy to use which allows for all generations. I have even thought about doing screen prints & sticking the sheets together, only to find difficulties in lining up the various generations and their joining up lines. It seems to me that for a simple chart showing, say, all generations from now back to 1800 or thereabouts, it might well be necessary to draw it by hand using some sort of drawing package.

Good luck with your quest, and if you do find an easy one, please let us know!

ten0rman.

Thank you, greatly appreciate the heads up :)

Take care

AiY

PhaseThree

Re: Best Ancestry Website UK

#466540

Postby PhaseThree » December 16th, 2021, 9:31 pm

Ancestry.co.uk is the best in my experience - more source data and better display than the others.
You can zoom in and out in both the pedigree and family view modes (vertical vs horizontal)
You can move backwards and forwards through the tree using the little arrows
I have a tree of 13 Phase3s going back to around 1100, all vaguely visibly on the one page if zoomed out

AsleepInYorkshire
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Re: Best Ancestry Website UK

#466543

Postby AsleepInYorkshire » December 16th, 2021, 9:50 pm

PhaseThree wrote:Ancestry.co.uk is the best in my experience - more source data and better display than the others.
You can zoom in and out in both the pedigree and family view modes (vertical vs horizontal)
You can move backwards and forwards through the tree using the little arrows
I have a tree of 13 Phase3s going back to around 1100, all vaguely visibly on the one page if zoomed out

Thank you

I must be doing something wrong :oops:

AiY

staffordian
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Re: Best Ancestry Website UK

#466566

Postby staffordian » December 16th, 2021, 10:16 pm

I would give serious thought to using a stand alone program rather than relying on an online tree.

I use Legacy Family History. It has a free version, which is more than adequate for most beginners. The paid for version simply unlocks additional features.

It is a little tricky to get the hang of, but there are tutorials available, links are within the the program. There is also an active Facebook group with users who seem to know every last aspect of it, and as they are spread all over the globe, someone will usually answer a query pretty quickly.

Other programs are available, of course.

I think the problem with online trees is twofold.

First, there is the chance they might disappear, though they often have a download option. But if you are keeping it offline, a bespoke program is probably better.

Second, it is too easy to accept Ancestry suggestions without always giving them the critical consideration needed. This can, of course, lead to errors.

I have used Ancestry and Find My Past. I prefer the latter, but it does depend on which countries your search leads. Ancestry seems to me to be better suited to international ancestors, and to me Find My Past seems better for English records, particularly parish records of baptisms, marriages and deaths/burials. These are of greater importance once you get beyond 1837 as there are no official state registrations or censuses before ths period.

One thing to bear in mind. If, like me you have Scottish ancestors, none of the usual online family history sites have images. They are only available via an official Scottish Government website, ScotlandsPeople, to which you cannot subscribe. You buy credits to view and download records, but, the detail is immensly more thorough than the English ones, where you cannot see much detail from birth marriage or death registrations unless you pay a tenner or so for eah one you might want to see.

One aspect I don't know about, and to be honest was really your query. The paid for version has a pretty comprehensive charting option built in, but I think, from memory, the free program is limited to displaying a certain number of generations.on the charts But it costs nowt to download it and have a look, and it comes with a sample file so allow you to explore its capabilities without having to enter loads of stuff first.

Lanark
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Re: Best Ancestry Website UK

#466595

Postby Lanark » December 16th, 2021, 11:12 pm

Excel is actually pretty good for this, use one sheet for mothers side and one for the fathers side.
Put each family in one column with the oldest set of ancestors on the left.
It is clunky and you have to do a lot of scrolling and moving stuff around to fit, but it's good enough for my needs.
The nice thing is that to add extra information you can just add a row/column wherever needed.

Ancestry.co.uk has the best set of tools and scanned data, but the OCR is far from perfect - if you just accept every 'hint' they offer you will end up going down a blind alley with lots of incorrect data, I tried to find at least 2 sources for each connection to be sure they were really the right people.

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Re: Best Ancestry Website UK

#466659

Postby GoSeigen » December 17th, 2021, 8:41 am

AsleepInYorkshire wrote:I've joined Ancestry UK for 2 weeks free and tinkered with it last night.

I'm struggling to get the Family Tree to show more than 6 generations at a time. Is this because as the tree grows it simply becomes too large to display properly?

Are there any better sites for this sort of research please?

Thank you

AiY


Ancestry's offering is first class, by far the best last time I looked. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

If you don't like the family tree display you can download the entire tree as a GEDCOM file and display it using any number of GEDCOM-compatible applications. Personally I find the family tree display good enough but that is what I'd do if I wanted it displayed better (e.g. for printing).

staffordian wrote:Second, it is too easy to accept Ancestry suggestions without always giving them the critical consideration needed. This can, of course, lead to errors.


