Using Ancestry.com


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I now use Ancestry and Findmypast. Ancestry is good for West Yorkshire. Findmypast is better for East Yorkshire, Norfolk and Lincolnshire. Findmypast is good for newspaper archives, and using it avoids paying a separate subscription for this archive. In the 1939 register in Findmypast I like the maps they give. These are not given in Ancestry and they are useful. Findmypast has a lot of transcriptions and I approach these with care. In the 1939 register transcription they have my mum being born back in the 1800s! I emailed them about this mistake, giving the correct date, but I guess they will do nothing. The transcriber should have gone to Specsavers!

I do not publish my tree online but I do look at published trees and cringe at the errors they have about my ancestors, remembering that none of us are perfect!

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I have just been to the new memorial on the enbankment and the workmen were brilliant one went to check if my grandfather was on and came back with it on his phone I would like to thank everyone who h

I did the 'spit in the tube' deal on Ancestry 2-3 years ago. You are always skeptical about these things, but hey ho, in for a penny....... i got back my results of where I came from and also close ma

Now, I'd have expected you to turn up some Tibetan relatives, Katyjay!

I use the library editions of both Ancestry and Find My Past. Too mean to pay the subscriptions!! I did most of my basic family research before the internet existed when it was a case of traipsing round churches and to records offices to view original registers. It's very easy to see how transcription errors occur: some of the writing is virtually illegible. However, I prefer working from the primary sources because it somehow adds to the sense of history.

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Some of the transcription's on Find My Past are comical. .My Great Aunt's job in 1939 was transcribed as 'Car Women Officer'

Clear as day when viewing the original it was 'Char Women, Office'

 

Got me thinking, would there be a job definition 'Gun Slinger' at the Ordinance factory in the Meadows in 1939? This one's spot on.

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On 6/15/2019 at 8:17 AM, HSR said:

 

Got me thinking, would there be a job definition 'Gun Slinger' at the Ordinance factory in the Meadows in 1939? This one's spot on.

This was was my Great Uncle, served in the Royal Artillery in WW2, came though it 'unscathed' but sadly had a stammer when stressed.

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I got back to the 1800’s on my dads family tree. It was only on my grandads side as my great grandmother was French (we presume my great grandad met her during the First World War). It was easy to start as my grandads name was Gresham and all his siblings had unusual names mostly biblical and we could remember my Great Aunt Zena (formidable lady) and my Great Aunt Lizzie (always with Zena but like a little mouse, always hung onto her handbag as if someone was going to steal it). It was very interesting, my Great Grandad was a Geordie coalminer who moved to Nottingham but my Grandad always said his boys would never be miners. I married a Geordie who was from a coal mining family and he ended working as a miner, came full circle.

 

 

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Again having a rest from Ancestry, as with a lot of others seeing the errors of transcriptions etc, it annoys me when I've found an "exclusive " photo and post it only to find that someone else has taken that photo and planted it on their family tree stating that the person was their gg grandfather or whatever. I've contacted quite a few to tell them not to believe everything they see, with no reply and the photos stay there on their tree.Don't they know they have to research first before they steal.

The furthest I've gone back to is 1678 on my fathers side and I also have a photo of his grave stone, sent to me by a distant cousin.

Maybe one day I'll go back with a new enthusiasm. 

Strangely enough his name was James which in my family figures quite a few times, my son included without even knowing.

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Nonna, is it conceivable that the person on the photo could actually be their gg grandfather (or whatever) as well as yours?  

Only this morning, I had a notification from 'My Heritage' that a person I have no knowledge of whatsoever has the same gg grandfather as me (born in 1784)

I do know a lot about my DIRECT ancestry because my brother has researched it thoroughly, but the people in previous centuries had so many children that the branches of the tree have spread far and wide since 1784...  wonder if the person who has recently discovered his/my gg grandfather looks a bit  like me?

 

I am reminded of the following verse by Thomas Hardy

 

Heredity

I am the Family Face

Flesh perishes, I live on,

Protecting trait and trace

Through time to times anon.

And leapin from place to place

Over oblivion

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I have the Essentials membership in Ancestry.com. it costs me £96 a year, It covers enough information for me to build my tree and It is surprising how often my ancestors names come up in other peoples trees. If your tree is a public one, as mine is, it helps others to share their and your information. My maternal side of the family are Mansfield people, probably moved to Nottm sometime before WW2, (yet to discover exactly when?) but Paternal side according to shared info and BDM registers, I must be related (without knowing) to quite a few people that I have passed in the street in the Carlton/Gedling area. You can have a private tree, if you don't want people to see your tree.

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I have just been to the new memorial on the enbankment and the workmen were brilliant one went to check if my grandfather was on and came back with it on his phone I would like to thank everyone who helped me on this quest  My father never knew there was a grave I found that at arrass and i was the first of the family to visit he was a gunner in the RHA and was killed 1918 he only had a few months to go  The workmen said it should be open in about the end of the month  This means so much to surviving members of the family he was not recorded on any memorial here he was born in Radford and the church was demolished and the memorial lost I wish my father could have seen it but i can rest now i have achieved my quest  once again thanks to everyone meeowed

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Margie the people I've written to who "stole" my photos , before I wrote to them I checked every conceivable generation and there was no proof that they could connect with my tree. I realize that big families were the norm but I couldn't find one person that could belong to us.

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I'm sure you're right, nonna, and they shouldn't have used your photos, but I just did a bit of maths... (cos I'm fascinated by the numbers!)

 

From my own family tree... (I've rounded down  the figures as not everyone produced children)

My great great grandfather  had 5 children (including my great grandfather)

Possibly each of those 5  had 5 children,  making 25 new descendants  ( including my grandfather) 

Possibly each of those 25 had 5 children, making 125 new descendants (including my mother)

 

If each of those 125 only had 2 children, that would still give another 250 descendants (including me)..... 

And if you add them all together it would be 405 people who have descended from my great great grandfather.  And that's not including the 2 generations after mine!

 

I think I need a lie down after thinking about all that..  

 

but whoever it was, definitely  shouldn't have pinched your photos, nonna!

 

 

 

 

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I prefer 'Find my Past' suits my more methodical approach. I find Ancestry has a better 'clue' engine but likes to 'feed ' the user with hint's. Iv'e entered nothing into the page of my supposed tree..most people seem to do one generation, maybe 2 to 4 document's listed thus creating clutter.

 

Nonna..I doubt people are 'Stealing' your pictures,  just human error and lack of commitment on their part. To research the 'Stealing' of a picture from say 1890 in my eyes would be a very laborious task unless your using the template (probably riddled with errors) on Ancestry.

 

Call me a cynic, but has anybody else found that you have to use both Ancestry and FMP to get NEARLY every census?

I had yearly subscription to FMP and didn't log in for 7 months with 2 months remaining..as if by magic the missing 1851 census I was after miraculously appeared!

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  • Cliff Ton changed the title to Using Ancestry.com

Ancestry has recently added Notts Anglican Parish Registers, which include births, deaths, marriages etc, going back as far as 1600s in some cases.

 

I use the free access in libraries, so this morning I had a poke around to see what was available, and came up with the record of my grandparents' wedding in Lenton in 1924, which also provided confirmation of exactly where they were living at the time.

 

I'll return and dig around more in the next few weeks.

 

 

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I saw many of them years ago at The Judges Lodgings on High Pavement in the days when the original registers were brought up from the bowels of the building every quarter of an hour! There's nothing quite like perusing the primary source but,  since then, I've found other events I'd like to look at, so Ancestry will suffice.

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