Ancestry.com - Am I missing something?

[Sashimito]

I made a free ancestry account a few years ago so I could find and get a copy of my dad's birth certificate (we are NC).

Recently I decided to get a membership for a month to find out some family history. However, all I've been able able to do is make my family tree from the little information I have. I found the birth record for one auntie but none of the other siblings of my parents.

I had assumed I would be able to find other links, or trees that were already made. Would the links only work if I do a DNA test?

I would be careful if you have skeletons, DH's family did and while I found my experience fun and interesting he found it upsetting.
I think he regrets having tried it.

The 1901 and 1911 census are available though on www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiywJ6_hPL8AhXwSkEAHZzpBhcQFnoECBYQAQ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.census.nationalarchives.ie%2F&usg=AOvVaw1Sa5WsB7GObeLVBDB-xFAH

@icefishing I don't have any proof of skeletons but I'm pretty sure there would be some. My grandfather spent over 40 years in London 'working' while the rest of the family were still on the West Coast of Ireland. I find it almost impossible to believe he wouldn't have fathered other children apart from my dad and his 7 siblings.

I only use Ancestry to document my tree as I think Findmypast is far more user friendly. I have however found quite a few ancestors on other trees but you need to be wary, I've seen stuff I know is plain wrong where I have certificates and others have made incorrect assumptions.

Irish records are difficult unless you know exactly where they came from due to central records being destroyed in a fire. So for example there is no point me looking for my ancestor John Gallagher from Donegal! Fortunately John's son and numerous other relatives moved to Scotland in the 1830sand Scotland people is an amazing source.

Good luck OP.

Personally, I think you are going about this the wrong way.

A huge number of Ancestry trees are absolute mince, people just add anything and anyone, don't research properly, get click happy and end up confusing people with similar names. It is not wise AT ALL to take other people's research as gospel.

It's not true that you won't be able to find any information about living people, but there is certainly less about people born within the last 100 years.

I would suggest taking this course - free - to give you a solid grounding in the basics.

www.futurelearn.com/courses/genealogy

You can only view deceased people on other people's trees; living people are marked as private unless the owner of the tree gives you access.

Have you got any England/wales family as they will be easier to track.
If you want to send me a PM I can try and help you get back to a place where there may be more branches.
I am really good at genealogy.

www.irishgenealogy.ie/

Is a very useful site it has full copies of birth, death and marriage certificates, not recent ones though.

Useful if you know where exactly relatives came from or lived but difficult if you are only sure of names and vague dates of birth.

The church records are very useful, again if you know exactly the area your relatives were from.

Good luck

Thanks for all the answers.

I think before doing anything I need to clarify to myself what I'm looking for. I think I hoped to stumble across a ready made tree that laid out family relationships more clearly. Since I don't have contact with my family I was probably doing it for connection. I'm also more interested in family in the last 100 years rather than actually going deep into the history.

As far as I know, the majority, if not all of my family will be Irish heritage.

You can search the GRO index for free if you know the surname someone was registered with at birth. The index will show their birth name, the quarter in which they were registered, the registration district and the mother's maiden name.

So, for example, if you know your grandmother was called Eileen Wilkinson and she was born in 1921, you can search the GRO index for her. The index should then tell you her mother's maiden name. Obviously this works better if the person you are searching for has a more unusual name. If you're looking for your grandfather David Jones from Swansea, it will be more difficult if not impossible to work out which one is him.

You can pay to get their birth certificates, it's about £6 for a PDF or £11 for a paper copy. But often you can get enough information just from the index to be able to get the surnames of the generation before the last one you know.

Again, if one or both of the surnames is unusual then you'll have better luck here.

So if from searching the index you're reasonably sure that your great grandparents were called Mr Robinson and Miss Brewer, you can search Ancestry to see if you can find a marriage record for them. If you can find out when they married, you can then search the GRO index for male and female children with the dad's surname and mum's maiden name, starting the year they married for up to 20 years to identify all the children they had together.

The GRO records go back to 1837, which means that once you get back past 1911 you can cross reference what you find against the censuses, which are all available on Ancestry.

Any further back than that and your best bet is parish records. If your ancestors were married or baptised in the Church of England in a big place like London, those records are often available.

I found that everything changed when I took the DNA test. It then tells you all the people you're matched to (including 3rd and 4th cousins) and I think that's when it gets more interesting. I never look at my family tree now but when I get an alert about a new match, I take a look.

I gave up with it. It was painful. I have a massive family and family history and it just didn't work for me.

Larger families just mean you have to be more methodical and systematic in your approach. And don’t expect any website to do the work for you.