RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => Topic started by: tezzer on Monday 06 September 21 11:11 BST (UK)
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Apart from ancestry, are there any other UK orientated genealogy websites that allow you to view other peoples trees?
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Best to do your own research ;)
Other people's trees are often wrong!
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FindMyPast has added this feature since I let my subscription lapse, so I can't vouch for it. But in general I have preferred FindMyPast to other sites and I find its search functionality much more to my taste. It seems to allow greater precision, whereas Ancestry returns anything and everything to get you excited. (And sometimes that has its place and is very useful too.)
I've ended up relying on Ancestry for several reasons: lack of funds and availability via my library while I was unemployed, ongoing library availability at home during lockdown, lack of time since resuming work to kick-start my research in a way that might justify a FindMyPast renewal.
In short: I like FindMyPast, but don't know if their public trees feature is any good. (I suspect it might be that - rather like Facebook and YouTube in their respective fields - Ancestry has gained critical mass and nothing else will ever be able to approach it in terms of breadth and mass acceptance, but I'd love to be proved wrong.)
I kind-of agree with KGarrad, but with reservations. I've seen so much poor quality research in other people's trees, but sometimes, perversely, that has been useful. And occasionally I see detailed but unattributed stuff that could probably only have been obtained from primary sources (certificates, family bibles, etc) that I will accept as 'possibly true' with the caveat that one day I have to identify the source myself.
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I have been with ancestry for quite a number of years i use other sites as well mainly the genealogist but have also tried find my past and my heritage My heritage claimed to access to other peoples trees but its mainly American trees. ...i agree with both of you my own trees have only proven connections on them and i wouldn't add any one with out proving the connection myself ...its not the tree I'm practically interested in its family pictures i have a fairly limited tree due to my own restrictions of only following the male members i only trace the females until there death i don't then trace there children plus I've only been able to prove 100% back to 1822 and I'm not able to prove his family so he is on his own at the moment with no brothers or sisters or mother and father ...which in a way has helped because i have a limited amount of people to trace i have managed to contact every one tracing my family tree on the site I'm on and we have shared pictures of our relatives ...but there's two branches with no direct decedents and i have no pictures of any of them (I'm talking about relatives who are now no longer with us and its done with the consent of the original owners)...we have exchanged lots of information and all gained through this co operation, but I've now exhausted the links on my websites and was looking for another which is set up in a similar way so that i could find other members tracing my tree and hopefully find someone tracing those two branches.
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"only following the male members"
Weird, If you're only going to follow one sex, doesn't it make more sense to follow the females since you can be almost sure that the parent/offspring relationship is correct. Fathers can be iffy.
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I'm following the name ...which obviously changes once married ...the name is the reason i got into genealogy in the first place ....it was to do with an uncle who had travelled to Ireland to try and find my grandfathers family...he wasn't able to find them although he did say it was a popular Irish family name. so i started tracing the name back ...funny thing is as far as i have got they all come from London
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If you are only following the male line, I would suggest doing the YDNA test with familytreedna. If you come up with any matches with the same name you can peruse the connection.
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In defence of "other trees" I have definitely found them helpful in the past. I accept there are a lot of errors out there - I found that out very early on in my Ancestry career.
But I was helped once whilst researching a marriage of a very common name (William Brown) who was from a small Hertfordshire town. There were so many possibles that I hadn't managed to firm anything up. Then I saw a tree of the same person showing a Marylebone marriage. I contacted the tree owner who had the certificate which proved the point.
I also find trees useful where the records have either been mis-transcribed or the original record has been mis-spelled. Even though I think I am quite good at searching for alternative spellings etc there are other people out there who have used different search parameters to find a target.
So I think trees can be a useful tool in the genealogists armoury.
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WikiTree with same caveats as others. Allegedly I was x (40?) number of degrees removed from HM Queen. I quickly found the error so I'm no longer connected to HM.
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MyHeritage or Find My Past are good sites for other people's trees but still err on caution about accuracy of the trees. Some people are name collectors but most are genuine researchers and may have been lead up the garden path by a huge coincidence in names and ages (or half coincidence if the two people were first or 2nd cousins). Or you may occasionally find (usually through ancestry DNA testing) that the supposed ancestor was not a blood ancestor, ie a straying wife or informal adoption.
Yes there is always the small chance that the man named as father on the birth/baptism was not actually the correct one, but expert estimates still have that as quite low, about 2 to 3%. In 1861 the population of the UK was about 20 million, so I guess about 300'000 or so were the result of not paternity expected or informal adoption.
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"only following the male members"
Weird, If you're only going to follow one sex, doesn't it make more sense to follow the females since you can be almost sure that the parent/offspring relationship is correct. Fathers can be iffy.
Following the male line is the normal or historical route of genealogy, few lineages followed the female line unless the male line had died out.
I suggest you are looking at it from a 21st century point of view.
Cheers
Guy
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"Following the male line is the normal or historical route of genealogy"
Normal? It's only the "normal" point of view because it's the male point of view. And men have long considered themselves to be normal humans and women to be a lesser and somewhat aberrant form whose point of view was irrelevant.
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To be fair, I think I was first drawn to genealogy to trace back my surname - which is obviously along the male line. Maybe others were the same. But it soon becomes clear that the male lines are more susceptible to, err, fake news back in the day!
