What is the best way to find out your Ancestry? As these ancestry websites dont seem accurate?

Question

I am very interested in finding out my family ancestry, ive gone on most of these ancestry websites and they seem to not be accurate. So i was wondering if there other ways of finding out my family Ancestry?

Answer 1

You need to do it PROPERLY, which can be frustrating. Sites where people have put up family trees are frequently full of errors and I wouldn't trust them. You have to go on official records.



As you asked this question on the UK Yahoo! site I'm going to assume you're English or Welsh. Scotland and Ireland have different systems, though the principles are the same.



Start by going back as far as you can with what your own family knows. From there, to get as far back as 1837 you need to be looking at official birth, marriage and death certificates (not that you need the death certificates unless you're interested in when ancestors died and what they died of) and the census.



To look up births, marriages and deaths, use FreeBMD http://www.freebmd.org.uk/ Say the earliest thing you know is someone's birth and their parents' names. You can use those names and that date of birth to search for a marriage with those two names in the few years before that birth. Remember that the parents might have married after the birth, or if the names don't look right, that people couldn't always spell their own names as well as they do now. Or they might not have married at all. Or that marriage isn't on the index yet. If you get stuck, try ordering that someone's birth certificate to check if your family information is right.



All you get is a name, district name and reference number. ALWAYS look at the image of the original index page to make sure it was copied correctly. Unfortunately you now have to go to https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/default.asp to order a copy of the certificate, as you need the details on that to find out when those people were born, look up the births, order the certificates and so on. It can be annoying that you have to do it one step at a time, especially when you've paid £9.25 for a certificate that turns out to be the wrong one. (Scotland is better - you can look at the original certificates without having to buy them!)



The census can be useful as it shows whole families together and is a great cross-check to make sure you're not barking up the wrong tree. The census is taken every ten years and http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/census-records.htm is your starting point for looking things up. Again, details aren't always copied correctly so ALWAYS look at the original image.



Before 1837, you have to use Church of England baptism, marriage and burial records. Nearly everyone was baptised, married and buried in the C of E then. But you don't have the census to help you :( http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/grouplist.aspx?group=epr is the site for this. I've found lots of errors in the index, even getting the date ten years wrong, so same rule - I know it costs money, but always look at the image of the original record. The best bit is that like the census, that IS the original record, not just the index, so you can print it out for reference later and I always recommend doing this.



It can be annoying to have to wait, not find records, find people couldn't spell, not be able to read the handwriting... Sometimes it helps to put less information in your search if it comes up blank. Just keep trying things. I found one line in my family where the surname spelling changed every generation, which gave me and Mum a good laugh as we were doing the work together! You'll probably come to a halt somewhere in the 1700s if not before. Parish records only started in 1538 and for most parishes the very early ones have been lost.



I really recommend a good book on how to do it that can point you to more sources like wills, and http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/familyhistory/get_started/#basics says more than I have space to write here.



But once you've tried this, you'll really know how to use a library and how to use Google!



Edit - I think Len means the Mormons, not Seventh Day Adventists. They're interested in genealogy because they believe it is possible to baptise the dead and make them Mormons by proxy. To that end they have copied records from all over the world and their database is at https://www.familysearch.org/ Of course it's incomplete but it's free.

Answer 2

You never start online on any website, you start with YOU and the records you already have at home and that way you not only learn how to research you also know you have your ancestors in your tree, a great foundation and you then know who to look for and where they were likely to have lived http://familytimeline.webs.com/recordsinyourownhome.htm that will help you get started, download free FH software from the links page and hat will also help you with other online sites........ but regardless of what online websites you use ONLY images of the real records are real and trusted NOTHING else, anything else is just a clue about where to look for the real record and in lots of cases you will find regardless of what the website says there is no real record the information goes back to as many are collected and donated data which has not been checked, but with the number of people now researching the websites just continue to feed that market and many people seem to think websites are how you research, but they are not, they are only a tool to help you....and there is a very large tool box which have trusted resources and records which are not online................

Answer 3

There are tens of thousands of free resources for genealogists. none are worth a lick without a good foundation built by following a good research process:

1. Interview your living relatives and family friends. But don't take what they say about others as gospel truth. Stories get mixed up.

2. Examine your documents and those of relatives that will allow it.

3. Prepare for research by learning about basic genealogy, genealogy specific to your known ancestors.

4. Organize your data. Free software is available.

5. Research one document at time for one generation at a time, one ancestor at a time. Record only facts found in the documents.



A few hints for making good use of resources: Because of privacy laws and etiquette standards, you'll want to get back 70-100 years before hopping on the internet or trying to order records. AVOID user-submitted or prepared trees/pedigrees except where they have sources cited, and go to the sources. Seeing the same information multiple times in trees does not mean it's more accurate, just that it got copies a lot. Indexes and transcriptions are better than trees but still likely to have more errors. Use these to get you to the original source. Try to find and work with original documents or images as exclusively as possible. Understanding how each type of record was collected and prepared and what that means is an invaluable tool for assessing the information.



Not everything is free and/or online. But you can get a good running start with the freebies. Sometimes paid sites that give all-you-can-eat access to their collections for a monthly rate is a better buy that paying for each record, travel, photocopies, borrowing fees, shipping, etc.



I suspect your troubles are one of a few things:

either you're

1. using the user-submitted trees (I've seen ones with numbers transcribed so that the person had kids decades afer they died, I've also seen one that included Superman born in Krypton. I'd say those were inaccurate).

