Am I missing the point of Ancestry website?

[stonkytonk11]

I’ve just started exploring on ancestry but the website is ‘telling’ me very little and instead asking me for the information…that’s fine up until my grandparents but I had hoped it would point me in the direction of their parents and grandparents…that’s why I want to use it. What am I missing? The search function asks for first name and surname which I don’t know, that’s what I’m hoping to discover!

If you know your grandparents names and whereabouts they lived (if you are in the UK) you could try finding them in the 1921 census or the 1939 register which should give you names of their parents.

It’s user-generated content. So if someone else has researched their family, and it happens to include your family, the details will be there. Otherwise…it’s on you.

I think originally it was a way for people to track their research and connect with fellow researchers. It seems to have morphed over the years - I suppose because there is more data on there, so people expect to find information readily.

I think that’s where I’ve gone wrong, I signed up to the basic package and I don’t think I can change it now to include census data (although is it just England and Wales census data?)

@sillylittlerabbityes I think I had hoped it would fill in the blanks for me a bit more but maybe that will come as I get further on

Once you're hooked into your ancestral line, it's easy. But you need to set it off on a trajectory with some basic info.
Start making a tree with yourself and your parents and grandparents plus anything more that you know.
Can you find grandparents marriage, as it may then have maiden names and fathers names? The 1939 register has actual dates of birth which may help further along the line too.
The more info you add, the more help you get from the site. The "Hints" function is very good; it searches for similarities in other people's trees as well as looking for records which may match your tree.

If you put in what you do know Ancestry will start to give you hints (they sometimes take a day or two to appear) but one way or another I have got back four or five generations. Be warned, hints are not always right. I have been given dates for grandparent/great grandparent deaths that I know are wrong but I have also traced the right info.
As PP said, I found the 1939 register very helpful and the 1921 census is adding to my knowledge.

It takes hours and hours to do it properly. It doesn’t just draw you a family tree, you have to work backwards using info you know for sure, then find those people on the census living with their families, which allows you to trace further back. It’s a lot of work, particularly if you don’t have much info to begin with.

I have living relatives I’ve been able to ask questions - they could give me the names of some of my great-great-grandparents for example.

Make sure you check any ‘hints’ on Ancestry thoroughly. I’ve seen too many people just accept a hint and add people to their trees and they’re completely wrong. The further back you go, the more common names become too. Trying to work out who is who when you have a father, son and nephew all with the same name. Children often named after each set of grandparents etc. Ages often fudged on marriage certificates, rounded up or down on certain censuses. It’s a minefield.

ive made some progress with my mums side but i cannot find my dads parents at all even though i know their names and his mums maiden name. No sign of either of them, what else can i try?

Start with what you do know.
Fill in all your details- and your parents and grandparents. Fill in the names of any siblings, aunts and uncles.
Look at their birth, marriage and death certificates, lots of information on them.

Then the census returns- the latest one is the 1939 register, then others from 1841 to 1921 (the 1931 was destroyed by fire during the war).
Be careful of just copying other people’s tree’s without verification- you could just be copying their mistakes. But they can give you clues.

Do you know Freebmd? Free births, marriages and deaths. Mind you, it depends which country you're looking in.

It's a while since I used Ancestry to help plot my family tree, but I used the censuses from 1841 on, and Freebmd, which goes back to 1837.
I would like to say that I really agree with you about being careful. Some people don't check very well! Someone gave me some info and I bought a certificate on their say-so, but it was the wrong person.

If you're not sure what to do, you need to find someone to do the research for you. A friend who's keen on genealogy, maybe?
Paying a researcher is another alternative.
I've researched family trees for a couple of friends. I enjoy doing it. Do you know anyone who has researched their own family tree who might be able to help you?

It’s user-generated content. So if someone else has researched their family, and it happens to include your family, the details will be there. Otherwise…it’s on you.

No, it has official records - births, marriages, deaths, census records and much more. But you have to start by putting in some information that you already know. You can start with just the name and date of birth or death of a grandparent.

