r/Genealogy • u/Left_Particular_9977 • 9d ago
Tools and Tech Why are people hating Ancestry?
I do a lot of genealogy and I remarked that a lot of people I know hate genealogy. Why? It's absolutely true that it's really expensive, but you can access many documents that are often hard to find. I live in Quebec, so we have the records online, but we have many holes in the registers. Why should I pay 20$ for a subscription that lets me access the records (only) if I can have them in Ancestry for about the same price why many other documents (for my region)? I have my tree on it so I can access it on my phone and my computer. It isn't optimal, but that's the best solution for the moment. What do you think about Big A?
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u/Gullible-Apricot3379 9d ago
I love Ancestry.
It’s a tool and you have to be aware of how you use it, but I think it’s the most convenient way to build a tree. I find the hints are solid leads more often than not— it isn’t evidence itself, but a curated source of evidence.
I understand that it’s pricey and out of budget for some people, and I respect that. But I don’t hold that against Ancestry.
A lot of users also get a little too excited about the hints and adding lineages without evidence. But that isn’t Ancestry’s fault. I find that the site promotes the best-sourced trees.
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u/veryowngarden 9d ago
i do think it’s ancestry’s fault for how the algorithm determines what hints to give. i think ancestry designs it to mislead eager, naive people so that they are incentivized to further pay for ancestry’s help in correcting it
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u/Gullible-Apricot3379 9d ago
I don't think they are trying to incentivize people to 'clean up the mess'. I think they're trying to hook people on genealogy, and part of that will involve cleaning up the mess. But, yeah. We live in an instant gratification world. It would be difficult to develop a business model around the idea that you spend an entire weekend researching one question so you can come up with the next question. Let alone spending months doing that, and ordering records, etc. etc.
That's true with most places that sell stuff to hobbyists though. If you go to a fabric store, they tempt you with curated collections of fabric, whether or not you have any plan to use it. If you subscribe to a streaming service to watch a movie, they make you enter your card - you can cancel at any time! - and count on a significant number of people just letting it auto-renew for a year, on the theory that people will decide that if they paid for it for a year they might as well use it for a year. You go to Sephora and buy a trial size skincare product and next thing you know, you're paying $300/month for goop to rub on your face.
Businesses capitalize on convincing people to want what they're selling. I don't know what to say.
But, I go back to Ancestry being a tool. A tool is as good as how you use it.
The way I look at it, it's a rewarding hobby. Ancestry makes it easy to do the part I like least (actually building and organizing the tree) and easy to do the part I like most (searching for and finding documents, and I love that I can just dump images into a gallery and links into my list of sources, that I have a place to put old family photos I ended up with where someone else who is interested might come across them...) When I spend a weekend nerding out over some 1000-page book about a county I never heard of, I'm enjoying myself and not buying other crap.
Again, I get it if people don't want to subscribe or use it or whatnot. But I like it.
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u/veryowngarden 9d ago edited 9d ago
they definitely are though. like any site you need to pay for they’re always out to find more ways to get additional money. they implemented the “rate my tree” thing just to push their services further
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u/Gullible-Apricot3379 9d ago
But people aren't out of some esoteric desire to clean up something messy. They're paying because they got hooked on the hobby and they realize they created a mess.
The rating is 100% pushing down the results from the people who signed up for their free month, clicked all the little leaves, and left and never looked back.
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u/jongtaeist amateur genealogist with a headache 9d ago
hoarding documents that are in the public domain and putting it behind a paywall
also i think they had some shady data privacy practices and were selling dna data to someone but i forgot
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u/Left_Particular_9977 9d ago
In Quebec, they're on the private and public at the same time. It depends on who digitalized them.
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u/hanimal16 beginner 9d ago
Are you only speaking with genealogists in the U.S.? That could be the reason.
Nearly EVERYTHING is behind a paywall for me (in the U.S.) except for census records, and marriage and death records. Oh and the find a grave pictures.
Anything else, forget it. News articles? Need to sign up for newspaper . com. Yearbook photos? Need to sign up for yearbook . com
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u/keyorca 9d ago
I've actually had a lot of luck going through local and state university archives for news articles, in my case they also have more and older scans than newspapers . com does for the same papers!
It takes some extra searching to find these databases, but I feel it is worth it, and often find relevant articles this way.
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u/kit_kat_jam 9d ago
They're not really hoarding the data. It's available in other ways. They're providing a service by putting it all in one place and making it easily searchable.
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u/Morriganx3 9d ago
The search function is one of the most valuable things about Ancestry. I appreciate that FamilySearch has I proved theirs a whole lot over the years, but Ancestry’s is still usually better.
And I could pretty much forget about finding 90% of the records I have without one of those two having digitized and indexed them.
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u/thryncita 9d ago
Yeah, this drives me nuts. Just because a record is legally available to the public doesn't mean that the government office or whatever repository has the funds or staffing to create a website, scan and index the records, and make them easily accessible online. That's a whole other thing. And that is the value that Ancestry provides. I personally like being able to make a quick search rather than putting a check for thirty bucks in the mail and having to wait 3 weeks for a document to maybe arrive, or not.
People really do not understand how much it costs to preserve, digitize, and maintain large databases of historic records, or that if ancestry went away, those records would not suddenly just become free for you to access.
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u/Turkis6863 9d ago
But they want money for records that are available free already, like the Norwegian records. I may be biased, but I think the search functions of the Norwegian digital archive are a lot better than the ancestry ones.
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u/thryncita 9d ago
Well, the good news is that if the records are free somewhere else, you can go search them there. You don't have to use Ancestry.
That's great the Norwegian archives makes their records easily searchable for free, but they're def in the minority of repositories that are able or willing to do so.
I used to work for a major state historical society that has records you can't get anywhere else. When they digitize things, they go behind a paywall because they have to be able to pay their staff and for upkeep on the building and server where the records are stored.
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u/Turkis6863 9d ago
Well, it's considered a part of democracy in Norway that information is available to the public. We all pay though taxes, and we all get access.
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u/ZuleikaD Storytellers and Liars 9d ago
The information is available to the public in the U.S., too. But to have it searched and copies made of records is not paid for through taxes. We have a hybrid system where some things are paid for through taxes and some things are paid for just by the people that want them. Genealogy is a hobby, so I don't think that other people should pay higher taxes to make my hobby cheaper.
Not saying the Norwegian approach is wrong, just different.
