Ancestry.com - any addicts out there?

[Bret44]

I have fallen down this rabbit hole and it looks like there have been some people of possible distant relation have done a lot of work.

Also, my 5x Great Grandpa may have been a Loyalist Col. in the British Army. My life is over. God Save the Queen.

 

[aauummm]

Someone needs to start an Ancestry Anonymous group. It is addictive. I have been an Ancestry.com member since 2010 and have done the DNA for myself and my mother. I've got over 20,000 DNA matches on there. That's a lot of cousins! My ancestors on my mother's side came over on the Mayflower so it was pretty easy tracing her ancestry back.

As someone else mentioned in a previous post, you have to be careful to verify each ancestor because there is some wishful thinking going on in some of the people's information. By that I mean some will juggle their lineage so that they can claim that they are related to George Washington or some royalty in England, etc.

I have over 5,000 ancestors and relatives in my tree and it's kind of surprising some of the people that pop up. Most usually it's just ordinary everyday Americans but all have interesting histories and stories. Lots of fun and many many hours put into it.

PS-So far no Loyalists in my background-thank goodness.

 

[SDClone]

Before my dad passed away 12 years ago, he spent hours and hours working on his family tree. He has so much information its crazy. I have it all in a couple boxes and I really want to continue it. I would have to pay it all out on a big table and work on, but I don't trust my 8 and 6 year old. I would hate for them to mess with the records and photos etc.

 

[aauummm]

I tried one of the two (that or Geneology.com) a few years ago and it seemed like they charged for each new record I wanted to access. Quit before it dollared me to death. If they don't do it that way anymore, if try again.

Ancestry.com is an annual subscription and that covers all costs. No charges for any records. They have been acquiring records and databases like crazy so the amount of records is just unbelievable and grows almost daily.

 

[SpokaneCY]

Someone needs to start an Ancestry Anonymous group. It is addictive. I have been an Ancestry.com member since 2010 and have done the DNA for myself and my mother. I've got over 20,000 DNA matches on there. That's a lot of cousins! My ancestors on my mother's side came over on the Mayflower so it was pretty easy tracing her ancestry back.

As someone else mentioned in a previous post, you have to be careful to verify each ancestor because there is some wishful thinking going on in some of the people's information. By that I mean some will juggle their lineage so that they can claim that they are related to George Washington or some royalty in England, etc.

I have over 5,000 ancestors and relatives in my tree and it's kind of surprising some of the people that pop up. Most usually it's just ordinary everyday Americans but all have interesting histories and stories. Lots of fun and many many hours put into it.

PS-So far no Loyalists in my background-thank goodness.

I kept coming to a dead-end (THAT'S funny right there) with a certain limb of the tree. Turned out some relative married a dead wife's sister or aunt (daughter maybe even?) which made the gene pool on one limb really shallow.

I've been able to track down birth and death certificates for many and have found several ships manifests for some of my European brothers from different mothers.

I have no interest in learning more about these people (unless someone famous pops up) but I really enjoy watching the tree branch out (that's a good thing?) and finding the source documents to support many of the relatives.

 

[iowa_wildcat]

Found out my family were French Protestants that fled to Scotland and Ireland. They landed in Nova Scotia and migrated down to New Jersey. Sounds similar to SpokaneCY?

 

[wxman1]

I may have to do this sometime. One thing that I have treasured is kind of a biography life story my grandma wrote. As nice as it to find out relationships, dates etc it was really cool to read directly from her actual stories. I should probably work on digitizing it. Would be nice to have one for my other grandparents but those ships sailed a long time ago.

 

[kcdc4isu]

My late mother had done work on our tree and when she died I took the info and looked some more. Tried Ancestry.com but could not get much more then what my mother had. I then found a site "My Heritage.com" and have found information that takes my dads side back 8 generations and am finding more every week. You can start for free (like most) then you can go to a yearly fee. You get information from other people that are related to people on your tree. I have received from at least 7 other trees.

 

[Bret44]

Grandpa Turncoat fled to Canada, where his kids were born. My ancestors. I am part Canadian. Now I gotta buy hockey pads. This sucks.

 

[kcdc4isu]

Grandpa Turncoat fled to Canada, where his kids were born. My ancestors. I am part Canadian. Now I gotta buy hockey pads. This sucks.

But you get to carry a BIG Stick to protect yourself.

 

[Bret44]

But you get to carry a BIG Stick to protect yourself.

I'm going to need it when I am celebrating Boxing Day this December.

 

[weR138]

I did the DNA test which was fun...but kind of disappointing. Turns out I'm as white and northern European / Scandinavian as I look.

I was truly hoping to find some sort of chocolate in my peanut butter.

 

[vmbplayer]

Does Ancestry do a lot prior to crossing the pond (european records)? I'm thinking about this as a Christmas gift for my folks, but they have pretty solid trees already going back to the original immigrants to the states, but as far as i know not much from Europe. I think they'd be interested in looking at that, but if the records are more US centric i don't think they'd get much info they don't already have.

