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MarblesMom

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One of the cool things that I've seen on Ancestry is the census reports for both my mother & her parents (1940's), & also for my father & his parents & siblings (1930's). That was a funky thing to see. Maybe I'm a cheapo, but I won't pay to have a full membership with them (Ancestry, that is).

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There is a Mormon church in my city with a full Ancestry.com membership that is free to use to anyone wanting to research their family.  They have a small room with computers set aside at the church for exactly this purpose.  It is open several days a week, with an attendant to help you with Ancestry.com. 

We're especially interested because my grandmother was adopted and we have not been able to track down her birth family.  My great grandfather (her dad) is listed as a traveling salesman on one census, which has led me to wonder if he is her actual father.  Great grandfather and great grandmother never had children and he brought home a baby one day, claiming that the mother had given her up, for some reason or another. We've all joined 23&Me in hopes of something or someone popping up that will solve the mystery of her birth parents. 

They also neglected to tell my grandmother that she was adopted.  Although it was common knowledge in the family, my grandmother did not know until a cousin spilled the beans.   At that time she was a grown woman with children of her own; it was emotionally devastating to her. 

Also found out from my sister that my Puerto Rican grandmother (dad's mom) was the youngest of 19 children (take THAT, Michelle!) and the first daughter from that family to not have an arranged marriage to someone from Spain.  She went on to have 12 children of her own with my handsome but alcoholic grandfather.  My dad was one of those 12 children.   This alcoholic grandfather emigrated from Ireland to the U.S. as a 16-year-old when his mother converted to Mormonism. He never converted but his five sisters did, they emigrated from Ireland later.  Considering the Mormon penchant for tracking relatives, my mom once remarked, "You don't know anything about them, but they know everything about you."  

There have been numerous Puerto Rican "hits" on Ancestry.com

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A lot of public libraries have free access to Ancestry.  I believe the one where I live allows you access via your computer but you have to be in the library on their wifi. 

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Conversation with my mum, who I set up with a free membership and invited to view my/our tree:

Mum: did you see that they added more people?

me: who added more people? 

Mum: the people who are doing our tree

me: there are no people doing our tree. I research it and add people.

Mum: oh, so they tell you about new people and you add them

me: no. Well, there are hints, but that's not how it works

Mum: so who gives you hints? People must research our tree and send you hints.

me: it's a computer program mum. It just picks up on names and places and dates

Mum: well I think they're doing a great job

me: who? 

Mum: the people who are doing our tree

me: yep. They are doing a great job mum. I'll tell them you said so

 

Repeat every time I add new people to our tree.

 

P.s. she isn't suffering from dementia and is a fit healthy 72 year old who manages an iPhone and a lap top quite nicely but ancestry.com has her completely bewildered. I give up.

 

 

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I located a copy on ancestry of the naturalization records of a great grandfather.  Giving me locations in Germany of origin.  

And I found birth records of 2 of his children (my grandmother's older siblings) that give my great grandmother's full name including correct spelling (with umlauts). Granted - I don't read Germany or old 'flouncy' handwriting.  

This should improve my chances of finding things.  

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I joined a closed genealogy group - Tracing The Tribe.  Its for Jewish genealogy which is a real bear because the names and towns in Europe can have different spellings from whats on the immigration records,ship's manifests etc.  Anyhow,  when I asked a question about where to look for something, 2 people found me the information within 15 minutes.  I found out my g-great grandfather (paternal) was born in Vitebsk - same town as Marc Chagall - but still had his very anglicized one syllable surname on the ships manifest.  It wasn't changed at Ellis Island as originally thought.  He did change his first name.  He also was detained at Ellis Island,still trying to find out why,and didn't get naturalized until 1940, despite emigrating in 1905.  

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On 4/7/2016 at 11:12 PM, DaffyDill said:

I cannot find one single piece of information on Ancestry.com on me, my dad, or my mum.

Mum's side of the family goes back to 1066 and some obscure noble in the Battle of Hastings, so that's pretty cool. No convict @Karma, but we also found my GG uncle who died in Pozieres in France in WW1 :(

I did read somewhere that Northern Ireland are slow to computerise records, so maybe thats why I can't find anything.

 

@DaffyDill  My Mom was a professional genealogist. She had to do some Irish work back before they put records online, so she was snail mail letter writing with the Catholic parish priest. Once she joined facebook she became friends with the Catholic priest which she thought was funny. I believe there are more Irish records online now, but not all records. Have you used FamilySearch?