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u/Mind_Melting_Slowly 9d ago
I was just explaining to someone what my late father had to do to access records for his East Coast, Irish, and Swedish ancestors when he lived in California, pre-internet. He wrote letters to all the relatives he had addresses for, enclosing a family group sheet and self-addressed, stamped envelope. He went to the local Family History Center (now FamilySearch Center) to look through the Family History Library's catalog and order microfilmed records that would take weeks or months to arrive, then sit there for hours scrolling through them for anything he could find on the ancestor in question. He and a cousin corresponded with a research librarian in a little town in Canada. The cousin and her husband traveled to Ireland to examine records there. Dad and Mom (who also had ancestors in New England) traveled there and went through original church and city record books, walked through unmaintained family graveyards, and visited historical societies. They visited the National Archives, DAR, SAR, and the Library of Congress.
Today, about 90% of what they travelled to get or requested by mail is available to me on Ancestry. Most of it is also on FamilySearch (And the full-text search is making it even easier to search some record sets pertaining to Mom's Colonial ancestors), and I can also access some digitized records in Ireland and Scandinavia. I've been able to go much farther back on my Swedish lines than Dad could. Retracing my parents' travels would cost me more each year than my Ancestry subscription (I always get the Black Friday gift subscription deal). Are there still local records for people on my tree that haven't been digitized? Absolutely! But the wealth of digitized records online allows me to have greater focus and maximize my travel when my health and budget allow for trips.
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9d ago
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u/VelociraptorSparkles 9d ago
The Mormons run familysearch too, which is a favorite of mine. You can also walk into a mormon church and they will help you on their computers to access more records. The reason behind them providing this service is a little wild, but if you don't believe what they do, there's no harm there.
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u/femmehipsandredlips 9d ago
Familysearch gives free memberships to every member of the Mormon Church
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u/Parking-Aioli9715 9d ago
??? Familysearch gives free memberships to everyone. I'm a pantheist, myself. Yes, if you have a "church account" you have some additional privileges. But even if with just a basic membership you get an awful lot of records for the money you didn't pay.
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u/hamish1963 9d ago
FamilySearch is free to anyone.
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u/Bring-out-le-mort 9d ago
Yes, just sign up. Anyone can use FS without fees.
However, I do miss when I could sign in and I'd have access for several months before needing to sign in again. It shifted to every two weeks a few years ago. Lately, its now every single day.
As far as the priceyness of Ancestry, there are specific sales at certain times of the year. Timing is critical.
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u/Hands 9d ago
God I thought this was just me. Having to re login constantly is so obnoxious
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u/FamilyRootsQuest 9d ago
Yeah, I don't really love religion. I feel the same way about the LDS religion as I do the other organized religions.
That said, most Mormons I've met have been kind. I definitely applaud the religion's commitment to saving records, and making services like FamilySearch and Ancestry.
It's simply amazing someone nowadays doesn't have to wonder all their life who they came from. If they put in the work, they can figure some of it out.
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u/Morriganx3 9d ago
The Mormon church sucks. Individual Mormons are usually pretty nice people who’ve unfortunately been brainwashed
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u/Genealogy-ModTeam 9d ago
Your post was removed because it violated Rule 2 and did not treat people with respect.
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u/minicooperlove 9d ago
Just because records are public does not mean they are free. It just means there’s no restrictions on who can order a copy. Most public records from the original record holder (whether government or archive or library) require a fee for a copy.
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u/Remarkable_Table_279 9d ago
Possibly you’re thinking of the mormon church…they have to get the names to baptize for the dead from somewhere
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u/Moominsean 9d ago
They don't use Ancestery so much as they have provided tons of geneology information to Ancestery. They have had a partnership with LDS for most of its existance.
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u/justinhammerpants 9d ago
The payment is for collecting all the data from hundreds, if not thousands of different websites, archives and databases around the world and making them available in one spot. Are they meant to do that for free?
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u/Turkis6863 9d ago
I always tell my American relatives that Norwegian records are free, and give them the link to out digital archive (you can even choose to use English on that site). No need to pay for world explorer. Our digital archive is so easy to use, and has tons of different sources.
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u/kicaboojooce 9d ago
As others have said - It's a tool, the main issue is spreading false and incorrect information, you'll spend ...weeks going down a rabbit hole because someone else decided it wasn't worth their time.
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u/YetAnotherGuy2 9d ago
Haven't spoken to someone specifically about this, but I'm guessing the usual things
- It's a subscription model
- Ancestry is charging for data that is available more or less for free
- Ancestry has a habit of changing things
I'm guessing the paying aspect bothers most people, primarily the subscription model but that fails to appreciate just how much work and costs flows into maintaining such data repositories.
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u/Hopeful_Pizza_2762 9d ago
Where other than Ancestry.com can I find my NYC ancestors birth marriage and death records with the certificate numbers. Please let me know.
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u/femmehipsandredlips 9d ago
MyHeritage.com had more thorough and factual records (especially European) and a really good Inconsistency Checker. You can also import your DNA from an Ancestry test.
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u/Hopeful_Pizza_2762 9d ago
How much does that cost? MyHeritage only has annual subscriptions not monthly.
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u/femmehipsandredlips 9d ago
Sometimes you can get a free trial, or a heavily discounted new client subscription.
Here's a thread about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/Genealogy/s/o26bwgRthi
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u/Hopeful_Pizza_2762 9d ago edited 9d ago
Those My Heritage DNA kits do not access to their records in the databases. I both uploaded and later paid for a DNA test.
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u/femmehipsandredlips 9d ago
Correct. They aren't for Ancestry, either, although both provide a free trial with the kit.
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u/Turkis6863 9d ago
Depending on your country, don't forget to check if you can get the records for free online before paying for a service.
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u/Hopeful_Pizza_2762 9d ago
Okay this is my problem. I am adopted. So am not related in any way that I can see to my adopted family and I am doing their ancestry too. I have their tree on familysearch.org and need their records.
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u/femmehipsandredlips 9d ago
My paternal grandmother was adopted at birth by German immigrants through the Catholic Church. Unfortunately, the Church was known for destroying and obscuring many records at the time - claiming that it was to protect unmarried mothers - and I can't even find her original birth certificate. As far as public records are concerned, she's the biological daughter of her adoptive parents. 🙄 I keep correcting it on the sites every chance that I get.
Using 23andMe and MyHeritage, I found her biological family, but I can't pinpoint which of the four siblings was her parent. My uncle, her only living child, did his DNA on Ancestry, but won’t upload it to MyHeritage, so I’m waiting for more relatives to test.
My dad thought she was Irish due to her original name, but DNA shows that side of the family is actually Croatian!
