Ancestry.com????

Question

Hi,

I'm trying look information up on ancestry.com, but every time I try and click something it says sign up and that they are giving me a 14 day trial. But the problem is they say to enter a credit card.. can I only view info if I sign up with credit card??? What info do they really give you? is it worth it? what if it's the wrong person and u pay for nothing? any help please. thanks

Answer 1

Ancestry will also take a monthly payment of 19.95

after your free month,  this way you only pay for the time you use the site....and OMG YES!!!! it's more than worth it....you can locate, view and copy census', birth, death, marriage, divorce, military, probate records and more......

try the free trial, then if your happy go for the monthly.

Their staff are great and won't s***w you over, belive me...

Answer 2

Some of the information on ancestry.com is shown to non-members with a little padlock icon, which means they are not allowed to view it. The icon that looks like a sheet of paper is open to everybody.

    You can still get a free trial membership for the 14 days , but the credit card info is needed in case you forget to cancel the trial before it ends. After that, unless you want to upgrade to a better plan, they will automatically withdraw the cost of the American deluxe  plan each month until you tell them to cancel it.  I have the World Deluxe membership and I pay $29.95 a month. To me, it is worth every penny because I can log-on to ANY of their affiliate sites--in Italy, Germany, Australia, UK, etc--with the same user name/password and look at any information I want. It also makes it easier to help with the genealogy requests I've helped with--being able to go back to the Middle Ages sometimes--to find someone's long-lost 16th great-grandparents.  :)

   What info is given?? They have 25,822 databases with information listings like these: (yes, those are MILLIONS)

1.Ancestry World Tree  Family Trees    467,671,004 names

2.OneWorldTree  Family Trees    192,141,453

3.England & Wales, FreeBMD Birth Index: 1837-1983--  Birth, Marriage & Death-- England; Wales--  65,103,126

names

4.United States Obituary Collection -- Birth, Marriage & Death-- USA--  118,804,290

5. U.S. World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942--  Military-- USA--  6,127,549

6. Hamburg Passenger Lists, Handwritten Indexes, 1855-1934--5,000,000 names

Just for fun one day, I looked at some of the British databases. Believe it or not, I found one that actually mentioned my 7th  great-grandfather BY NAME and told some more family names dating back another 200 years beyond him (he was born in about 1662).

And that is just a sample of what they have.

    If you get the wrong person, there's probably the right one listed somewhere. You have to take into consideration, too, that name spellings CAN & DO change over time,and depending where the person lived--spellings in Ireland wouldn't be the same in Wales, but it would still be the same family. I'd bet if you went to www.familysearch.org and just typed in your last name, you'd come up with 10-20 spellings for it, depending on location and timeframe.

That is what genealogy is all about--trial and error--until you get your family pieced together like the jigsaw puzzle it is.

Answer 3

I tried the 14 day trial about 3 years ago and have had a subscription ever since.  They have added tons of information over the years. Some states have several types of records, like Minnesota, some States you can find little more than the Fed census records.  You may want to try Rootsweb, familysearch, and then google your State, County or other local historical society cites, before paying for Ancestry.  With Ancestry, in some cases, you can put a family tree together going back to the 1800's rather quickly.

Answer 4

There is a lot of information on Ancestry.com. It's worth it if you are doing your ancestry. If you are just looking up a person it is not. If you sign up with a credit card you will get 14 days free, then, unless you cancel, your credit card will be charged for the full subscription.

Answer 5

Yes, you do have to go ahead and enter your credit card to get the 14 day free trial. I have had people say they have no difficulty cancelling if they do so before the 14 days are up.  

I think Ancestry.Com is the tops for its records.  You can get census records, the transcription of them as well as the original images through 1930 for the U.S.  You can get many birth, marriage and death indexes.

You can get immigration indexes..  You can get some newspaper files.   You can get military indexes.  

I think I have already warned you not to take as absolute fact everything you see in family trees.  However, you can usually get the email address of the submitter and correspond with them.  Some can be very nice and helpful. Some you might never hear from.  They have message boards under surnames or location.  I have had great success on the location message boards.  Surnames are too vague as too often there are too many people with the same surname that has no connection to you at all.  

Also if you put your family tree on the Public Member Tree program, people might just contact you.  I recently heard from a great granddaughter of one of my grandmother's sisters who saw my family tree there.  

Now no way are all the records on line. It seems Ancestry.Com is working to get more and more all the time.

Answer 6

Ancestry.com does have thousands and thousands of records.. I personally use census records more than anything. You are not paying for any guarantee that it is the "right" person.. the records are there, and it is up to you to determine who is right/ wrong.  Yes.. it is a business, and the majority of the info is only open to subscribers. You can (in some cases) use it at your local library, if they subscribe.

I notice you are very new here. Have you taken a bit of time to check out some of the tutorials on how to find your ancestry?

http://rwguide.rootsweb.com/

Here's one guide, and it is free.

SOMETIMES.. it might be good to start without using a fee based service, until you have a little experience as to what you want to find.  You can post a specific question here about an ancestor (not living), including what you do know.. for example.. need to find the place of birth for John Jones, who married Martha Smith and died in Montana in 1950.  Each answer that you get, will be a lesson in how to use the info, or how to build on it, to find more.

You really CAN find a lot through them. But (like anything in genealogy), you have to know what you are looking for, to determine the best place to find it.  It will NOT ALL be on ancestry.

Answer 7

My famely was looking up our history many years ago, and we got a lot of good information by going to a big library that had microfish copies of old papers that showed when and where people were born and died.

I have traced my Family history back to 1290 In Germany.

Answer 8

Yes, the info is really worth it, they will bill you if you don't cancel before the 14 day trial is up.

Ancestry is the single best value, after I cancelled my trial they sent me a deal to get it for a year for $99.

I took it and I have loved it ever since.

You can get ancestry free at your local public library just ask.

Answer 9

I opted not to do the ancestry.com for that very reason.   I am including links to some of the free sites that I have found useful. I have also just typed in the first & last name, in quotes, of a person I am looking for plus the state if I know it, in my Yahoo! search bar. Your family name can show up in different state histories and records.

Good Luck

http://www.genealogybank.com/gbnk/keywor...

http://www.rootsweb.com/

http://ancestorguide.com/

http://www.tribalpages.com/

http://www.usgenweb.net/

http://www.ellisisland.org/default.asp

Ellis Island passenger list search page

http://www.familytreecircles.com/

http://www.censusdiggins.com/

http://www.archives.gov/research/civil-w...

http://www.genealogybuff.com/

http://www.gencircles.com/globaltree/

http://www.genealogysearch.com/wwwboard-...

http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/s...

http://www.genealogy.com/index_a.html

http://worldconnect.genealogy.rootsweb.c...

http://www.cyndislist.com

Cyndi's List has over 250,000 sites, some are free, some are not.

http://genealogy.about.com/gi/dynamic/of...

Access Geneology has good resources for Native American & African American

research as well as census records, military records and family bibles.

Don't be afraid to get in to some of the geneology forums for your family name. Sometimes that can be very helpful as well.