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Family history research, Ancestry.com or somewhere else?

2 replies

AnOddOod · 17/08/2015 18:02

Dh has suggested a subscription to a family history site for his birthday. He's just starting out so where is the best place?

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RedToothBrush · 17/08/2015 18:28

I've used Ancestry and FindMyPast. I think Genesreunited is the other main one.

I personally think findmypast is the best at the moment. It revamped its site a while back and was awful but has improved. I find it the easiest to find things on and it has got more new collections in the last 12months. It also has access to a large database of newspapers which can really add colour to any stories you find. Plus they are due to release the 1939 register in the near future. You can do a tree on their site but these are not currently searchable.

Ancestry is just about to start revamping its site. I hope it goes better than findmypasts did. So it may be a bit of a gamble. The search ancestry has is that you can search other people's family trees and connect with people with a shared ancestry. The trouble is that more trees are inaccurate than are well researched so you can be sucked into poor research if you do that.

Genesreunited is owned by the same people as findmypast. It has a lot of similar records, but not exactly the same. It also has a family tree feature similar to ancestry but it doesn't have the same number of users but has the same problem with inaccurate trees. I don't think its as good as findmypast though as the record collection isn't as good.

Go for the British subscription rather than a world one. If you are Scottish, don't bother. Just use Scotlands People (works out more expensive though sadly). If you have a lot of Irish roots, you may need to go for the world one but there are limited records and you'd be better starting off working out what you are doing with a British subscription and finding out if its worth upgrading later.

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AnOddOod · 17/08/2015 21:21

Thanks , that's really comprehensive.
Going off surname there's Scottish blood in there and possibly some Caribbean link but majority and immediate is English so findmypast or ancestry then.