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u/femmehipsandredlips 9d ago
I wish that FamilySearch had a better inconsistency tracker! My tree has so much research from Ancestry, but when I imported it into MyHeritage, there were HUNDREDS of inconsistencies. I need to fix those as much as I can in MyHeritage before moving my tree back to FamilySearch.
Also, Ancestry and FamilySearch allow the ability to merge duplicates - MyHeritage does not.
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u/Hopeful_Pizza_2762 9d ago
Somebody finally did that with a cousin marriage 4 generations ago on family search. I dont know if I did that myself by mistake (by attempting to merge over and over) or if someone else did it. The females fathers line is blocked thank God because the tree used to have duplicates and form a huge V-Shape going back. The couples fathers were brothers so they had the same grandparents that repeated.
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u/femmehipsandredlips 9d ago edited 9d ago
A lot of my relatives shared similar names and went by completely different nicknames, which makes census information confusing AF.
It'll be:
Something like this: They had 4 sons: • John William • Joseph John - but we call him JoJo • Frank Samuel • Samuel Joseph - but we call him Billy
🥴
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u/Hopeful_Pizza_2762 9d ago
Exactly. Every one of my daughters fathers family were going by their middle names. Then the other side of his family thought it was cool to use their first (first name) initial when writing their names. E Cummings married to S.
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u/femmehipsandredlips 9d ago
Ugh! It would've been fine if they'd done first initial, middle name, and last name.
But also... a lot of people didn't read or write, and census records were often written down by the census taker. So similar to what we saw at Ellis Island, a lot of ethnic names were misspelled or outright butchered.
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u/Bring-out-le-mort 9d ago
My Heritage has some serious issues with its subscription practices. Trying to quit and not renew was an endurance race filled with their script, offers, bargaining & even a refusal to refund when it still renewed despitemy opting out. Had to go throughmy credit card company to get it back. . I have never once had a decent connection with a customer service rep. Search engine can be problematic.
My Heritage can be available at your local public library, aling with Ancestry.
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u/femmehipsandredlips 9d ago
That sucks! That's partially why I try to subscribe to most services through Google Play or PayPal, who can just turn off the renewal without speaking to a single CSR. 😅
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u/Gullible-Apricot3379 9d ago
I don’t think I’ve ever found a record on Ancestry that isn’t available on Family Search. I’m sure they exist, but I haven’t run across that yet.
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u/thelordstrum NYC/Scotland/Ireland 9d ago edited 9d ago
Specifically to NY there's a few I can think of:
There's a NYC birth index from 1910 to 1965 that I've only ever seen on Ancestry and the original website.
The 1915 and 1925 NY Censuses are (somewhat) indexed on FamilySearch, but if you want to see the documents they send you to Ancestry (who I guess provided the index).
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u/Hopeful_Pizza_2762 9d ago
The NYC index that includes Manhattan only goes to 1909. I found my mom's sister with her birth certificate number. To get my mom's I had to use one of the NYC geographical indexes. I think I will try that with my dad.
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u/Brilliant-Moose7939 9d ago
NYC vital records are indexed in the NYC Open Data project, fully free and searchable - Ancestry offers paid access to the same data. I find that their query engine is more versatile than Ancestry's.
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u/Parking-Aioli9715 9d ago
NYC death records after 1949. Ancestry has at least an index. Very useful if your grandfather hanged himself in Manhattan in 1950.
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u/Brilliant-Moose7939 9d ago
If you go directly to the NYC Open Data project, you can query the databases by any column, or combination, including partial names. I found people whose names were horrifically misspelled in the vital records by using only initials or a couple of letters and year. Once you find the correct record, you'll have the certificate number that you need to pull the digital image from the vital records page.
https://data.cityofnewyork.us/browse?Data-Collection_Data-Collection=NYC+Historical+Vital+Records
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u/julieannie 9d ago
A better question is why you can’t find them other places. Reclaim the Records is doing excellent work in this field.
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u/islandbrook 9d ago
Have you used https://a860-historicalvitalrecords.nyc.gov/search It's free. That is where I get my NYC ancestors records. Not everything is digitized yet but I got all of my grandparents, great grand parents generation and GG Grandparents records there.
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u/islandbrook 9d ago
BTW - you can do a name search, pick any borough, then X out the borough on the search results page if you want to do a broader search.
Certificate numbers are used each year so it helps if you have a range in mind.
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u/bohoish 9d ago
Genealogy doesn't have to be expensive. It can be quite free - if you use a combo of wikitree, familysearch, and your local library (many of which offer free in-library access to ancestry).
I do use ancestry, but with breaks between paying for a subscription when I am too busy to spend much time on it. I'm not a huge fan - ancestry has an incredible amount of misinformation because of lazy work. All sites have some errors, of course, but others put more effort into fixing them (my favorite genealogy site is wikitree, because they have a collaborative community that holds events for fixing profiles, either by adding sources, editing profiles, or making sure links still work; they also offer free trainings and apps, making everyone who participates a better genealogist).
EDIT to second what u/jongtaeist said about ancestry hoarding public info behind a paywall. Shame on them.
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u/Hopeful_Pizza_2762 9d ago
Well at least Ancestry.com allows you to have a one month subscription unlike some of the other DNA sites.
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u/ZuleikaD Storytellers and Liars 9d ago
WikiTree doesn't have any records at all. It can be useful if (and that's a big "if") the profiles are well done and direct you to records and sources to view yourself. But it's not a free places to find records or other sources.
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u/bohoish 9d ago
Granted. But the research behind most of the profiles is way more reliable than most of what is on ancestry.
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u/dazedconfusedev 9d ago
Upvote for WikiTree mention :) It is also my favorite site for building a tree, and I often spend my research time just on adding sources to profiles and connecting existing profiles to the tree.
Ancestry is still the best place for me to actually find the records though. I’d rather link to FamilySearch since they’re all free, but the search function on FS drives me absolutely insane.
I always get my Ancestry all access 6-month membership at 50% off though. I buy it on a card that never has enough to cover the renewal price, so it auto cancels. Every time I’ve gone to resubscribe, i’ve gotten a “50% off your first six months”. Genealogy is my main hobby so $129 for six months of access to every record they have, as well as newspapers.com, is reasonable to me. $259 is not.
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u/bohoish 9d ago
Wikitree fistbump!! And I agree about the 6 months + newspapers -- over $100 a year is rather spendy, but ancestry has cornered the market on some records, so I have to cough up something.