2. having trouble with your foundation , starting with yourself or a parent, or not understanding the exact records and how the information was collected (not all records are right). Spelling variations throw folks off at first too.

3. having trouble with how to use the search engine. It works a lot like Google. Like Googling table. You'll get results for mesas, furniture, HTML code, and data. If you put in table and mesa you might miss the one website you want on Table Rock because it didn't have the word mesa in it. It gives you possible matches, but not always the match you want. You still need to sort through the records to see what fits.



Some helpful starting places:

http://www.cyndislist.com/ (START with How To and Genealogical Standards and Guidelines, they also have guides and links for specific places)

https://www.familysearch.org/

http://www.censusfinder.com/

http://www.findagrave.com/

http://www.deathindexes.com/

http://www.archives.gov/

Here -- Many of us have resources or knowledge specific to certain documents, times, places, and groups.

Google -- Look for local libraries, archives, agencies, and GenWebs, or websites similar to above for your ancestor's country.

Offline -- Libraries, archives, museums, church records, genealogical societies, Family History Centers (operated by the Mormons), etc. BIG note: FHCs and some libraries have FREE access to some of the paid subscription sites like Ancestry.com and librarians or volunteers that are happy to help.

Answer 4

You could go to your local Seventh Day Adventist church if there is one near. They keep thousands of birth marriage and deaths records, all on microfiche. They have readers for these and they do not normally charge but would like a donation. Start with your parents and work back.

Answer 5

You have to start with your parents and go back each generation, then check any information you find, there are hundreds of people with the same name on all genealogy sites

Answer 6

This BBC guide explains how to research your ancestry: http://www.bbc.co.uk/familyhistory/ The following free forum is also useful for asking more experienced genealogists questions and looking up lists of local resources: www.rootschat.com



Basically, you start with yourself (and possibly any siblings) and work backwards, generation by generation. For each person you research, try to find out at least the following details:



Their full name

The date and place they were born and/or baptised

If they were married, date and place of marriage and full name of spouse

If deceased, date and place they died and/or were buried

Most crucially, their parents' names, so you can trace back another generation



It may also be both useful and interesting to find out other details, like what job(s) they did (this can be essential for elimination purposes if you find two people with the same name in the records - if you know your ancestor was a fishmonger, it can help you to identify which of the two people is your ancestor and which is just some guy with the same name)



How do you find out this information? When dealing with living relatives, the best way is by asking them! If your mother tells you she was born on e.g. 1st May 1944 in Ealing, you can probably trust she is telling the truth without needing to see any documentary evidence. However, you should be careful about trusting what your relatives say about other relatives - sometimes people make mistakes, so it's always best to check records if you've heard stuff secondhand.



Other ways of finding out information about relatives include:



- any private family documents, like diaries, family bibles, things written on the back of old photos etc Ask all your relatives if you can see any family documents they have

- ordering birth, marriage and death certificates (although these are expensive. I know I'm going to be thumbed down by the entire world for saying this, but I only order them as a last resort, if there is no cheaper method of finding the same evidence. The great advantage of bmd certificates, though, is that in theory, at least, they are a complete resource - if someone was born in England between 1837 and today, they should be on there

- searching for birth, marriage and death announcements or news articles about weddings and funerals in local newspapers. The British Newspaper Library has a great site, although you have to pay to read articles http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/

- information on tombstones (sometimes called monumental inscriptions or MIs in the genealogy world).

- census records. Unfortunately, you have to get back as far as 1911 for these to be any use, as they are only released to the public after 100 years. Parts of the earlier censuses are available on free sites like www.freecen.org.uk and (if by any chance you're Cornish) the brilliant Cornwall Online census project http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~kayhin/cocp.html, but you can get a complete set of censuses on paid sites like Ancestry.co.uk (you can use it for free in many public libraries) or findmypast.co.uk. These are a great way of finding out who your ancestor's parents are - if you know he/she was born in a certain village around 1865, if the only person of the right name in that village in the 1871 census is a 6-year-old child, living with his parents John and Mary, then you've almost certainly found the right family.

-local parish records of baptisms, marriages and burials. These are most useful once you get back before national bmd registration. www.familysearch.org has a searchable database of transcriptions of parish records, but it (a) does contain inaccuracies (b) isn't complete - some parishes weren't included, so just because you only find one John Fothering-Smythe born in 1775 on FamilySearch doesn't necessarily mean he was the only John Fothering-Smythe born in England in 1775. If you know where your family came from, online parish clerks schemes (where local volunteers offer to look up and e-mail information to people who can't travel to where the records are) can also be very useful http://www.genuki.org.uk/indexes/OPC.html



While Clive, Maxi etc are right that you can only completely trust real records, not transcriptions or indexes, I think it's fine to work from transcriptions and indexes when you're starting out, especially if you're only doing it for fun, not publication - you can always check against the real records at a later date. You will probably make mistakes to start with, but the learning curve is part of the fun and I'd hate to put anyone off trying this fascinating hobby by giving them the impression that you have to buy lots of expensive documents right off.

Answer 7

Try talking to different family members about it, or going to the library and researching it.

Answer 8

Such websites are put up by amateurs. Which means quite often they make errors, in this case, they often leap to assumptions which make their families fancier. It's as reliable as a great aunt whom you've never met.