Ancestry dot com

[AdamZ]

Anyone every use this to do family tree work? If so what are your thoughts and comments?

 

[flyingron]

I use it. It does provide some nice interfaces to some of the historical records. Not only do I use it for geneological research but general historical research (I managed to find a 1916 passport application for one of my subjects).

 

[TheTraveler]

Works very well. If you've got the time to sort through and verify all the options they present to you, you should see some pretty neat results. +1 on what Ron said above also.

I would only caution to pay attention to the subscription terms, and the auto-renewals. More than once we've had telephone conversations about them charging me things I was not happy with. Not large sums of money here or unreasonable issues, just a mild annoyance.

 

[pmanton]

My wife is heavy into it. She came up with the documents covering my father arrival at Ellis Island

 

[Ghery]

I've used it for years. Be careful when accepting information, some folks put stuff in that makes no sense. How could the son be born before the father? I've seen it. But, used with care this is a great place to look.

 

[WingNut42]

Works well, although shockingly it takes more than one click as the ads might imply. It is a great research tool with a little patience.

 

[TommyG]

What does it cost to actually get in and get results.

 

[BillTIZ]

Family uses it a lot. Researching the census records helped a lot to confirm parent child relationships, locations. And with that you can find birth/death records.

 

[TheTraveler]

I've used it for years. Be careful when accepting information, some folks put stuff in that makes no sense. How could the son be born before the father? I've seen it. But, used with care this is a great place to look.

I saw a few of the examples like you mentioned and thought the same thing. After digging deeper, they all turned out to be the wrong people with the same names except for one, which was a census error. It was so old though could have either been the citizens fault (who may not have been educated at the time) or the census taker, no way to know. I also realized at that point that there are a lot more duplicated names than I could have ever imagined. Some of my family has some very, very common last names, and sorting through that was not easy.