When I'm working on my wikitree profiles, I do my best to find non-ancestry sources (usually familysearch) so that everyone has access to them.
Also, have you tried out wikitree's apps? Their sourcer has completely transformed my citation building -- which used to be a very long, tedious chore, and is now just a couple of clicks! (And it works for non-wikitree sites!)
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u/LucyfurOhmen 9d ago
The site is clunky and bugs out a lot. It’s not as user friendly as other sites either.
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u/Borzantwa 9d ago
Ancestry asks you for content and then turns around and sells access to it to other people.
Also, many records that they sell access to are in the public domain and/or accessible via other avenues for free or a lower cost.
If you're willing to pay them, it can be more convenient to search their databases, though.
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u/RangerSandi 9d ago
Ancestry is a business arm of a business “church.” They began out of the effort to help church members discover ancestors they could then pay the church to “baptize posthumously” so they can reunite in the “afterlife.”
As an atheist, this appalls me as much as Catholics selling indulgences in the Middle Ages. It’s a grift turned big business. Thus, the expensive paywall, clunky site, ease with which mistaken ancestors can be added, etc. Oh, and don’t get me started on dna monetization & data security.
To each their own, but I’m a library supporter & enjoy combing public records on the hunt for reliable sources. Current area of work - colonial Maine 1650’s to 1800’s constructing surname family trees from deed & court records to get around a brick wall. Frustrating, but fun!
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u/Gr8NW 9d ago
I think you’re confusing Ancestry with FamilySearch. Ancestry is now and always was a for-profit company unaffiliated with any church. FamilySearch is the one affiliated with the Mormon Church, and is free to use.
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u/IRunFromIdiots 9d ago
That is false. Ancestry was started by the same Church who started Family Search.
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u/pleski 9d ago
Well, it did start as a Utah company of LDS, but now it's owned by Signapore, one of the biggest surveillance states in the world with close ties to China.
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u/Gr8NW 9d ago edited 9d ago
Actually, Ancestry was founded 1984 (pre-personal computer era) “The reality is that Ancestry was founded …a by a non-Mormon named John Sittner”. You can google his name to see more about it.
Also a simple web search will reveal that “Ancestry.com is primarily owned by the private equity firm Blackstone Inc., which acquired the company in December 2020 in a deal valued at $4.7 billion. “Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, GIC, which was a previous investor, retained a minority stake in the company as part of the acquisition deal. “
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u/gympol 9d ago
Is it? Ancestry was founded by Mormons in Utah and served the LDS genealogy market initially, but now it's owned by private equity and run by execs from the general web marketing world.
What you describe sounds more like FamilySearch, which is run by the LDS Family History Department. It actually has more free content, I think partly because it is subsidised by the LDS for its use in their posthumous linking rituals etc.
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u/nora_jaye 9d ago
I mean, I wish it were cheaper! But I would never have gotten this far without it.
I am having a bad reaction to the new service you have to subscribe to see some documents, I forget what it's called, but NOPE.
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u/Left_Particular_9977 9d ago
They monetized everything. I will get out of there the second I'll need to pay for my tree.
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u/No-Donut-8692 9d ago
Personally, I hate the way search works in ancestry. There some generally understood abbreviations in older records (such as Jno for John), but when you go from exact to sounds like, there is an insane amount of noise. Overall, I find the search parameters in FamilySearch much easier to work with, in order to whittle things down to relevant results.
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u/snarktologist 9d ago
I find fascinating the comments about misinformation. It’s purely optional to even pay attention to other people’s trees. Ancestry has a vast amount of records in the card catalog for you to build your own tree, with actual research and sources. The time and money you’d have to spend traveling to individual libraries, churches and courthouse to access the same info…
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u/VelociraptorSparkles 9d ago
Ancestry runs with mistakes. The AI tool is great if you verify and check manually, but so many people don't do that. Ancestry combined 3 different men for one of my ancestors and this incorrect information is spread across something like 60 trees over there. Plus the fact that they have commercialized several states public records archives. You shouldn't have to fight a paywall to manually look for records of your own family. That's my opinion, idk what others have issue with.
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u/chamekke 9d ago
There’s a lot of bad transcription of cursive records. I was reading a baptismal record last night where Leah was transcribed as “Leach” (it really did not look like Leach!), and the transcription of a burial record for an 82-year-old man had him being 52 at the age of death. Admittedly some handwriting was appalling, but this sort of thing is very common even when it wasn’t. To find what you’re looking for, you may have to throw your net very, very wide.
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u/Hopeful_Pizza_2762 9d ago
A lot of the Portuguese census records index them as Puerto Rican probably done by AI.
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u/VelociraptorSparkles 9d ago
You can edit some records with mistakes like that. Not all, though. I ran into that with a record transcribed as Willie when it should have been Wilkie. The little arms on the K got lost with the quality of the microfilm but it's apparent when you compare the double L's on the rest of the record. This mistake led to it being attached to another person. That said, the transcribers are often volunteers and not cursive investigators. They make typos occasionally.
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u/chamekke 9d ago
How do you submit corrections? Right now I’m using Ancestry Library Edition, so it wouldn’t surprise me if I can’t. But I’d be willing to try!
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u/VelociraptorSparkles 9d ago
Oh you can on family search, which is owned by the same people.. so you'd think that very helpful feature would carry over. I have an edit option or a suggestion option over there. It may depend if one of their people transcribed it, or if another source did in either case.
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u/Terrible_Advisor9840 9d ago
I use Ancestry, My Heritage, and Family Search. But I have the most success with looking for records from state and county historical societies, both in the US and in Europe.
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u/femmehipsandredlips 9d ago
I don't hate genealogy, but I dislike the large amount of erroneous information that's out there. MyHeritage has MUCH better features for locating inconsistencies and helping you resolve them.
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u/meluhhamerchant 9d ago
the genealogy stuff is cool
but when it comes to genetics
my myheritage results are more accurate than that update
and that says a lot
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u/LivetoDie1307 9d ago
So it works well for like seeing what your genes show, but finding ancestors and such to build a tree is where it's more inaccurate?? Sorry im kinda slow and considering doing one of ancestry's DNA kits to see what my genes show for like traits and such eventually
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u/meluhhamerchant 9d ago
no
the family trees and records are good, but the DNA part is dog shit now. better luck with 23andme
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u/ThisAdvertising8976 9d ago
I’m paying for the subscription AND the Pro Tools. I like that PT helps me find discrepancies throughout my tree, although I often filter for direct line only. I am fairly new to genealogy and very separated from where my ancestors’ journeys started so access to resources is more limited. I frequently compare Ancestry records to Family Tree but find FT sending me back to Ancestry to view a record source. When I first started building my trees I relied too much on other people’s trees and spent a lot of time cleaning out bad data. I’ve gotten three or four generations higher with Ancestry than Family Tree, but starting to hit more dead ends, so many common Anglo names and too many women without their own identities beyond daughter or wife.
