How to find the motivation to carry on?

[Biggles50]

Having been a member of "Ancestry" for donkeys' years, I often think about stopping that subs, and giving up - but a bit of me then worries what would happen to my trees on there? I obviously wouldn't be able to see into them, unless Big A makes them public, but how much would others be able to follow them? Would I have to delete them all to avoid that?
Till I work that one out I'll have to keep shelling out the money!!
TY

Suggest you spend £40 buying Roots Magic from S&N Genealogy Supplies in the UK.

Once downloaded and installed, Create a new project selecting Download from an online tree.

Navigate to Ancestry and let the software download all the tree, not just a Gedcom but all the media, images etc in reality an exact duplicate of your Ancestry Tree.

Create a new project and repeat for each tree that you have on Ancestry.

I have done this for years and it is my Backup method should we decide to cease using Ancestry.

Thereafter you can Tree Share between Roots Magic and Ancestry where Roots Magic justbdownloads the changes that have been made within Ancestry.

[Aguella]

Having been a member of "Ancestry" for donkeys' years, I often think about stopping that subs, and giving up - but a bit of me then worries what would happen to my trees on there? I obviously wouldn't be able to see into them, unless Big A makes them public, but how much would others be able to follow them? Would I have to delete them all to avoid that?
Till I work that one out I'll have to keep shelling out the money!!
TY

You don't need to subscribe to view or edit your own trees! I always cancel my subscription over summer/whilst I'm travelling, and have no issues accessing my trees during those times.

[Nova67]

i have both Ancestry and Find My Past subs.  I appreciate these are expensive but work well in conjunction with each other.  I do not drive so I call this my "petrol money".

Do you do all the branches of your tree - often the most interesting are the side branches and they also help you discover more about your direct line. It will give you clues especially on the Census, and they will tell you that person's relationship to the Head. Ahah...you will go!

Go beyond Ancestry: newspapers, archives, land titles, FREE BMD and FREE REG, Family Search, Google Books.  These are all sources that I have used.  Getting some BMD certificates, divorce papers, wills etc.

[Nova67]

I find missing people sometimes.  Set yourself a challenge.

[macwil]

Having been a member of "Ancestry" for donkeys' years, I often think about stopping that subs, and giving up - but a bit of me then worries what would happen to my trees on there? I obviously wouldn't be able to see into them, unless Big A makes them public, but how much would others be able to follow them? Would I have to delete them all to avoid that?
Till I work that one out I'll have to keep shelling out the money!!
TY

I currently have a subscription to FindMyPast but not Ancestry and I have no trouble accessing my trees there, I just can't see the record's images attached to the trees. The trees are private too!
So do cancel your sub if you no longer do record searches, you will still have access to your tree! If you might want to see the records at some point make sure you download the images to local storage before cancelling your subscription!!

[ThrelfallYorky]

I  have traced many of my "side groups", with interest, over the years, Nova 67. Thank you, Comberton, not sure I quite understand what you can / cannot do if you resign. Biggles 50, it certainly does sound quite complicated to me!
Thank you all for your guidance and advice.
TY

[coombs]

As said, any Irish genealogy can be pretty hard after the early to mid 1800s. England is lucky in comparison. Pre famine migration to the UK from Ireland was always steady, one of my ancestors sisters wed a man of likely Irish descent in 1805 in Westminster, his surname was Carroll. I know Westminster did have quite a large Irish and French Huguenot descent population at the time, and also quite a few Scottish and German families.

Some counties have beneficiary indexes for wills for certain periods, such as Essex 1674-1857 beneficiaries index, but beneficiaries who had a different surname to the testator. These may help find previously unknown relatives.

[cwatterson]

I would echo the suggestion on the newspaper archives - fascinating snippets right back to the 19th century on all kinds of family members. I was also interested to trace back both paternal and maternal lines at every stage, and also trace back down at least to the cousins for every level ancestor. That's a lot to keep busy with, and many areas to pick at later.

I can suggest it may be worth researching topics as well, or locations relevant to an ancestor. That will give more flavour to their experiences, if not throwing up little bits for that ancestor unexpectedly.

Also get hold of relevant books for that, it was already mentioned about offline records but even pulling out others research that's not online can be useful.

The Internet Archive has older (out of copyright) books - I've found letters by my ancestor John O'Hart, teacher and genealogist, who I am researching, published in old family histories etc. Appreciate that's not the usual experience but even so there's a lot of topics/local history there.