Just started tracing, isn't it addictive?

[slowlygoingbonkers]

Got a two week trial on ancestry. Managed to get back to my great great great nan so far. It's really addictive

Anything juicy, so far?
Take everything you find with a grain of salt, it's better if you can find actual documents to verify who was born when & married who when, etc. Lots of false tree info on A'y.com.

I am currently madly comparing notes with a 3rd cousin about the 5-6 siblings who didn't make it to adulthood in one family, we can't figure out death dates or even birthdates. They were so incredibly poor. 3rd Cousin had a 1943 written account of the oral history about the Scottish grandparents etc., about people born 1800-1850, lovely rich details.

Start asking around for old family photos, sometimes a wealth of info in them, too, if you study. I've had good results by publishing all my findings online though (dedicated website). So many cousins have found me that way & then had loads of info to share.

Yes very addictive. As llijkk says you need to verify everything on Ancestry.com from other sources. I started 30 years ago and have recently taken it up again after a break of 10 years. I got on Acom and couldn't believe how many people I found. After thinking it through I realised that I was getting verification from other people's trees which is wrong! I went and identified certain people on parish registers before putting them down as definites. I love the new census records - when I was starting they'd only just released the 1880 census and there was a lot of gaps in my family, now looking at the 1910 one there's so much more information that I can be filled in. Have fun!

Never thought about verifying things. I think most of it is right though as there are some photos on there and they are photos I inherited of my nan, which sparked the interest. Nothing juicy yet.

Matching photos is a good sign.
Verifying details is a never ending process, anyway.
It may help you to know... most people find it useful to get occasional subs to A'y.com, maybe one month every 18 months. You just have a huge blitz getting info off there, then spend 18 months organising it & building up the next set of questions to research when you next buy a 1 month sub. Occasional membership is usually better value for money & more productive than having an ongoing sub.

I agree. I used it extensively for a month then I didn't go near it again for the other 11 months I'd paid for. The information you accrue is still accessible even though you are not subscribing. Also I noticed that a couple of months ago they were allowing free viewing of certain records, I'm not sure if that was a one-off or something they give you from time to time.

So if I cancel my subscription can I still access my family tree that I have set up on there?

Yes. I've just checked to see if mine are still there! When I cancelled my subscription I was told I would still be able to access them. Not sure if you can update them as I haven't tried.

Thanks. Is there any other sites you would recommend? Our local library has a family history section with parish records etc that I'm going to check out as well.

Familysearch.org. I've had amazing amounts of FREE info off of there.

Don't forget to put out feelers (messages) to other members of Ancestry.com, who seem to be related to you, see if they want to swap info. The 3rd cousin who recently got in touch with me, was after she found a message I sent her on A'y.com about 4 years ago.

I have a feeling findmypast has a 50 free credit offer at the moment. But expect both sites to be very busy over the Christmas period - people have time to search.

If I remember rightly when you buy familytreemaker platinum (eg amazon about £30) you also get 6 months subscription to ancestry.co.uk - cheaper even if you never use the software.

FreeBMD is good to find certificate index numbers (also on ancestry but often easier to use on freeBMD). FreeREG is good for register lookups for some counties (eg Norfolk, Somerset, Lincolnshire). There is also a FreeCEN - again coverage varies.

Rootschat.com is a good place to ask advice.

But best of all - if you can - visit the relevant records office - it can be great fun - especially if you can get back to the era of tithe maps etc.

Familysearch.org is a good site - just make sure you only search the transcribed records, not the submitted ones. The latter are posted by members and can be a bit, umm, imaginative.

To make sure you get the transcribed ones try using this site to search individual parishes freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~hughwallis/IGIBatchNumbers.htm

Forgot to add this - there are also sites devoted to individual counties (known as online parish clerks, but nothing to do with the official version), there's a list of the counties covered here www.onlineparishclerks.org.uk/

I'd love to do this again, sadly lost confidence when I signed up originally and some utter c* hacked the records of Ancstery and took £10.5k of my card as they took over my identity.

Be careful and use wisely.

Thanks, this will help loads. Is there any world wide sites? Managed to get back quite a few generations and an ancestor is from India.

Ancestry has a worldwide membership, but I don't know how many countries it covers. I Googled 'Indian genealogy' though and found this list of sites that might be useful. Alternatively, post a message on this forum on Rootschat, if they can't help you they will almost certainly point you in the right direction.

I actually popped back to mention the National Archives. It's a great place to look for things like wills, military records and family papers.

Ancestry is great but sometimes wrong. And ancestor of DH's is called Sinai (I won't say the surname). Ancestry have got it down as Swan ---. We thought it was a census mistake- nope, looked on other sites, all have got it down as Sinai.

Lots of users post family members' dates of birth (especially the ones from way back, such as in the 1100s) before their parents were born! So lots of inaccurate info so be careful when copying from other trees.

Saying that I've got nearly 9000 people in my tree (not all verified) with a lot of links to the aristocracy/royal families from the Tudor times and earlier from all over Europe. It's very addictive! I've discovered links between my mother's and father's trees (not very close - 9th cousins - thank god) and trying to work out how DH and I are related - his mum is from the same town as my family, with a surname in common, but so far I've hit a brick wall.