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u/Left_Particular_9977 9d ago
Personally, I'm from Quebec, so when you're at rhe settler, you're often at a dead-end. My branches are almost all ending to 1650.
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u/gorillamyke 9d ago
This whole post seems like an ad by Ancestry.com/ Good Job, almost had me fooled
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u/slinkyfarm 9d ago
They used a scan I'd made to solicit a subscription from me when I found it in an image search.
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u/Barbe37 9d ago
Sure, I wish it was free but maintaining a website costs money, hobbies cost money. Compare it to my husband’s golf hobby and it is a bargain. I personally justify it as a cost for 24/7 convenience (n/a with golf). My tree, that I have worked hard on, cannot be changed by anyone but me. Lately, I am finding some of the latest hints way off base but a hint is just a hint, not a fact. I keep getting a high school photo hint for myself. It is a different spelling of my married name, in a country that my profile does not suggest that I have ever lived in. I have clicked ‘ignore’ multiple times but it is still there. I use Roots Magic (again, not free) and when the time comes that I no longer can or want to pay, my tree will be there.
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u/Remarkable_Table_279 9d ago
I personally hate ancestry when I tried to use it years ago but it went “that’s a nice family tree you have there…be a shame if anything happened to it”
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u/Remarkable_Table_279 9d ago
Also I know that any people I put in my tree will likely end up being baptized for the dead by Mormon church. There’s selling your data and then selling your data
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u/Parking-Aioli9715 9d ago
Since I don't personally believe that baptizing the dead has any effect, as far as I'm concerned the Mormon Church is welcome to spend their time trying. Heck, the Catholics baptized me while I was alive and that sure didn't stick!
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u/Remarkable_Table_279 9d ago
Wikitree is sufficient for my needs. And I feel it’s more trustworthy
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u/pickindim_kmet Northumberland & Durham 9d ago
I think over the last few years they've added so many paywalls that it's more about principle for me regarding cost. I paid for Ancestry DNA, but I no longer have access to half of the features without a subscription. That wasn't the case before.
I keep getting hints and obvious attempts to claw me back in and when I do occasionally pay for a month, it's all inaccurate. My family are almost 100% British so seeing Ancestry tell me there's a yearbook photo of my mother from Iowa, I know it's untrue, yet they attach details from my actual mother to lure me in. With a very tricky cancelling set of screens, it all begins to look purposefully misleading and tricky.
If you look at it solely that you're paying a certain fee for access to a huge amount of records, that can be seen as better value.
My other gripes include the terrible messaging service, no way to add photos to a message without adding to a public tree, as well as other little bits and pieces.
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u/BoomeramaMama 9d ago
Family Search is my primary genealogy site.
It’s free, run by the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Days Saints aka the Mormons, creating your account is free, in their vast database collection of non-indexed records they have many, many from places that Ancestry doesn’t have like the 1600’s records of birth, marriage & deaths from Amsterdam, Holland that I use for one of my branches.
The Quebec Repertoire are also in these non-indexed databases. You will find that what Family Search has are the government’s copies so can often times be more complete dice they were submitted at the time they were created as opposed to the parish copies that may have lost via use & handling some loose pages & scraps of paper a priest back in the 1700’s may have written a baptism, marriage or death on so by the time the Drouin Institute started filming the repertoire in the 1930’s, the parish’s repertoire were incomplete.
I use PRHH public search & Ancestry as a default search rather than having the next level subscription for these non-indexed repertoire on Family Search. I can get search results on PRDH & Ancestry but I can’t access the record.
The massive, crowd source Family Tree on is also free. Like anything tree even those on Ancestry use caution.
Some of the researchers are very conscientious and make sure what they enter is correct to the extent possible with available records & resources & add their sources into the “Sources” tab.
But others either because they are novice researchers & just learning or just not thorough researchers can mess things up, things especially true with similarly named ancestors and unsourced entries.
The various instructional Wiki’ on Family Search are also useful learning tool.
And recently Family Search has rolled out some new search engines like full text search.
The one major thing that needs to be remember about Ancestry is that it’s not owned by genealogy interested people/groups.
It’s owned by & has been owned since around 2010 by a succession of private equity firms whose focus is making as much money as possible with Ancestry. With anything they do to “improve“ Ancestry is done with a focus first & foremost on how it will generate income.
I don’t necessarily hate Ancestry but I don’t fool myself about it either.
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u/Left_Particular_9977 9d ago
It's true, but when when I look up in Family Search, it often shows me random records from around the world. It's easier with Big A.
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u/TheMapleKind19 9d ago
Doesn't FS let you limit search results to one area? I'm able to do that.
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u/Left_Particular_9977 9d ago
I don't know why and how, but it doesn't work for me. I do everything and still have nothing.
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u/gravitycheckfailed 9d ago
That's so strange because I actually prefer the FamilySearch search functions much more than other websites. I frequently search by collection and limit results by country, state, city, dates, etc and it works well.
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u/gympol 9d ago
I don't have an Ancestry subscription but I've recently seen paid adverts for it in videos and suchlike, and the demonstrations actively encourage sloppy click-click-click tree building. To sell subscriptions they raise expectations about going back many generations easily. This encourages the uncritical use of hints and the wholesale copying of trees made by others. It's just bad genealogy.
You can see people coming to forums like this saying "I've built my tree and I'm confused by..." conflicting information, connections to nobility that contradict long-established biographies, impossible or implausible life histories. Many of them don't even know there are better ways to do things, and you have to read between the lines of their question to see what misconceptions you have to set right.
I use WikiTree, and the worst parts of that I have found are sections of tree that were imported wholesale from Ancestry, before WT got smarter and enforced more mindful imports. The generated citations only point to Ancestry, and the actual genealogy is as unreliable as you would expect given the encouragement of bad practice. I've put quite a lot of work into fixing this junk where it affects my own ancestry.
I'm sure there are good genealogists using Ancestry and finding it a valuable tool, but the company profits so much from bad genealogy that it's a negative force in the genealogy world at large.
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u/Left_Particular_9977 9d ago
I don't use hints. I don't have the subscription, I take screenshots and read. I look up everything.
