Genealogy site hassles

[verte76]

One of my relatives asked me to trace the ancestry of his parents. I've traced my own ancestors but he has some ancestors I don't have. It's been a few years since I did this. Wow. Things have changed. You have to *pay* to get to some surname sites. There have always been paying services, but some of this stuff used to be free. Is this going the way of free web site hosting, which is getting obsolete??

 

[The Sage]

This is what my mother does constantly, she has about a billion certificates in genealogy - I keep trying to persuade her to make some money out of it but to no avail so far...

Sorry, I know that doesn't answer your question...

 

[verte76]

The Latter Day Saints, or Mormons, have a bit of ancestral info that's free. They have connections to services where you pay, however. I'll bet people are making scads off of this stuff. I already have a bunch of ancestral information in my closet, in dusty files and other places that take time to search.

 

[Liesje]

My mom spends hours each day working on ours and her best sources are

-Ellis Island records

-church records

-newsletters/online groups specific to our ancestry (Dutch)

-connections in places she can't get to. for example, she corrosponds with a guy in the Netherlands that's a distant relative and my mom sends him info from America and he digs up whatever she needs from Europe

Good luck!

 

[anitram]

Shouldn't public records be free or do you have to pay for those too?

My uncle spent a year of his sabbatical in Venice tracing our family tree to the 11th century (I am a descendant of the Cornaro line). And this was before the advent of the Internet, so he had to totally rely on birth and death certificates, etc.

 

[beli]

The Latter Day Saints, or Mormons, have a bit of ancestral info that's free. They have connections to services where you pay, however.

The Mormons have loads more information than is on the web. You can order a microfilm to be viewed at one of their centres and you can look at as many records as there are on the film. In Australia it cost $6.00 a film a month, but Im guessing would be cheaper in the USA.

And before you ask, no they dont try and 'convert' you. I have found the safest place to hide from preachers is right in the middle of their church.

Which countries records are you looking for Verte?

 

[U2Kitten]

Try Myfamily.com

 

[verte76]

Which countries records are you looking for Verte?

Mostly the U.S. I haven't had a European-born ancestor since the nineteenth century, and those were in German-speaking lands. I don't read a word of German.

 

[verte76]

I just found a book with some old notes about my ancestors in it, including some neat stuff about my French Huguenot folks. Wow! I'd forgotten about this stuff.

 

[U2Kitten]

I have my family traced back to before this country was a country, but I can't trace them back to Europe yet

 

[verte76]

I have my family traced back to before this country was a country, but I can't trace them back to Europe yet

Locating foreign births is potentially a nightmare, especially if you don't speak their language (German, in my case). Someone else already identified my French ancestors by actually going to France. Someone else identified my Scottish and Irish ancestors also, I didn't have to. But these darn German births! I'm completely stumped!

 

[Liesje]

Locating foreign births is potentially a nightmare, especially if you don't speak their language (German, in my case).

Yeah, it's a pain in the arse b/c the names constantly changed or are spelled phonetically since not as many people were literate back then. When my mom searches for someone, she first makes a list of ANY possible way to spell or pronounce the name.

You should get in touch with a distant relative in Germany who is also interested in your family history. This is what my mom does for us (though she reads/writes Dutch) since she's never had time/money to actually go to Groeningen. My dad is a Rosema and my mom found a Rosema in Amsterdam who now researches for her. He also keeps track of every Rosema in the States so as a trade, my mom sends him any info on any Rosema (a sports article, birth announcement, etc). It works great b/c this guy will spend weeks on trips to libraries, city halls, and churches digging up info.

 

[beli]

And Latin. I have some Irish ancestors and their records are in Latin - including my ancestors names. They translated EVERYTHING.

I agree with LivLuv. See if you can find a One Name Society researching your family name/s. Im a member of the STRANGE name group (ancestors in Oxford England where the Church of England wont share their records) and everybody emails in the information they find and everyonce in a while one of my ancestors will come up.

I have a book with some one name studies listed. What last names are you after Verte?

 

[verte76]

My family's surname is Hefner. I don't know how many times I've been asked if I'm related to Hugh. I'm not, to the best of my knowledge. A relative of mine traced our ancestry back to a birth in Maryland in 1752. This made me throw away a fairy tale about a birth in a castle in Westphalia in 1795 (which God knows I was skeptical of anyway). Screw the fairy tales, I want to know where that European birth occurred. Most likely the name of the town has been changed. Another German name was anglicised as "Uptigrove". My mother's family name was Lowe, which is also anglicised from the German. All of the births in Scotland and Ireland are documented. It's the German names that are giving me fits.