Question For Genealogy Fans - Page 3

Sooner · ‎03-10-2010

My thought is go to Walmart, a ballgame, the post office or maybe a mall or shopping area and look around you. What percentage of the folks would you like to be related to?

Then scan the police report for a day or two and do the same things. See anyone in the perp walk on tv that you'd like to call 'cuz?

I figure I'm good as it is!

LizzieInSRQ · ‎12-27-2010

I don't allow other members of Ancestry to add to my family tree.. on my family I see a lot of generations naming kids the same names and such so it can get messed up I've witness someone take a branch and emailed me and they don't know what they are doing. I said "sorry, you need the other Robert. B. not my Robert B. Wrong century" lol

Yeah I'm related to a family of celebrities ( even the uglier ones look like my other cousins LOL ) but I will never be contacting them. If you go back far enough ...all of us are mostly related <wink>.

Icegoddess · ‎03-19-2010

@ThinkingOutLoud wrote:
I have an account on a couple different sites but for this, I used the one @ALRATIBA mentioned.

Step 1 - set up a free account on Familysearch dot org

Step 2 - input your info (names, birthdays, etc for you, your parents, grandparents). Go as far back as needed. There's a good chance info is already there once you add enough of your own. (hope that makes sense)

I'll give you a chance to get that far and add in the other steps in a bit.

Step 3 - google the names of who you think you're related to and go to their wikipedia page. Scroll down to 'early life' and note the parents names and birth/death years.

Step 4 - go back to familysearch dot org. At the top left, click on 'family tree' and scroll down to 'find'. Click that and type in the name, gender and years of the parent (from the wiki info). Click 'find' at the bottom. Names will come up to scroll through. When you see the one that lists the name, years and spouse, click on that name.

Step 5 - At the bottom of the pop up, there are icons. Click on the second icon (to the right of the star). In the black bar at the top left, it will indicate your relationship and you can also see the lineage from person to person.

Oh - living people are kept private so you'll just have to assume that if you're related to the parents, you are to their kids.

Hope I've explained things well enough and I'd love to hear if your inkling is correct.

I have not read all the replys past this one so someone may have already mentioned it, but a warning. You can't trust the trees on FamilySearch. They have what is called a One World tree which means you have no control over the information in it, including your own direct family. Anybody can change the information and there is nothing you can do about it but change it back. And then they can change it again I sometimes use it for hints, but never for any sort of verification of a tree. The only way you can know for sure is through doing your own homework looking at records.

Icegoddess · ‎03-19-2010

@Oznell wrote:
Searches of this kind can be a fun, diverting quest-- hope you enjoy, @PickyPicky3 .

I hope you won't mind, since there appear to be some Ancestry.com-knowledgeable people on the thread, if I pose a question that has been nagging at me.

My sister, who has done tons of genealogical research on our family over the decades, finally had her DNA analyzed at Ancestry. All of our ethnicities got broken down in percentages. Does anyone know why they have such a hugely broad category as "England and Northwestern Europe" lumped in together?

That covers a lot of turf! There's England-- and then northwestern Europe, I imagine, takes in France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg and who knows what-all else. We already know about the English component in the family, and the French, but would have liked to know roughly how they break down, separately.

For those of you familiar with Ancestry, do they lump England and Northwestern Europe together b/c there are so many close genetic linkages that you can't really separate them out?

That might make some sense to me, yet they DO break down separately groups as closely related as Denmark, Sweden and Norway! How can they differentiate among them, yet not between England and northwest Europe?

Very grateful if anyone has answers!

@Oznell it all depends on what they have in their DNA database. The more DNA in their database, the more specific they can get. From what I understand they do update those profiles. Has your sister checked to see if they have tweaked the info? I'm on a Facebook Genealogy group and I've seen this discussed a few times although I don't do the DNA thing at all.

I know there is very little Native American data in the database and the Native American tribes will not accept DNA data as evidence to be included in their tribes. If you are termed Native American, it's more than likely it is coming from Alaskan Eskimos or South American nativess, not US Native Americans. Not sure if they actively discourage submitting DNA or it's just not a thing with them.

Icegoddess · ‎03-19-2010

You can get free access to basic ancestry information (census records, birth, marriage, death, divorces, Social Security, and military records) via your local library. You do have to have a library card and be within their Wifi service to access it although they suspended the wifi requirement during the Covid-19 lockdowns. They were supposed to go back to that requirement a couple of months ago, but I'm still using it from home, so I'm not sure if they extended it again and when it will go down on me. I'll continue using it until then.

I used to use FamilySearch before that and really liked them especially for census searches, but they have changed their platform and I don't like it as well anymore. I used to be able to keep each Census year up in a tab and only search on the one I wanted, but can't do that anymore. I can do an advanced search to narrow it to the year I want, but it helped to be able to keep them all up at once. It also helps if I want to search on neighbors when I can't find a family since sometimes the transcriber gets the name all wrong.

skatting44 · ‎07-26-2019

@ 23 & Me has an ancestry composition breakdown -

example " British & Irish % . The United Kingdom has 165 administrative regions, and we found the strongest evidence of your ancestry in the following 10 regions. " Greater London, Greater Manchester, Lancashire , West Midlands , ... " " French & german - Gisons and Baden -Wuttemberg , Brandenburg "

PickyPicky3 · ‎10-22-2018

I did a quick free search on FamilySearch and Ancestry and got nothing. So I Googled CelebrityName1 Ancestry, found a guy on YouTube talking about this, and learned CELEB1's great grandmother MOVED FROM THE SAME TOWN IN EUROPE TO THE EXACT TOWN IN THE US WHERE MY MOTHER WAS BORN!!! What are the odds? I'll try to contact the YouTuber.

Got nothing I didn't already know about Celeb2.

Enough for one day. Thanks.....

skatting44 · ‎07-26-2019

@Icegoddess

Definitely agree with you. To that point Ancestry.com has many unproved trees , some people click and attach any record to their tree without any scrutiny . On the flip side there are many trees on ancestry which are good solid sources in ading one in filling in their family genealogy puzzles.

Icegoddess · ‎03-19-2010

@skatting44 wrote:
@Icegoddess
Definitely agree with you. To that point Ancestry.com has many unproved trees , some people click and attach any record to their tree without any scrutiny . On the flip side there are many trees on ancestry which are good solid sources in ading one in filling in their family genealogy puzzles.

@skatting44, the takeaway is you need to do your own research and not rely on someone else's if you want to be sure yours is correct. Same for Find a Grave. I really haven't used the trees on Ancestry that much although I have found some errors in the ones I've found that would attach to mine if I had mine out there. Usually, when I look at a tree I'm looking for a record attached to it, and in most cases I'm disappointed.

I see a lot of posts on my FB Genealogy site of people starting over because they didn't do their own research. I think it's common for beginners. My sister won't even look at census records because she says she can't read them.

Annabellethecat66 · ‎03-12-2010

I've never been interested in doing ancestry.

But my daughter has traced my husband's. ancestry back to the 1600's. But there are towns and schools named directly after his relatives, so it wasn't REAL hard.

With my side of the family, I have a name a lot of people have so it is more challenging.

I think the OP should do the work on her own and track down her ancestry.

I'm told it is rewarding. Hats off to those who have the patience. Really, I wouldn't mind it if I had some of that tenacity...but I don't.