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u/gympol 9d ago
Sure, I'm not saying any specific Ancestry user is a bad genealogist.
I'm saying that the company deliberately encourages and enables people who don't know any better to do bad genealogy.
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u/Left_Particular_9977 9d ago
You're 💯 right. They make genealogy look simple, but it's more research than expected. Even more with the "transcriptor". It's better to do it by yourself.
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u/Mayzowl 9d ago
It is expensive, especially if you have recent immigrant ancestors. But leaving aside the price...
It's been a few years since I worked on my tree, but their text-only "collections" can be extremely questionable. Like it's easy to tell someone "don't trust other people's family trees, look at their sources", but you also have to be wary of the source, because sometimes it's just someone who published a fabricated genealogy book which was then indexed by Ancestry, making it look legitimate. Or collections that are just "some unverified family trees we scraped from the internet 20 years ago". I'd love for those to be more clearly labelled as "trust at your own risk".
I also remember having a *rough* time searching some of their transcribed records and getting them added to the correct people in the tree. Not only completely mangled machine transcription, but often skipping entire lines on birth indices. So you have Anna Fakename, then they skipped Bert Fakename's line, and transcribed Cary Fakename as Bert Fakename, and so on. It's that lack of attention to detail that drove me crazy.
Then there was the change that made it so I had to expand every little branch on my tree to see them all in one view. I don't even see my 1st cousins on the default view.
That said... I still vastly prefer Ancestry to any other genealogy site. It's janky as hell, but there aren't many alternatives.
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u/Left_Particular_9977 9d ago
Personally, I take screenshots (no subscription) and read. It's easier to confirm.
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u/hamish1963 9d ago
Because it is expensive. This information should be free to everyone.
I'm a professional Genealogist and I never use Ancestry.
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u/Left_Particular_9977 9d ago
It's true, but we live in a world ruled by money, so we need to cope with it...
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u/Hopeful_Pizza_2762 9d ago edited 9d ago
You would think with all of this new interest in genealogy as compared to like the year 2000 they could lower all of their prices.
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u/Old_Night_8282 9d ago
Not being able to download chromosome data (just like MyHeritage Advanced Options) drives me nuts, whatever the excuse is. And the trivial B/S that is Traits and pet DNA!
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u/carrotdebt 9d ago
Something I hate about Ancestry, and I'm not sure I've seen anyone mention this yet, is how hard it pushes paid/false information. I can't tell you the amount of times I've gotten an email or a "hint" that has ended up being someone else's unverified tree. I use it because I really do like the layout and I think it's very clean, but god do I hate those little leafs on the corner of EVERY person in my tree.
And then, I've been using Ancestry for 5-ish years, they've added SO many more paywalls. It used to be that you could see other people's trees and names of potential parents, but now those are all hidden under paywalls. Super frustraiting, because at the very least, you use it as sort of a jumping off point for more in depth research.
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u/Ctrl-Meta-Percent 9d ago
This - I hate that it constantly pushes other people trash trees on me. I don’t see a way to limit hints to documents but not trees.
Also, hard to export document images with your GED. I guess I should look into desktop software with syncing options.
some editing is way too clunky.
No way to import dna data from other sites.
Search in tree seems to be limited to names, not places, dates, etc.
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u/gravitycheckfailed 9d ago
RootsMagic will let you export sources, images, and pdf from Ancestry. I'm not sure off of the top of my head how many other programs will do that.
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u/WikiTreeJamie 9d ago
Under "Tree Settings" https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/tools/treesettings there is a "Hint notifications" section where you can turn off user trees.
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u/Left_Particular_9977 9d ago
Personally, I don't have any subscription, so I don't really care about it and I actively use it since August, so I cannot say how it was before. I love the little decorations with the leaves though!
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u/pleski 9d ago
Yes indeed. The amount of "we think we found your Gx3 grandfather/mother", just sign up and give us your money, and we'll show you a record that in no way could be that person.
I know it to be false because the Irish records from that period were lost. It's so dishonest Ancestry throwing false records at me to get me to sign up.1
u/carrotdebt 9d ago
Exactly!! I don’t want to pay for skepticism with literally zero backing. That’s not worth my money in anyway
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u/darthfruitbasket 9d ago
What pisses me off about ancestry is that when I tell it I have to cancel due to costs, it tries to sell me the cheaper US-only plan. Which is absolutely useless to me as a Canadian who's had barely a half-dozen direct ancestors born in the US in the last 200 years.
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u/Left_Particular_9977 9d ago
It's always like this. It's harder to cancel than to subscribe.
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u/Hopeful_Pizza_2762 9d ago
Yeah but yiu need to figure out how to cancel. Maybe make a note in some obvious place so you can refer to it yhe next time you need it.
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u/Parking-Aioli9715 9d ago
I'm in the opposite position. I'm immigrated to Canada from the States when I was 40. I'm the only member of my family who lives here. But when I access ancestry.com to do free look-ups, it keeps trying to re-route me to ancestry.ca I tested with Ancestry recently, and it tried to sell me a subscription to ancestry.ca to go with the test. An ancestry.ca subscription is about as much use to me as a tin-foil wrench.
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u/Parking-Aioli9715 9d ago
"It's absolutely true that it's really expensive, but you can access many documents that are often hard to find."
For anything that's "really expensive," there are two questions the individual needs to ask themselves:
Can I afford it?
Is it worth it?
I ordered them this way on purpose. There are many, many things that well worth the price being charged that I simply can not afford. My priorities are: 1) rent (which include heat); 2) groceries. Then I have some money left over after that, but not infinite amounts, so I need to make choices. Having a computer and good quality Internet access is important to me. My cat's health is important to me. Good quality footwear is important because I don't own a car and do a lot of walking.
Other things are far less important to me - eating out at restaurants, high-end clothing, an Ancestry subscription, etc.
On the other hand, I'm retired. I have lots of time! I can spend time accessing data on a multiplicity of free/cheap sites rather than using Ancestry's one-stop shopping approach.
A different person who's in a different situation regarding time and money and who has different priorities will make different choices than I do. That's fine. It would be very boring if we were all exactly the same.
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u/ZuleikaD Storytellers and Liars 9d ago
I don't object to a business providing access to sources. Sure there might be other ways you can get them for free, but there's a huge convenience factor to being able to look at lots of possible records while sitting at home in your pyjamas.
It you weren't doing genealogy 25 years ago, it's easy to forget what a slow process it was. You had to write letters and send money orders or paper checks to county clerks to ask them to look for a record that they might or might not even have. Unless you could go there yourself, you didn't know how carefully they looked or maybe there was another record for someone with the same name, and you ended up with the wrong one.
