Advice on Tracing your Family Tree

[Ryan3932]

Add Cyndi's List, and RootsWeb.

-Ryan-

[ScotSites]

Originally Posted by Ryan3932

Add Cyndi's List, and RootsWeb.

These are two sites that I have looked at, but so far never used. However, if anyone does decide to use them there is one piece of advice that is worth repeating: always double check what you get!

[Babz]

Rootsweb isn't too bad

[ScotSites]

Anyway, with regard to genealogy software, Rootsweb lists the following:

Brother's Keeper
Family Tree Maker
Legacy
Lifelines (Unix)
Personal Ancestral File (PAF)
Reunion (Macintosh)
The Master Genealogist (TMG)
RootsMagic

More details can be found in RootsWeb's Guide to Tracing Family Trees!

[jafapete]

Hi Folks,
I'm just a newbie to this list but have some experience of researching family history. (Some people distinguish the compilation of family trees - genealogy - from family history, which seeks a fuller picture of one's ancestry.)

All the advice so far is great.

Can I make a plea for the exercise of critical faculties in researching family? Every source should be treated as suspect. Even official records can be wrong, as the large number of corrections suggests. Family too. And especially the LDS records on Familysearch. Too many people just take the LDS data - usually the IGI (International Genealogical Index) - and put it somewhere like genesreunited, and then others lift it, and so on. I've found innumerable mistakes on genereunited, etc. So many, I don't usually bother notifying the owners anymore. In short, everything should be checked against another source, if possible, and sources should be noted.

For researching ancestors from 1855, when official registration of BDMs (births deaths, marriages) were introduced, to recent times, scotlandspeople can't be beat. Their indexing of women by the maiden names and married names seems inconsistent, but otherwise it's easy and relatively cheap to search for BDMs from 1855. Registration extracts cost 1 quid each, so the costs can mount, but it's fast and a lot cheaper than travelling around the world for someone in NZ like me.

I have through genesreunited found many distant relatives and have added many little bits to my family tree. It's worth joining for the first 6 months. But the tree-making program sucks (clumsy and tortuous) and the rampant capitalism grates. What an idea though - get zillions of genealogists to pay to put their own trees online so that they can connect with each other, and use this as an opportunity to on-sell. Clever!

Discussion forums on sites like genforum.com and rootsweb used to be very useful, but seem to be becoming less used. Maybe everybodies headed to ancestry.com, genesreunited and so on.

Then there's google and, especially for the family historians, google books. If you are lucky and your ancestors were middle class or higher in the social orders, then there's a treasure trove awaiting, and it gets better by the day. You'll be surprised what comes up. Books like, Robertson, G. A Genealogical Account of the Principal Families in Ayrshire, More Particularly in Cunninghame, 1823 can now be read on-line. Tips: Use inverted commas for complete names, e.g., "Hamish McHamish" and or family names with the place where they lived and see what you get.

Enjoy! Cheers Peter