 

[TXCyclones]

I was big into genealogy for a while. I spent quite a bit of time at the State Historical Building going through dozens and dozens of microfiche and microfilm. It was awesome. Then I spent some time at the National Archives too, which was cool, finding which ship my ancestors came over on. I lost a bit of interest when I tried finding my great grandparents and beyond in Germany and Austria.

One of the fun things was finding that my grandfather spelled his name one way when he came to the U.S., while one of his brothers spelled his last name differently when he came over, and another two brothers spelled theirs differently still! The German Ö had two brothers using "oeh", another "ah", and another using "oh". The brothers all arrived at different times, and a couple through different ports, so their Americanized names were spelled by whomever processed them. Turns out I had played sports against kids from neighboring schools in Iowa who were direct relatives and I had no idea.

 

[aauummm]

I did the DNA test which was fun...but kind of disappointing. Turns out I'm as white and northern European / Scandinavian as I look.

I was truly hoping to find some sort of chocolate in my peanut butter.

That would appear to apply to me as well. However, a DNA match popped up recently with an African American lady in Louisiana. Yippee! We are 5th-8th cousins on my mother's side. About 95% of my ancestors on my mother's side immigrated from England to New England and then road the gravy train west through NY, PA, Ohio, and eventually on over to Iowa. So it probably wasn't any of them (but you never know).

However, I am suspicious of a relative or two that got lost and ended up in North Carolina or Virginia!

 

[aauummm]

Does Ancestry do a lot prior to crossing the pond (european records)? I'm thinking about this as a Christmas gift for my folks, but they have pretty solid trees already going back to the original immigrants to the states, but as far as i know not much from Europe. I think they'd be interested in looking at that, but if the records are more US centric i don't think they'd get much info they don't already have.

The records are world wide with a huge bunch from Great Britain and Northern Europe. Unfortunately there are literally hundreds of thousands of people in Great Britain and Northern Europe with the same last names. Immigration records are very extensive, however, tracing a particular immigrant back to a specific person in GB or Northern Europe is pretty hard to do.

However, if the ancestors from GB, etc. were notable (say a William Penn or Mayflower immigrants, etc.) then yes they can be traced back to their origins that may go back as far as 1000 AD.

 

[JP4CY]

Grandpa Turncoat fled to Canada, where his kids were born. My ancestors. I am part Canadian. Now I gotta buy hockey pads. This sucks.

 

[CycloneSarah]

I was big into genealogy for a while. I spent quite a bit of time at the State Historical Building going through dozens and dozens of microfiche and microfilm. It was awesome. Then I spent some time at the National Archives too, which was cool, finding which ship my ancestors came over on. I lost a bit of interest when I tried finding my great grandparents and beyond in Germany and Austria.

One of the fun things was finding that my grandfather spelled his name one way when he came to the U.S., while one of his brothers spelled his last name differently when he came over, and another two brothers spelled theirs differently still! The German Ö had two brothers using "oeh", another "ah", and another using "oh". The brothers all arrived at different times, and a couple through different ports, so their Americanized names were spelled by whomever processed them. Turns out I had played sports against kids from neighboring schools in Iowa who were direct relatives and I had no idea.

I've always wanted to dig into my ancestry for this reason. My last name is completely unique to my immediate family because of the way it was interpreted from the German pronunciation when they immigrated so I would love to learn more about the origins.

 

[aauummm]

I've always wanted to dig into my ancestry for this reason. My last name is completely unique to my immediate family because of the way it was interpreted from the German pronunciation when they immigrated so I would love to learn more about the origins.

Turns out that I have one line that has some Germans in it also. While messing around investigating them, I ran across some that spelled their names all different ways, Kreisler, Kriessler, etc. This piqued my interest so I did some further digging and eventually came up with Walter P. Chrysler as a distant cousin type. Yep, he founded the Chrysler Corp and was the richest man in America.

His ancestors were Palatines that left Germany to escape persecution. They went to England and were housed in abysmal conditions. It got so bad that the queen of England paid them to go to America. A lot of them accepted the offer and the rest is history.

http://www.olivetreegenealogy.com/palatines/palatine-history.shtml
https://www.geni.com/projects/The-Palatine-Families-Project/735

 

[somecyguy]

However, if the ancestors from GB, etc. were notable (say a William Penn or Mayflower immigrants, etc.) then yes they can be traced back to their origins that may go back as far as 1000 AD.

While doing some research on my family, I ran across this person who had competed a family tree for my surname, Lewis, all the way back to around 1085AD. Lewis is an obvious Welsh/English name, but this person had supposedly connected spelling variation and modifications to the name that cycled through various dukes and earls across Europe.

It was a fascinating read, though I am very skeptical of the information.