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"Following the male line is the normal or historical route of genealogy"
Normal? It's only the "normal" point of view because it's the male point of view. And men have long considered themselves to be normal humans and women to be a lesser and somewhat aberrant form whose point of view was irrelevant.
It is normal because family trees were normally researched for heraldic reasons and very few women have a Blazon in their own right, though many use their father's Blazon.
We cannot change history but we can prevent ourselves from holding a grudge against half of society.
The ruler of this country is a female who is held in high esteem by most right thinking people, not only in this country but in many other countries of the world.
Cheers
Guy
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I first got into genealogy because both of my grandfathers died before I was born.
Initially I chased the surnames, Garrad & Sims.
I very quickly moved onto other lines: Crocker, Weech, Pearse, Goold, Vanstone, Cousins, Baker, Steele & Whitmore on dad's side; Bridger, Fowler and Baldwin on mum's side.
Makes for a much more complete tree ;)
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"very few women have a Blazon in their own right"
Gosh, I wonder why that was? Maybe it had something to do with the matter of who had 'rights' and who didn't.
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hi guys looks like i opened a can of worms stating that i follow the name (male) side of the family. i have nothing against the female side and agree it does sound a bit sexist in this day and age ....as i did say I've been tracing only the name for a reason ...it was the task set for me by my uncle who travelled to Ireland to trace our Joyce family line and found so many Joyce families he got completely confused. My uncle and father where two of 5 brothers whos father, my granddad had informed them that he could remember leaving Ireland as a very young lad. With my research i had the very unenviable task of informing them that he had led them on. i have traced the family back living in London to 1822. Using only 100% connections all traced and proven by me. I suspect i can go back at least 2 more generations but i can not prove 100% the link so until i do i stop in 1822.
the reason i am interested in other peoples trees is because with a limited amount of people to trace i have been lucky enough to be able to collect a lot of information about the members of my tree. that includes contacting other researchers and exchanging information as well as pictures i have now built up quite a collection of photos of individuals in my family but there are two branches in particular that i have been unable to find any body researching them ...so i need to broaden my search to other sites to try and find other researchers. i do agree with what most of you have said about not taking other peoples information with out thoroughly proving its right first.
tezz
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....as i did say I've been tracing only the name for a reason ...it was the task set for me by my uncle who travelled to Ireland to trace our Joyce family line and found so many Joyce families he got completely confused. My uncle and father where two of 5 brothers whos father, my granddad had informed them that he could remember leaving Ireland as a very young lad. With my research i had the very unenviable task of informing them that he had led them on.
Did he also claim kinship with the famous James ? :)
I remember seeing Irish people in England in 19thC. putting Joyce country as place of birth on census.
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Hello rootschatters. Going back to the first thread- does the family search website enable you to see other users trees? Just wondered as it wasn't mentioned. I have an ancestry tree but subscription lapsed. I was considering starting another tree with family search, is this wise? Anyone else got the same tree on 2 different sites?
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hi again ....no mention of James Joyce maiden stone, but the term Joyce county not country has been used when talking about Galway. I believe my uncle visited a valley there nicknamed Joyce valley. Alas as my research has shown from 1822 there's not a shamrock or leprechaun in sight, of course any time before 1822 its quite possible that the family had arrived from Ireland although if my suspicions are correct, i can carry the family back another two generations into the late 1700s all still around London.
Tin man i did try carrying two trees across two different websites but unless your meticulous with your updating of collected information it all gets a bit confusing, I've found it better just using one site tree.
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Hello rootschatters. Going back to the first thread- does the family search website enable you to see other users trees? Just wondered as it wasn't mentioned. I have an ancestry tree but subscription lapsed. I was considering starting another tree with family search, is this wise? Anyone else got the same tree on 2 different sites?
You can still update your tree on Ancestry!
What you can't do is attach Ancestry's images to your tree.
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I see. Great information. Thankyou for the replies.
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"very few women have a Blazon in their own right"
Gosh, I wonder why that was? Maybe it had something to do with the matter of who had 'rights' and who didn't.
No it was simply because most women did not go out to fight in battles and so did not need to be identified to their followers whilst wearing armour.
Cheers
Guy
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Hello rootschatters. Going back to the first thread- does the family search website enable you to see other users trees? Just wondered as it wasn't mentioned. I have an ancestry tree but subscription lapsed. I was considering starting another tree with family search, is this wise? Anyone else got the same tree on 2 different sites?
I often look at the trees on Family Search and have found some interesting information and also the odd photograph. The trees on the site can be altered and amended by anyone who uses the site, so it doesn't remain yours!
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I follow my mother's side more because she had the rare name of Skelcey, and though I follow all my lines the others on her side are fairly uncommon, except for Green.
On my father's side the Welsh names in Wales become impossible - if you think they are only as common as Smith you're wrong: about a dozen names seem to suffice for almost everybody, and you can sometimes see whole pages of Jones Williams Davies etc in the census.
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Female ancestors can be harder to trace for before the census era especially, hence why the male lines can be easier, lots of the visitations often follow the male line. Many pre 1800 baptisms only gave father's name, and it makes it harder finding a marriage, so as to find even the mother's first name as well as maiden surname.
My ancestor was Patience Brown born 1759 in St Andrew Auckland, Durham. Only her fathers name is given on the baptism, John Brown. Patience wed my Scottish ancestor John Stewart in 1789. Luckily the Barrington registers gave more info for 1798-1812.