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On 4/13/2016 at 10:28 AM, Florita said:

I keep a free tree on Ancestry and do my digging on Family Search. If there is something only available on Ancestry I can access it at the library. This has only happened once.

Sometimes it seems as if they are using the same indexing because I'll find the same spelling mistakes at both places, but other times not. I seem to find more spelling problems with the Family Search indexing and their search engine doesn't help. For example, I was looking for a marriage record for a relative named Adora. Ancestry has it indexed as Adora, Family Search has it indexed as Adira and searches for Adora (with the correct date and place) produced nothing at Family Search. I found it there using the grooms name.

@Florita  My Mom told me about a trick to use when you think there might be spelling errors. If her name is Adora then you can search for Ad*ra and all variations with a missing letter will come up. Also FamilySearch info is from either LDS church records or scanned records from other governments and churches. When they need to add the the records they ask volunteers to 'Index' the scanned records, therefore the volunteers can spell things wrong all the time. You can download the FamilySearch Indexing app to your laptop/desktop and help anytime you want. I've done it a few times and FamilySearch can email you when they need a big push to index records, especially if you know a foreign language. 

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On 4/16/2016 at 5:33 PM, FundieFarmer said:

I'm glad you asked that, rabbitkm. I've wondered that for a while. I've been interested for a while. How much time do y'all put into this? How long does it take to make an intensive family tree? How far back do yours go? What are common road bumps you've hit?? These are all of the things I've come up with that have stopped me from setting up an account emoji15.png

@FundieFarmer and @RabbitKM  I'm Mormon so my genealogy is pretty much done (at least the British side), but I have 1 whole Danish line and 1 whole Swedish line. The biggest problem is the language since I don't speak/read Danish or Swedish. The next problem is that Scandinavian countries (along with Baltic, Russian, and Iceland) use to do patronymic last names; meaning if the father's first name is Jens then the son's last name will be Jensen (in Denmark or Jenson in Sweden) and the daughter's last name will be Jensdotter (or a variation of the -dotter) until she gets married and takes her husband's last name. Denmark stopped doing that around 1850 so records before that become difficult to connect. 

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On 4/16/2016 at 6:49 PM, RabbitKM said:

Either way, I might give it a go in a few months, and maybe enlist my grandparents to give me as much information as they can.  With my grandparents getting older (and sick, unfortunately), I've been thinking a lot more about where they came from and wanting to learn more about their histories.  

 

@RabbitKM  My Mom the genealogist taught a class in church about how to start your family history. She said the best way to begin is to get as much information from the oldest living relatives as possible. Journals/diaries, pictures, family bible, records, etc anything they have. After my grandpa was diagnosed with Parkinson's, my Mom video recorded him telling stories about his life and how he met my grandmother, and anything else he could remember. He had a great story about a great great uncle that ran around with Butch Cassidy for a while. There also might be one relative who is hoarding all the information, so find out who that person is. But also there might be a family legend that is false, but that can still get you in the right direction some how. And remember the 1890 US Census was burned down in the warehouse, so you won't find any records from that era. 

On 4/16/2016 at 7:29 PM, FrumperedCat said:

I research in the UK with all my discovered ancestors being born in this country which makes research relatively easy. I've managed to get by on the free version of ancestry and made use of the local libraries version in the past. Over here each Easter bank holiday weekend allows free access to census records and the like which I found to be very useful. There are also a few free sites run by volunteers such as FreeCen, FreeReg and FreeBMD that provide UK records for free which are invaluable.

And Cindy's List, that is a good resource

http://www.cyndislist.com/

This might sound snobbish, but check the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) website for Revolutionary War records. You can search even if you are not a member, It takes a while to get the hang of it.

http://www.dar.org/

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On 4/24/2016 at 3:05 AM, Blahblah said:

My other problem is that almost my entire family is English with fairly common surnames, limited first names (curses to Mary, Ann, Sarah, Edward, John, Frederick, William and every combination thereof) and they mostly stayed in the same place so it gets very difficult.

@Blahblah Ugh me too, but add George. I'm researching one line from Bath, England and it is a nightmare because the jumping off ancestor was born before the 1841 Census started. I was able to find his parent's marriage in the parish records 6 weeks before his was born. Then I found out there was no divorce records back then, so I have no idea what his Mother's name is after she remarried.