I find this criticism of Ancestry bizarre to say the least. You do not have to accept any hints. You can turn them off entirely IIRC. It's entirely your own fault if you enter data into your tree without first checking it -- it doesn't get in there automatically: you actually have to carry out the operation yourself.

GS

staffordian
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Re: Best Ancestry Website UK

#466667

Postby staffordian » December 17th, 2021, 9:12 am

GoSeigen wrote:
staffordian wrote:Second, it is too easy to accept Ancestry suggestions without always giving them the critical consideration needed. This can, of course, lead to errors.


I find this criticism of Ancestry bizarre to say the least. You do not have to accept any hints. You can turn them off entirely IIRC. It's entirely your own fault if you enter data into your tree without first checking it -- it doesn't get in there automatically: you actually have to carry out the operation yourself.

GS

I think my main issue with hints is that you don't get the same feel for a family and how it fits together compared to if you have put it together using logic, reasoning and research yourself, using clues from, say, a census, to determine where next to look for a vital piece of information to add to what you know or confirm what you think you know.

I find I have a deeper understanding of a family when I've explored several sources, perhaps had a few dead ends and finally (perhaps finally is the wrong word as there is always more to unearth) got the fullest picture I can.

Edit to add: Meant to say that I can see value for beginners in hints as it can get a good start, but I still think even then, or especially then, when knowledge of sources etc is perhaps lacking, they can be potentially misleading.

ten0rman
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Re: Best Ancestry Website UK

#466674

Postby ten0rman » December 17th, 2021, 9:35 am

Further to my posting above, in general I do use Ancestry the most. I use FindMyPast where Ancestry doesn't seem too good, or I'm going round in circles, or I don't understand (GoSeigen will confirm that as he has helped me out a few times - thanks GS).

Recently I've started again for the winter (it's too cold for anything else now) and am chasing up my wife's father's side. (GS will perhaps remember the pickle I got into over a man who may be my wife's grandfather as he, the actual GF is unknown.) Anyway, I'm now chasing up my wife's grandmother's side, and using Ancestry's hints I've discovered that the grandmother had a sibling who died within 12 months of birth (via a hint to a baptism certificate of all things), and that two other siblings emigrated to USofA with one marrying in the UK and the other marrying an English girl in USofA. Fortunately, on digging into these connections via the hint system, I found that there was enough evidence to be sure of the fact, eg in the case of the baptism,there were actually two baptism's on the same day and both father's name & mother's maiden name along with birthdates.

I usually start with Census records. And in this respect, note that only FindMyPast will shortly have access to the 1921 Census - at a cost of course, but they are a commercial operation.

So yes, whilst it is very easy to be sidetracked and get lost, hints can be of help.

ten0rman

p.s I must say that I find this a most interesting exercise to do, but very time consuming and mentally tiring. And in part, this is why I limit my activities on the genealogy front to the cold winter months.

yorkshirelad1
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Re: Best Ancestry Website UK

#466682

Postby yorkshirelad1 » December 17th, 2021, 9:58 am

AsleepInYorkshire wrote:I've joined Ancestry UK for 2 weeks free and tinkered with it last night.

I'm struggling to get the Family Tree to show more than 6 generations at a time. Is this because as the tree grows it simply becomes too large to display properly?

Are there any better sites for this sort of research please?

Thank you

AiY


I have used, and quite like, ancestry.co.uk and FindMypast (happily, my local County Library Service offer free access to both in the libraries, and during lockdown, access from home). However, I only use them for research and finding information. For storing data and building reports and output, I use Gramps. It's open source, and standalone on my PC (and therefore not dependent on a website subscription/lifespan), and backed up locally. There's quite a learning curve to get going, and it seems to be more the geek end of the market, compared to point-and-click of the likes of ancestry, but I like it. https://gramps-project.org/. YMMV. I don't think it's what you're looking for, but thought I'd throw some feedback into the general mix.

GoSeigen
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Re: Best Ancestry Website UK

#466683

Postby GoSeigen » December 17th, 2021, 9:58 am

staffordian wrote:
Edit to add: Meant to say that I can see value for beginners in hints as it can get a good start, but I still think even then, or especially then, when knowledge of sources etc is perhaps lacking, they can be potentially misleading.


[OT] indeed, they are very helpful for beginners, a wonderful idea actually if used correctly. I'd guess the thing that irks you is people who blindly add the hinted information whether it matches or not to their trees, which end up full of complete nonsense.

