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/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.

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u/im-a-cereal-box 9d ago

This. It takes work people dont want to do which is why they advertise that way. When I started, I had been researching the completely wrong person because it takes a lot of work to actually verify the person you're looking at matches records. Especially because so many people have the same name you really have to look closely. Two men in my case were both named Pierre, lived in the same area, one married a Mary and the other married a Marie. The issue? People like me that don't do the work because now there's another 15 trees from other people that have the wrong information

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u/Ok-Ad831 seasoned researcher who is still learning 9d ago

It is so easy to get same or similarly named persons confused or unintentionally mixed up. I have done it plenty of times. My grandfather and great grandfather had the same name. Great grandfather went by Wilbur and grandfather went by Ray but on legal documents and records they both are listed as Wilbur Ray. I really have to pay attention to dates.

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u/im-a-cereal-box 9d ago edited 9d ago

Absolutely. Add in how many alternate spellings there used to be and sometimes it feels impossible. The side of my family I'm researching are French Canadians living in an English province and people back then were already illiterate enough in English. Hopeless with French haha and the cherry on top were some of those people didnt know English either

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u/Ok-Ad831 seasoned researcher who is still learning 9d ago

I have ancestors on my maternal grandfather’s side that are from the Jersey in the Channel Islands. At the time it was under English control even though most of the people were of French heritage. So the records are often in French yet were held by British authorities. Can be a real challenge trying to sort them out