On 8/15/2016 at 5:43 AM, Blahblah said:

Any ancestry.com experts who can solve this? Several generations back two of my lines converge with two of my 10xgreat grandfathers being brothers.

Ancestry.com (I'm using the app on my iPad) records one of them as my 10x great grandfather and the other as a first cousin 10x removed. I have no idea how to fix this, or even whether it can be fixed. The next generation down is fine. It just can't deal with the brothers.

@Blahblah  Weird because intermarriage is pretty common in Europe  

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On 8/19/2016 at 8:09 PM, Blahblah said:

Conversation with my mum, who I set up with a free membership and invited to view my/our tree:

Mum: did you see that they added more people?

me: who added more people? 

Mum: the people who are doing our tree

me: there are no people doing our tree. I research it and add people.

Mum: oh, so they tell you about new people and you add them

me: no. Well, there are hints, but that's not how it works

Mum: so who gives you hints? People must research our tree and send you hints.

me: it's a computer program mum. It just picks up on names and places and dates

Mum: well I think they're doing a great job

me: who? 

Mum: the people who are doing our tree

me: yep. They are doing a great job mum. I'll tell them you said so

 

Repeat every time I add new people to our tree.

 

P.s. she isn't suffering from dementia and is a fit healthy 72 year old who manages an iPhone and a lap top quite nicely but ancestry.com has her completely bewildered. 

2

 

 

 

 

On 8/19/2016 at 8:09 PM, Blahblah said:

 

How lucky you have her to brighten your day.  Laugh, give her a kiss and thank God that you have her.

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On 8/15/2016 at 8:12 AM, Howl said:

There is a Mormon church in my city with a full Ancestry.com membership that is free to use to anyone wanting to research their family.  They have a small room with computers set aside at the church for exactly this purpose.  It is open several days a week, with an attendant to help you with Ancestry.com. 

We're especially interested because my grandmother was adopted and we have not been able to track down her birth family.  My great grandfather (her dad) is listed as a traveling salesman on one census, which has led me to wonder if he is her actual father.  Great grandfather and great grandmother never had children and he brought home a baby one day, claiming that the mother had given her up, for some reason or another. We've all joined 23&Me in hopes of something or someone popping up that will solve the mystery of her birth parents. 

They also neglected to tell my grandmother that she was adopted.  Although it was common knowledge in the family, my grandmother did not know until a cousin spilled the beans.   At that time she was a grown woman with children of her own; it was emotionally devastating to her. 

Also found out from my sister that my Puerto Rican grandmother (dad's mom) was the youngest of 19 children (take THAT, Michelle!) and the first daughter from that family to not have an arranged marriage to someone from Spain.  She went on to have 12 children of her own with my handsome but alcoholic grandfather.  My dad was one of those 12 children.   This alcoholic grandfather emigrated from Ireland to the U.S. as a 16-year-old when his mother converted to Mormonism. He never converted but his five sisters did, they emigrated from Ireland later.  Considering the Mormon penchant for tracking relatives, my mom once remarked, "You don't know anything about them, but they know everything about you."  

There have been numerous Puerto Rican "hits" on Ancestry.com

@Howl  I'm Mormon and through my FamilySearch account we can access Ancestry, Find My Past, My Heritage, American Ancestors, and Geneanet for free, which means if you use the Family History Library in a Mormon church it is also free. For the rest of you, you can look up how to find a Family History Library in a Mormon church at  https://familysearch.org/locations/

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So sorry everyone for all the replies, since my Mom was a professional genealogist she shared info with me. I always joke that my Mom taught me how to read from microfilm/fiche. Since we're Mormon and my ancestors did a bunch of genealogy when they arrived in the Salt Lake Valley (+1850's) my Mom got stuck in the 1600's in her family history research because before that there are no records for peasants in England. When I married a convert to the church my Mom was so excited to do his genealogy (he had done nothing), she immediately found his Aunt and other family still living in Ireland! 

My anecdote for Ancestry is that my grandfather's middle name is the letter E. His mother and father's first, middle, and maiden names all started with an E, so instead of giving him a name they just did a letter. So now I have to go into Ancestry and FamilySearch to fix my grandpa's middle initial every so often and tell the person who thought they were "correcting" it that they are wrong and I am right. Some woman actually tried to message me on Ancestry that I was wrong, sorry granddaughter with correct information trumps complete stranger trying to connect invisible dots. 

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