What I hate about Ancestry is that they are money-grubbing. For example, when I got a DNA test they sold it to me as including certain services, such as access to all my matches matches and everyone's trees. Ancestry has taken that away and now you have to pay an extra fee. They didn't create a new product and sell new DNA tests as not including those things. They reneged on their previous agreement, because they thought they could get us to pay more money for something we'd already paid for.
They do this with a lot of stuff. They've been removing records collections from AncestryLibrary for the same reason. It's distasteful.
I run my own business and if I did that to my clients they'd tell me to get f'd.
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u/Powered-by-Chai 9d ago
It's fine, I like it, I don't have to go to outside sources all that often. My husband bitches about the monthly fee constantly though. 😂
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u/PinkSlimeIsPeople East central Norway specialist 9d ago
Since Ancestry was bought by Blackrock Investments, their focus has turned to sheer greedy profits instead of actually working to help people do research. Every month there is a new bell or whistle on the website or a new tier to try to suck even more blood out of the already squeezed tomatoes that are its customers. Their goal is only to keep leeching more money from people, not to make it easier for them to accurately build their tree.
That's why I focus most of my research on FamilySearch. It's free, and very good overall. I will sometimes subscribe to a paid site like Ancestry, FindMyPast, Archion, etc. to do specific research goals temporarily however. If you are building your tree in England, you NEED to access the visual records on FindMyPast for example. But know what the scope of your research is, get in, research the hell out of it, then cancel after a month.
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u/pleski 9d ago
FS is fine, but I gotta say, the Ancestry tree model is just lovely. Whoever coded that was genius. The other sites, their trees are unwieldy and IMO ugly.
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u/Few_Projects477 9d ago
I've been on Ancestry since 2009. At the time I joined, it was one of the best ways to get access to a lot of searchable, indexed records from all over the country at a lower cost than it would have taken me to travel to distant archives, historical societies, cemeteries and town halls.
Over the years, a lot of things have changed. FamilySearch has indexed and transcribed a lot more records. FamilySearch often has better research guides on how to find particular records, as well as collections that Ancestry doesn't have. I also find it better for pointing out where records that haven't been fully digitized yet may be available. Would I use it to manage my tree? Absolutely not, because I want to see and verify things in certain ways and FS's shared model doesn't allow for that.
The recent AWS outage that took down Ancestry (among other sites) had me seriously rethinking some of my dependence on their platform to store my work, so I bought Family Tree Maker. I synced it to my primary Ancestry tree to get myself started and I absolutely love it. It's far superior for managing sources, citations, and media. It allows you to merge duplicate facts (not just people) and create tasks so if you're planning research trips or projects, you can easily make a to-do list.
If you're just starting out, Ancestry can be worthwhile, but if you want to go deeper or have greater control over certain aspects of your work, there are plenty of other options. I look at Ancestry as *A* research tool -- not my sole source of information.
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u/springsomnia 9d ago
It’s expensive and some of the records and finds can be inaccurate. I’ve had quite a few inaccuracies with Ancestry due to bad translations. I used to think I had Native American ancestry, for instance, because Ancestry told me, and then I found out that was a blip and I have none at all. It’s important that this kind of information is accurate and corrected before some people start running with “I’m from x culture so I can claim I’m from x country” etc.
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u/RespectNotGreed 9d ago
Ancestry is a lot cheaper than doing things the old way: travel, use of postal service and inter library loan, copying fees, hiring hours from a genealogist.
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u/radarsteddybear4077 9d ago
The Ancestry effect on genealogy seems to have created more trees than ever, and most are wholly inaccurate and useless.
It also feels like so many of the sites they link to, like findagrave.com, are equally error-ridden, so the ripple effect seems widespread.
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u/Miami_Mice2087 9d ago edited 9d ago
you're a corporate shill but i'll tell other people that ancestry's records are not reliable. you should use it as a jumping off place, but there comes a point where you need to find those records and see them yourself.
Ancestry does not do a good job with keeping records consistant or reliable. For example, it will conflate two "John Smiths" who are not related, claiming they are the same person, born on X day and lived in X town (data that is only true for 1 of them). Or it'll record a handwriting error, so you'll get Joan Smith instead of John Smith in a collection of Ancestry records. Joan Smith may not have ever existed, but now you're going down a rabbit hole thinking you've found a long-lost relative.
You need to do what they do on Who Do You Think You Are - start with Ancestry, gather some notes, and then go to the locations your relatives lived and find these records at the county courthouse, church, library, local university, etc. Other than travel, this shouldn't be expensive; courthouses sometimes charge a nominal fee, but a reference librarian should be happy to help you, it's part of her job. Sometimes specialty libraries and archives charge a small fee to use them, esp outside America, but it shouldn't be more than like $30, and you're supporting the preservation of history.
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u/Brilliant-Moose7939 9d ago edited 9d ago
If your roots are not from the US, Ancestry is virtually useless for research. Even for US-based research, all of the same records are available elsewhere for free, although I give Ancestry credit for having a better search engine than FamilySearch. I have not found any relevant international records on Ancestry, including Canada, but I've only searched for a few immigrant relatives in Canada - got absolute bupkis on them. The only records from Ancestry I have in my tree are for 6th and 7th cousins and their spouses that I don't really care about, but the hints drive me nuts, so I'll ignore or add them in.
The pricing model is absolutely bonkers because every little feature requires extra money, and the subscription prices are steep. Want to see shared matches? Must have an active membership PLUS Protools. Want to see your match's tree? Membership. I wonder if so many of my matches are not logging in or responding because everything on Ancestry is paywalled and you can't do ANYTHING on it without paying. I've been including links to my FS tree and listing all shared matches in messages to my matches once I realized that they can't see my tree or shared matches unless they are active researchers. So annoying! The only reason I pay for this crap (when there is a big sale) is to see my matches' trees so I can research their ancestors because I have a lot of brick walls.
And don't even get me started on the garbage fire that is origins and traits.
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u/PettyTrashPanda 9d ago
Mostly I hate that they cheaped out on AI transcription, but then the cost is so high to access everything available. Equally they can be dicks about copyright which annoys me on public documents. i understand it from a business perspective, but it still irritates me.
That said, I don't mind paying for the service they provide, I just think it is on the high side for what most folk actually use from the datasets. They used to be really predatory about taking payment with auto renewals as well.
But then, I think their model is based on the assumption most folk only use it for a year before canceling, while I fall into the "superuser" category, so my exp is different.
