Ancestry helped me make my Grandma smile (ancestry.co.uk)

Member Name: sweetiebum

Product:	ancestry.co.uk
Date:	06/02/09 (580 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Has a vast amount of records available

Disadvantages: Sometimes unreliable

Ever since I was little I have always been fascinated by history of some form or another and my own family history has been no exception. I have fond memories of sitting as a child spending hours gazing at the grainy photographs of the people with no names in my Grandma's photo albums, wishing that I knew more about them. Despite having a keen interest in my family tree it has only been in the past six months that I have started making a conscientious effort to put some names to the familiar faces staring back at me.

It is certainly true that genealogy has quickly risen in the popularity stakes and it seems that anyone and everyone are trawling the archives compiling their family tree. A lot of these people have jumped on the 'Who Do You Think You Are' bandwagon and it is fair to say that this successful television programme has reinforced my interests. However, this was not the only reason for me wanting to research my family tree; instead it was one that was much closer to my heart. I have always been extremely close to my Grandmother on my mother's side and I had always known that she never knew her real mother as she died when she was around eighteen months old, after giving birth to her brother. However, what I did not realise that she literally did not know anything about her mother other than her name. As she had been relatively close to her father, I had quite foolishly assumed that he would have told her about her mother. This, combined with the fact that certain things like this just weren't spoken about explains why her photo album is full of unknown faces. This may sound a bit clichéd and morbid but I made it my goal to find some information before my Grandma was in her grave.

After taking on what felt like a mammoth task (and still does six months in) I was really unsure about where to start. Initially I began by googling things like 'family tree', 'ancestry' and 'census records', you name it, I tried it. After numerous searches ancestry.co.uk was the website came up more than most. The site not only kept appearing in my searches, adverts kept popping up everywhere, even when I wasn't looking for them! However, I was initially really sceptical because of the simple fact that the site required either a monthly or annual subscription. As I didn't know whether the website would even help me in my search I kept delaying my registration. I naively believed that there must have been a better and cheaper alternative. So I started off my research using a site dedicated to the 1901 Census. What I liked about this site was that I could 'pay as you go' and I thought it would work out to be the cheapest option. However, I was sadly mistaken and I ended up spending a small fortune purchasing £5 worth of credits every ten minutes. After realising my finances could not sustain this amount of expenditure I decided to look again at the Ancestry website. I am so glad that I decided to take a risk and pay the subscription fee as the website has proved to be invaluable in helping me achieve my goal. In fact because of ancestry.co.uk I have achieved much more than I even thought was possible.

Basic Synopsis of the site:

Ancestry.co.uk is a totally unique website in the field of genealogy because it combines the resources to research your family tree and the software to build your tree as well. This is unique because unlike the traditional 'pay as you go' sites you don't have to use additional software unless you want to; you can do everything in one place so in theory saving you money. It differs to many websites as it is a subscription only site, which at first I didn't like. However the more I have used the site I believe it is actually the best system.

Subscription Choices:

What really convinced me to join Ancestry was the promise of fourteen days access for free. I thought this would be a really good way of finding out whether or not it was a waste of money without actually having to spend any! However, all was not as it seemed when I tried to sign up as I soon realised that to gain access to the free trial you still had to sign up for a subscription. This basically meant that I had to enter my credit card details. If after the two weeks I did not want to continue the subscription then I could cancel my subscription so in theory the two weeks would be free. This kind of practice really does irritate me because I always worry about being conned into paying the subscription and worry that it will be difficult to cancel the subscription. Despite my fears I signed up and was relieved to realise that the website was actually rather useful. In my initial signing up I had picked the second cheapest of the three memberships and after the free trial I decided to just keep on paying the monthly fee and after the progress I have made I am happy to do so.

When you sign up to the website you are taken to a page dedicated to the various membership options. There are basically three main options which are set out clearly, however I found it took me a little while to read all of the information as I wanted to be entirely sure what I was signing up to. The three options are:

Essentials Membership -

This is the cheapest option at £83.40 a year or £10.95 a month. For your money you get access to the Birth, Marriage and Death records and the Census records. Although this is good value for money compared to other pay as you go sites I felt that as I was going to be paying a monthly fee I wanted access to as many records as possible.

Premium Membership -

This option costs £107.40 a year or £12.95 a month. This is the subscription that I chose as I felt it offered the best value for money. The difference between this option and the cheaper one is that it gives you access to pre 1837 Parish and Probate records. After reading this I was easily swayed by the promise of going even further back in history and decided that this was the best option for me. At the time when I signed up I convinced myself that I would pay monthly in the hope that I could get my research done quickly so I could cancel the subscription as soon as possible. However, looking back now I should have just paid the annual fee as it would have been cheaper still.