Just in case people are wondering what we are talking about, Ancestry.com offers "hints" which are basically links to documents which other users have attached to a person in their tree whose details closely match your individual**. As an example, if you input a Joe Bloggs born 1903 in Brighton into your tree, then ancestry software finds other trees which also have a Joe Bloggs born around that time and place; if the match is good enough according to their algorithm, then you will be alerted to the other source documents that those researchers attached to their Joe Bloggs. This feature means that you can often benefit from research that others have already done. It's really a brilliant leverage of the information contained in the trees hosted on Ancestry; you will NOT get this benefit if you use offline software.

GS
[**Additionally if the match is in a user's public tree and you have "tree hints" turned on you may get a hint linking directly to the individual in that tree; you can then see all the information in context in the tree and see if it matches your own tree.]

genou
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Re: Best Ancestry Website UK

#466861

Postby genou » December 17th, 2021, 5:46 pm

GoSeigen wrote:[OT] indeed, they are very helpful for beginners, a wonderful idea actually if used correctly. I'd guess the thing that irks you is people who blindly add the hinted information whether it matches or not to their trees, which end up full of complete nonsense.


This. I find Ancestry very useful, but it is like driving. You have to assume that everyone around you is a homicidal maniac.

I have never worked out what to do when you see complete garbage in another user's tree. To date I just stay schtum. There is an American woman whose tree links to mine through a great uncle of mine who in her version of reality emigrated to the US. If he ever did, they shipped him back to bury him in Kilmarnock.

I find Family Tree Maker ( which happily synchs with Ancestry ) a reassuring way of keeping an independent record.

AsleepInYorkshire
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Re: Best Ancestry Website UK

#466939

Postby AsleepInYorkshire » December 17th, 2021, 11:25 pm

Thank you for all the advice and guidance. Genuinely greatly appreciated.

My Mum died peacefully on the 1st December 2021. She was 80.

She was cremated today. Her wish was to have a service at the Minster and to walk over the road to her local for a small buffet. We're having a memorial service in the spring next year to celebrate her life and ensure her wishes are met.

I want to prepare a family tree before that date and I'm aware of the time limitations. I know it will be far from complete. But it will include all of her family who are coming to the service and I feel that is the right thing to do. They were a part of her life.

I was considering getting the family tree printed on a sheet of A1 paper and giving a copy to all the family members who come to her memorial service. Its not a big cost ... accepting the caveat that I know I've some work to put in to get the tree populated. I was hoping to put a framed family tree up at her memorial service.

Has anyone printed a family tree on an A1 sheet before please and what problems did you encounter?

I assume it will be quite simple - but therein lies the mother of mistake

Thank you

Take care

AiY

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Re: Best Ancestry Website UK

#468794

Postby gryffron » December 28th, 2021, 10:58 am

AsleepInYorkshire wrote:Has anyone printed a family tree on an A1 sheet before please and what problems did you encounter?
I assume it will be quite simple - but therein lies the mother of mistake

I've printed other stuff on A1 before. Any local print shop will do it for a few quid a sheet. They do still exist everywhere, they're usually on an industrial estate these days rather than the high street. But at least that means you can park.

I don't know what software you're using. But the main problem I had is convincing your PC that A1 sheets are allowed. Word/OpenOffice won't let you choose A1 unless you have an A1 printer installed! So you have to find and install ANY industrial printer driver, so you can start on an A1 sheet, and then not use your new printer but rather Windows print-to-PDF. Take copy of PDF to print shop on a memory stick - sorted.

I would test you can "print to A1" as soon as you install the software, and not assume it before you start entering all your data! As I said, in Word/OpenOffice you have to START with an A1 page. If you can create an A1 PDF, you're there.

Gryff

ten0rman
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Re: Best Ancestry Website UK

#477652

Postby ten0rman » January 31st, 2022, 9:32 pm

AiY,

(& others if interested)

I noticed today that Ancestry has modified their Family Tree drawing. Although it is still "Beta" it now allows you to show all generations, not just the six it used to restrict you to. It does need you to select the generations, but to my mind it is a good improvement.

Regards,

ten0rman

AsleepInYorkshire
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Re: Best Ancestry Website UK

#477654

Postby AsleepInYorkshire » January 31st, 2022, 9:53 pm

ten0rman wrote:AiY,

(& others if interested)

I noticed today that Ancestry has modified their Family Tree drawing. Although it is still "Beta" it now allows you to show all generations, not just the six it used to restrict you to. It does need you to select the generations, but to my mind it is a good improvement.

Regards,

ten0rman

I'm going to take accreditation for that one - I complained to them :shock: (genuinely did)

AiY(D)

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Re: Best Ancestry Website UK

#477715

Postby bungeejumper » February 1st, 2022, 10:00 am

Ancestry newbie here. My wife has bought me a membership which I'll probably use for a month or two. (I'm a fast worker. :) ) I've also been using the free trial fortnight from FindMyPast, which I think is the only place where you can get info from the 1921 census at the moment? (I believe some of it may also be available on Rootsweb, though I haven't followed that up.)