For example if you know you had a relative called Frank Smith who died aged 75 in 1990, you could search the 1921 census for a Frank Smith who was aged five or six then. If he was at home with his parents on census night, you will find his parents, siblings, anyone else in the household, their ages and birthplaces.

Then you can search for his parents' marriage, and also look for them in previous censuses, and so on back through the generations.

When I started family history, it was way before the internet. There were excellent books one could buy which told how to go about it and what sources were available. I don't know what guides are available now. But you ideally need to know what you're looking at before you begin.

Look for their marriage on FreeBMD and send away for their marriage certificate. That will give you their ages, fathers' names and occupations, whether either of them had been married before and who the witnesses were.

Ancestry will only 'fill in blanks' for you if someone else has already compiled a tree that links with the information you've provided in yours. And even if you do find that, there's no guarantee that the other researcher has got things right in their tree. I was once contacted by someone whose own research was wrong, and we weren't actually related at all.

You have to do your own research, using primary records, which are Birth, Marriage, and Death registrations, parish records, censuses, wills and so on. Start with what you know and work backwards from there. You need to double-check everything. If you think you have found the right birth (for instance) it may be the right one, but it may not.

Other trees are user generated but the vast majority comes from archives who have a contract with the site (most County Archives have a contract with either Ancestry or Find My Past). The London Archive and Gloucestershire are two whose records go on Ancestry, Hertfordshire records are on Find My Past to give a couple of examples. Records include parish registers, workhouse records, electoral registers, and more is being added all the time.

If your ancesters were baptised, those records are fantistic for finding parents, which can lead to siblings. If you know the county where they were born, check on the county records office website which should let you know if the registers are online, and if so where. Records less than 100 years old may not be up (some are).

Lots of County Archives offer a family history advice service and some do getting started sessions to help with the early days of research - they can give advice even if your ancestors are out of county. Your local library service (in UK at least) generally has a subscription to the two main research sites and you can access this free in the library if you book a computer. The staff may have training to get you started with them. You can't create a family tree when signed on with the library, but you can check records and gather info, send copies of documents to yourself, and other functions. It is really useful if you need to check things when you don't have a subscription.

Good luck OP! Once you get going it is absolutely fascinating.

Would they be on the 1939 register or the 1921 census? Do you know your dad’s siblings names and ages? Sometimes transcription errors occur but maybe try looking for the siblings and you’ll find the parents. GRO or FreeBMD websites should help.

There’s a Genealogy board on here if you want to try asking for help - you’ll need to give specifics though obviously.

It's incredibly time consuming- you are doing research using the documents, it won't tell you anything unless someone has done a complete family tree and made it public.

Have you done a DNA test? That really helps.

I'm happy to have a try to find them if you PM me.

I have done one - to date I have 22,892 DNA matches according to Ancestry 😁, and am 98% Cornish. (Only about 700 reasonably close though).

I think without the DNA test I would have had a great deal of trouble getting anywhere with my father's family. He was an only child, the youngest in his generation and died when I was a child. By the time I was an adult all his kin we were in touch with were dead.

You don't need to match dna with living people. You match as far back as you can then work forward.

So I had 20 close matches. I did their family trees until I found an ancestor with the correct surname I was looking for. 5 of the matches shared that ancestor. So I was certain I shared dna with that person ( born 1832) I then did her family tree ( using the documents on ancestry) and ended up finding 2 potential birth fathers ( same name, they were 4th cousins) This of course only works if you have a name.

With no name it can be done- foundlings have found their birth parents this way- but obviously much more time consuming as you have no name to give a clue..

If you know grandmother’s maiden name you might find the generation above. From grandparents birth/ marriage certificates you can find witnesses who may be relatives and fathers’ name, address, occupation which might help you narrow down options on a census.

The closest match I have is 128cM and all of my great-great grandparents predate birth certificates and so do half my great-grandparents - moreover they are mostly non-conformists so the baptisms are a bit haphazard! Some of my great-great grandparents predate marriage certificates also and the parish register doesn't give their father's names.