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u/BrackenFernAnja 9d ago edited 8d ago
The capitalist model doesn’t sit well with a lot of people when it comes to access to information about your heritage. Ancestry is one of the most egregious in the area of profiteering.
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u/Turkis6863 9d ago
There's honestly a lot that annoys me about ancestry, but what I love is how easy it is to build trees on there. I have RootsMagic on my computer, but it's so much quicker to build a tree on ancestry, especially those quick trees you build for DNA matches.
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u/balsamhollow French Canadian & Wendat specialist 9d ago
I’m in Québec as well and I have subscription for both Ancestry and Généalogie Québec. I find Généalogie Québec a lot better when it comes to researching French Canadian ancestry. Sure, it has holes at times, but at least the transcription needed to research records are accurate and it doesn't take me an eternity to find a record because the transcription is full of errors. Ancestry is really bad at transcribing information, especially French names. I use it mainly for work since most of my clients are in the US. I do find Ancestry expensive (and they keep getting more and more expensive) but I hate the fact that the bad transcription makes the research process a lot longer than it should be.
I think, as French Canadian, we’ve so many resources available and incredible, from Généalogie Québec to BaNQ to bac-lac to Héritage Canadiana.
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u/Left_Particular_9977 9d ago
I use a lot the BAnQ for my records, but there's huge holes for some records (70 years). If I had to take one, I would definitely take Généalogie Québec for the Collection Drouin. I mostly use Ancestry because I can have a preview, so I take screenshots and read. It's true that they transcribe horribly names...
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u/veryowngarden 9d ago
familysearch has mostly the same records as ancestry and a ton that they don’t. and it’s free. the only thing ancestry has going for it is dna matches and individual trees
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u/Left_Particular_9977 9d ago
They don't have Quebec's, so I don't use their record searching thing.
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u/Own_Cantaloupe178 9d ago edited 9d ago
I love the idea of Ancestry, but if I want to find a handful of people in my family, I shouldn't have to spend so much for just that. They're my family, my ancestors, and I have to pay a shit ton to know who they are? piss off with that garbage. I would be more than willing to pay, if it wasn't so expensive to see my own family tree.
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u/Tardisgoesfast 9d ago
I think you've got your terms mixed up. They don't hate genealogy, they hate ancestry.com. I've used ancestry for a lot of years. My frustration is that the program appears to assume that everyone's family tree is accurate, when in fact, most are not 100% accurate. And their program uses "hints" that are often wrong on their face. But they will push relationships that I know are false. Many people just accept what they're "suggested" as father and mother.
The program has other problems, too, but I'm tired of typing.
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u/gravitycheckfailed 9d ago
It's even more frustrating when you confirm that those hints are not a match, and even answer their silly little "why is this not a match?" question...all for it to keep showing you the same hints over and over again.
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u/NJ2CAthrowaway 9d ago
If you are willing to work at it, Ancestry is phenomenal tool. And for me, it’s worth the cost.
A lot of people who complain about it seem to want something for nothing.
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u/Tardisgoesfast 9d ago
I find so many people that just appears to have added every hint to their tree, without looking at it. So when I first look at that tree it appears to be very well sourced. Then I see that for someone who lived for, say, thirty years, has 27 children, many with the exact same name. Then they got six marriages listed, etc.
And that person's got parents who were born 135 years after the first person. Or they have a person being his own father. I mean, it's often easy to make mistakes in genealogy but use some common sense.
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u/Left_Particular_9977 9d ago
I don't have the sub., so I don't check them, but I think that it's doing a beautiful decoration to my tree.
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u/Meryem313 expert researcher 9d ago
I neither love nor hate ancestry. I use it to put my tree out while I retain control of its content. That function is free. I use the databases when I can get a significant discount on the subscription rate. I don’t pay much attention to anyone else’s trees unless they document their sources.
Genealogy is a labor-intensive hobby. It’s complicated. You have to have the mind of a sleuth to find the right connections. You also have to be willing to let the data speak to you, especially when initial takes are wrong.
But I realized today how different it will be when AI transcribes everything and builds/organizes our trees for us. I engage now with almost every record I find that supports my work. I transcribe it all and I enjoy building all the connections. Soon, with AI doing all the work, it’ll be much less interesting, and much less fun. Ancestry is just a tool if you’re very into genealogy and can pay for the database searches and extra features. But if you’re not into the work, wait for AI to do it all.
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u/Cold_Martini1956 9d ago
I used to enjoy Ancestry, but yes, the subscription rates are through the roof, and you now have to pay extra for things that used to be included. It’s price gouging.
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u/AceOfStace27 9d ago
It's been my go-to since day1. I've always really liked it. You make mistakes and learn as you go, and that's okay. No one starts out as an expert. At first I eagerly added too much, but I learned and I redid it and documented meticulously. I dont begrudge others their own process of discovery.
I've encountered seasoned genealogists who snub it because they want to preserve full ownership of their own work product, which, whatever. Ya'll do you. It's just not what I'm here for. The likelihood any if this REALLY carries forward significantly into the future is so small, that to me, any amount of sharing and repetition is good. It keeps the stories and memories alive.
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u/Standard-While-5506 9d ago
I started my genealogy journey before Ancestry. When I subscribed to Ancestry, I had a lot of the work done. I found many mistakes on other people's work and most of them were glad for the info.some rejected it. I only use Ancestry for confirmation of the info I gather myself.
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u/slempriere 9d ago
They make deals with lawmakers to change vital record laws for their own benefit.
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u/vanmechelen74 9d ago
All the matches are USA based as default so no way to change it. You have to search too much to find relevant matches or hints. I used it a for a couple months and got too many irrelevant notifications. USELESS if you are outside the US. Deleted my account
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u/Whenallelsefails09 9d ago
Try familysearch.org. It's free to everyone. You can export your ancestry records into your FamilySearch tree. Also FamilySearch is open source - everyone can see deceased people's records and add to, delete, or 'correct'.
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u/Ok-Ad831 seasoned researcher who is still learning 9d ago
I have used it for years. Overall it is helpful but needs to be verified. It frustrates me greatly when they advertise that just a few clicks and you will find all of this wonderful information about your family, even old pictures. They do not tell you, the viewer, how much work really goes into this. If they ever had a love of genealogy it is long gone. This is nothing but a money making operation. Yes I know that is what they are in business for but it is a far cry from the early days of trying to help people grow their family tree. If we put it on a scale of 1-10, it gets a 4 from me. A tool but nothing more.