I have been trying to do ancestry research for some time now, and I'm making a little progress. The problem I'm having is the expense of it all. Once you get past the free stuff, like the U.S. census, it gets really expensive. I have used the free trial at Ancestry.com, and even subscribed for awhile, until I couldn't afford it anymore. There is also help to be found on the LDS website, but again, it is limited. My question is, does anyone know of a website that is as good, but less expensive than Ancestry?
I use this site;Log In It has more or less the same information as ancestry, but it depends on the country with how much information is available. Some libraries have ancestry.com free to use, so you could go there to use it as an option. I find it's more about multiple searches with different name spellings as many transcribed documents are misspelled because people cannot read the handwriting of the original documents.
I would avoid the LDS sites, no matter how useful. Not wanting to start a fight here, but I would not want to give them a cent for any amount of information because they are a cult and I know people who have been lead astray by them. I think your best bet is to find out which libraries have a subscription to ancestry already and visit them like Theo suggested.
These sites are great, but have you ever thought of reaching out to family to help with this research? I find older family members LOVE to talk about family history and can give you tonnes of details the sites cannot. I did this and learned there is actually a book written about the family history!
That's cool, thanks @Theo, I'm going to look into that site. @Brenda Barnousky have you tried (in addition to the other suggestions here) signing up with different family members' names, to get around the extra charges? My Mom is curious, since she's the youngest of 12, and most of the family is gone. She wishes she'd asked more questions when she was younger and the others were alive, but it is what it is. She's not online, so I will try to do what i can from here using that site.
I recently started to get interested in finding out more about my family history. I started by picking my parents brains and recorded some of their memories. Now I am at the stage where I will need to dig deeper to find out more. I am going to look into the familysearch.org site and I will let you all know how successful I am.
I used to be a historian, but I still do a lot of research to help track down family trees and where people have come from. There are lots of things to look out for such as the date of birth, as many people will have lied about their age (especially during war times to enlist) and also spellings, immigrants would change the spelling and also on census records, the transcriptions aren't always accurate. You may get Robt for Robert or Eliz or Elizabeth or Kate for Catherine. As most would have been done verbally, it would be how that person wrote them. Even when you have resources, it's knowing how to use them. Do PM me if you need some advice or just for an opinion.
Thanks, @Theo I'll have to make some notes before I try to do any research. I know my grandmother had a coat of arms in the front hall that had the Irish spelling of the last name, and it was much different than the end version. I'm not sure where the change occurred, because they were Shipwrecked Irish, and ended up in the Boston area from Canada, although my dad's mother came from Ireland directly. There's also probably some family in Germany, England, and Wales, if I ever trace it back that far.
That's quite uncanny (or not) as I am helping a friend who is Canadian and I'm tracking her Irish roots. It's been an amazing journey so far with what I have been able to trace. In the UK there are lots of records, but you have to do it chronologically to figure out where they were and knowing who extended family were is important. Very often people would stay with cousins, aunts (mother's side) or even family friends from the old neighborhood. I discovered one of my friends ancestors literally married the girl next door, by finding the census.
I find information like that interesting, as well. I've done family type research (other families, not mine, for work) in the past, but it was just for living and recently deceased, so was somewhat different. I'm going to make some notes next time I speak to my Mom. I know someone in the Canadian portion of the family had researched in the past, and one of our relatives up there, a Mountie, came down and met us, it was really nice. My Mom used to write to him, so hopefully she still has those letters and addresses. My Great-Grandmother was married three times, so that should add some depth to the investigation.