I'm getting a lot of good stuff from the 1939 National Register, which I think "replaced" the 1931 census that was destroyed by fire. But there are a lot of gaps, including a lot of people who were away with the forces or who had left the country since 1939. (Lots of thick black deletions on the forms I've been seeing.)

Some horrendous mistakes being made by other Ancestry researchers, who I take it aren't resident in Britain (or they'd know that Kenton is a more likely location for a Londoner than the tiny village of the same name in Devon. :lol: ). And it was a surprise to learn that one of my ancestors married his own 91 year old mother!

I suspect the dead hand of the Mormons here. Although Ancestry has technically never been Mormon-owned, I understand that members get free access to it.

BJ

ten0rman
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Re: Best Ancestry Website UK

#477725

Postby ten0rman » February 1st, 2022, 10:41 am

The 1939 register did not replace the 1931 Census. AIUI, the '39 register was simply a listing of people, where they lived and what their DOB was. The black lines are those people who are less than 100 years old, but here, with a small amount of checking, they can usually be identified, eg, my mother was born in 1920, hence when I first looked at the Register she was blacked out, however the other two people were her parents, hence easy to deduce who she was. The '39 Register was released on the undertaking that people under 100 years were blacked out.

The '39 Register was taken over and used by the NHS who kept it up to date up to sometime in the 1950's, ISTR. This is why there are what appear to be corrections.

FindMyPast have indeed got the rights to publish the 1921 Census, as they did initially with the 1911 Census. Ultimately, the 1911 Census became available on Ancestry as well. In respect of the 1921 Census, FMP are charging either £2.50 for a transcript or £3.50 for the original version.

As is usual with all. these databases, there are errors. My maternal grandfather, who carefully filled in the 1939 Register form with his best copperplate handwriting (I understand that he used to practice this as a sort of hobby) was misread by the transcriber such that his surname appeared as something else. This does apply elsewhere. Currently I'm looking into the Margerison's in the 1800's. This is another name that gets mis-transcribed, usually by the addition of an additional "r". One of the problems I have found, and this could explain your ancester marrying his aged mother, is that there is a tendency to repeat the same forename over consecutive generations, eg one of my wife's great grandmothers was Emma Maude. Her father was George Maude; her grandfather also George Maude, as was her Gt Grandfather! It wasn't helped that I found another George Maude in the same area who may, or may not, have anything to do with the family. It also wasn't helped when I found that the eldest of "our" George Maude's was actually married four times. That took some sorting out!

The Mormons do indeed run their own genealogy site - Family Search.org. This is free to use although they do ask for an email address, which made me very reluctant to join up. In fact I have never had any communication at all from them. In general, because they are actually American based, I haven't found them to be too much use, but, having said that, their site has indeed recently helped me.

In respect of their connection with Ancestry, I too have noticed that recently there indeed appears to be a connection with the Ancestry website. Quite how deep, I do not know.

Incidently, there is also a Kenton near Tyneside!

Good hunting,

ten0rman

p.s. I have just noticed that there is a reference in an earlier posting to another genealogy website with a similar name to Family Search, the Mormon site. I maybe getting confused between the two and their connection with Ancestry.

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Re: Best Ancestry Website UK

#477732

Postby bungeejumper » February 1st, 2022, 10:53 am

ten0rman wrote:The 1939 register did not replace the 1931 Census. AIUI, the '39 register was simply a listing of people, where they lived and what their DOB was. The black lines are those people who are less than 100 years old, but here, with a small amount of checking, they can usually be identified, eg, my mother was born in 1920, hence when I first looked at the Register she was blacked out, however the other two people were her parents, hence easy to deduce who she was. The '39 Register was released on the undertaking that people under 100 years were blacked out.

The '39 Register was taken over and used by the NHS who kept it up to date up to sometime in the 1950's, ISTR. This is why there are what appear to be corrections.

Thanks Tenorman! Yes, that all makes sense. Although my mother, who would have been 93 this year, is most definitely there and has not been blanked out. She died twelve years ago, so have her rights to anonymity been infringed? ;)

I gather that the 1939 register, with a war looming, was also undertaken in order to find out which people might be eligible for conscription. And to help with the strategic planning for social needs, ration books, etc. The records I've been looking at (Hertfordshire) also show the person's occupation, which is extremely useful. And so are the subsequent amendments (hand-inked in red). In one case, a young man's name has been crossed out and replaced with that of his younger brother!

BJ


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