I used ancestry.com to find my family history how long does it take to get clues or a shakey leaf?

Question

i really want to know because i can only use it for 14 days but it has only been a few hours since i started

Answer 1

The real answer is how fast can you type in new search criteria?

But, you can always continue on www.ancestry.com or www.heritagequest.com at your local library.

Answer 2

Just keep adding information and people that you know are in your tree.  Eventually, it will make a match somewhere in its database.  You may not have gotten to the point yet where it connects to any info in their database.  It constantly checks.

Answer 3

Just don't take as absolute fact everything you see in family trees on Ancestry.Com or any website, free or paid.  The information is subscriber submitted and mostly not documented or poorly documented.  Even if you see the same info repeatedly by many different subscribers that is no guarantee at all it is correct. A lot of people copy without verifying.  You can make up a tree and submit it to Ancestry.Com or any one of those websites and it would be accepted. There is no way at all that people who run those sites can verify all the information people submit.  Actually, I understand, some people do make up things just to see how many fools will copy.

Use the information as CLUES as to where to get the documentation.

Ancestry.Com, I feel, is the best website overall for its records.  They have all the U.S. censuses through 1930. The 1940 and later are not available to the public yet.  They also have U. K. censuses.  Now sometimes their transcription of the censuses has errors and of course, sometimes, the original censuses have errors.   However, you can have pity on the transcribers when you look at some of the original images which you can do.

Answer 4

It will start searching as soon as you enter the information.

Answer 5

Five minutes to five years, depending on who, how far back, what country, what else you do and the luck of the draw.

I did my tree via free sites, without Ancestry, for the first 8 years I was on-line. (And for 30 years before the Internet.) So, if the 14 days end, you DO have other options.

It isn't like that trench they have in Algebra books, where Mr. A can dig 3 feet an hour and Mr. B can dig 2 feet an hour. Working together they can dig a 40-footer in 8 hours. There is a nice definite answer.

Genealogy is more like fishing. Sometimes you can catch and release a dozen 14-pounders in an hour. Sometimes you can't.

Answer 6

It should be instantly, but if it doesn't, there may be no close matches.  You can click on person's name in your pedigree, then click "search for historical records" and it will show you the records that are the  closest match.  As long as they are deceased, or were  born before 1930, there should be records that match.

Answer 7

Well, I've been at it for 8 years so far.