Worldwide Membership -

The most expensive subscription out of the three costs £155.40 a year or £18.95 a month. The difference between this option and the previous two is that it gives you access to more records from other countries. As I had no reason to believe that I had any ancestors overseas I decided that I couldn't justify spending the extra money. I suppose if you were doing this for a living and researching other people's family trees then it would be worth it. However if you are just researching your family tree as a hobby and you have a tight budget I would not recommend this option.
After reading the small print at the bottom of the page I later found that you could also 'pay as you go' but this was still an expensive option. I really like the fact that you can choose between paying monthly and annually because if you don't get on with the site or with your research then you can cancel your subscription early. It basically gives you the freedom to choose rather than being forced into shelling out one large lump sum unless you're certain you will use it.

Features:

What makes ancestry so special to me is the fact that the site holds so many records alongside the basic census collections and birth, marriage and death records. This ranges from a host of military records, immigration and emigration, phone book directories, University Alumni records, medical records and much more - too many to list in fact. I personally have found the military records very useful as I have been able to find out what regiment my ancestors were in and the exact date they signed up. Not only this, but I have been able to print out copies of the forms with my ancestor's signature on when they initially signed up. It is little details like this that makes it all worthwhile and makes the names seem more human.

If you choose to use the website to build your family tree then there are lots of extra features at your disposal. These do however come at a cost. If you click on the 'Print & Share' button you are taken to Ancestry.com where you can pay to have your family tree printed out professionally. I have not yet used this service, however I have looked at the options and they products look very professional, if a little expensive. The products include family history books, posters, calendars and the like.

Another service that the website offers is DNA testing - this is not the same type of DNA test that they carry out on programmes like The Jeremy Kyle Show; instead it claims to find 'genetic cousins'. As I have not used this service I cannot comment on whether it is reliable or not.

The website also has its own online shop where you can purchase birth, marriage or death certificates for your ancestors. They also sell family tree building software and other random things like tickets to events about genealogy. I have looked into purchasing certificates through this site and I would strongly advise you against it. This is because of the simple fact that it is very expensive, at a cost of around £10 per certificate. Instead I would suggest that you order the certificates directly from www.gro.gov.uk where they are £7 each. This is one of my few criticisms of the company, however at the same time I can see they need to make a profit!

Website Layout:

Once you sign into your account using the login box at the top right of the screen you are taken to the home page. If you have entered your family tree using the software available then this will be your homepage. At the top of the screen underneath the ancestry logo there is a bar with lots of links to help you get started. This includes a link to the search function, print and share, community, DNA, Learning Centre and Shop. The only one of these links that I use consistently is the link to the search page. In fact I find the other links quite pointless and unnecessary. As the website holds so many different pages it is difficult to describe all of them. However they all appear to use a similar layout and colour scheme. As the site holds so much information there some pages that are inevitably crowded and busy looking. However on the whole the design is clean and the pages are simple to navigate. After taking a little while to get used to how the site works I can know navigate the site without even thinking about it.

The Search Function:

As there are so many different kinds of records it is not surprising that there are many different ways to search for an ancestor. If you know exactly what type of record you want to search you can click directly on that set of records and search only within them. That will obviously limit your results, making it easier to pinpoint your ancestor down. If, however you want to do a more general search you can use the main search box. In the main search box you can enter the first, middle and last name of a person, their date of birth and death and location. It is not essential to put all of these if you do not know them.

Every time you search for a record, if you are creating your tree on the site then you can choose to save that record in your 'shoebox'. This is an extremely useful function as it means that if you can't print it out you don't have to worry about trawling through records to find them again. Also when you have found a specific record, on the page before you view the original it gives you options to search for the same person in a different records, thus speeding up the process as you don't have to re-enter all of the information.

If you are searching for somebody that you have already included in your family tree when you begin to type the name in it will give you the opportunity to pick them. Alternatively you can go and view your family tree and search the records from there. Either of these two options makes little difference to the results.

Summary:

Overall, I have had mixed results from the search facility as sometimes results are then, and then next time you search for them they can vanish. Also I find that if I put all of the information I know about the person then the result I am looking for does not come up, yet if I put less information in I can find what I'm looking for. I have also come across a few spelling mistakes in the transcriptions. By this I mean that on the website itself, the record is recorded differently to what it says on the actual census records. In many cases it looks as though somebody has just misread the census and taken a complete guess at the name. Although this is very frustrating I can understand how it can happen as the writing in the older records can be extremely difficult to decipher. This problem is sometimes rectified by similar sounding names appearing in the search results.

One other small criticism is that despite having almost every record imaginable one thing that I do feel that is missing is the option to search for a specific address and the residents of that house. The website that I used previously to this had this function and it was extremely useful. There have been a handful of occasions where I have had to use another site.
Despite painting a very gloomy picture of trial and error, I have successfully managed to trace my family tree back five generations from my Grandma and finally have some names for the faces in her album. Ancestry.co.uk has been instrumental in this research and without it I would have given up a long time ago. It's not perfect by a long shot but I have found the faults are workable.

Summary: I could not have gone as far back without them