Anyone used Ancestory website and find it useful?

[jpclarke]

Just curious if it is worth the money or is it mostly Americans on it looking for long lost relatives? Thanks

You could also do the same with marriage certs, which provide three names (bride, groom and his father)

This is where Scottish record are excellent as marriage records also give mothers names (I know new English records now record the mother's name, but Scottish ones always have).

Marriage records are my preferred records for information as the adult bride and groom are giving their parents information themselves. Death certs are good, but often the person registering is a generation down again so there are more often errors in grandparents names I've found.

I’ve been a member for years, I have built a pretty substantial tree and done my DNA, plus I manage my parent’s DNA results. The thing that really drives me nuts is the number of people who simply cut & paste other people’s research and do no checks themselves. I ended up switching my tree to private after my records and photos were copied without as much as a “hello”. My great-gran is on multiple trees as the daughter in a household when I know 100% that she was raised by an aunt (I spent a lot of my childhood with g-gran so I had this confirmed directly, plus I got a copy of her birth certificate).
Ancestry is available for free at my local library, you could check that out, plus some libraries do introductory sessions for free.

Yeah, I probably would have gone for marriage certs if I hadn't been researching a family health syndrome. Great tip about the better accuracy of marriage-cert names.

That's so interesting re. Scottish marriage certs!

It's helped me find a few distant relatives and it's allowed me to view/share documents to substantiate people in my family tree.

Great tip about the better accuracy of marriage-cert names.

It was a man in the Scotlands people centre that said it to me. As soon as he said it I realise it makes absolute sense.

That's so interesting re. Scottish marriage certs!

Scottish certs love a maiden name for a woman. It's so so helpful!