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Author Topic: Who remembers the early days of Ancestry?  (Read 476 times)

Offline Josephine

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Who remembers the early days of Ancestry?
« on: Monday 27 October 25 02:15 GMT (UK) »
Do you remember when you could only view a census page in a small "viewer" box? And you couldn't download the entire page in one file?

Do you remember when Ancestry didn't have all the census records from every city and state, let alone all the decades up to whatever the privacy cut-off date was at the time? And the census images that it did have weren't all indexed?

I'm pretty sure they didn't have a place for family trees, either: wasn't that what we went to Rootsweb for back then?

People could choose to allow you to download a gedcom of their family tree from Rootsweb, and I think I recall having that option for a time after Ancestry started providing a place for family trees. Do you remember when they removed that option and why?

It's so much easier now for people to create and build a family tree, especially with the hints and being able to click a button to have the system add people for you. (You'll notice I didn't say their trees were necessarily populated with sound research, but we all know about that, don't we?)

I think we get much more bang for our buck nowadays, especially compared to what was available 20+ years ago.
England: Barnett; Beaumont; Christy; George; Holland; Parker; Pope; Salisbury
Scotland: Currie; Curror; Dobson; Muir; Oliver; Pryde; Turnbull; Wilson
Ireland: Carson; Colbert; Coy; Craig; McGlinchey; Riley; Rooney; Trotter; Waters/Watters

Offline Forfarian

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Re: Who remembers the early days of Ancestry?
« Reply #1 on: Wednesday 05 November 25 22:42 GMT (UK) »
Quote from: Josephine on Monday 27 October 25 02:15 GMT (UK)
People could choose to allow you to download a gedcom of their family tree from Rootsweb, and I think I recall having that option for a time after Ancestry started providing a place for family trees. Do you remember when they removed that option and why?
I don't remember when but why is a lot easier - to make more profits for their hedge fund owners.
Never trust anything you find online (especially submitted trees and transcriptions on Ancestry, MyHeritage, FindMyPast and other commercial web sites) unless it's an image of an original document - and even then be wary because errors can and do occur.

Offline jonwarrn

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Re: Who remembers the early days of Ancestry?
« Reply #2 on: Thursday 06 November 25 10:42 GMT (UK) »

Offline Nick_Ips

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Re: Who remembers the early days of Ancestry?
« Reply #3 on: Wednesday 12 November 25 10:10 GMT (UK) »
Quote from: Josephine on Monday 27 October 25 02:15 GMT (UK)
Do you remember when you could only view a census page in a small "viewer" box? And you couldn't download the entire page in one file?

I don't remember the viewer box, but my early use of FindMyPast and Ancestry was at the Family Records Centre and then at Kew.  Neither allowed you to download images to a memory stick, so it was a case of printing the page (not cheap) or my preferred option of handwriting a transcript and then typing that up when I got home.

Much of what I got from the 1901 census in the early days was done that way - made more complicated with the FRC rationing users to 1 hour, after which you had to go back to a desk to request another hour and wait for your turn to come around again.  At least there were the microfilm/fiche readers to use while waiting.  :)

I think Kew set up the same rationing thing when the 1911 census was launched, but (I guess) with more people having access at home I don't remember having to wait long for a session, and they dropped the rationing quite soon after it started.

Offline LizzieL

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Re: Who remembers the early days of Ancestry?
« Reply #4 on: Wednesday 12 November 25 10:15 GMT (UK) »
Was it FindMyPast (then 1837online) or Ancestry that had a strange format called dejvu (or something like that) for census or bmd files? You had to download a special viewer. I have a load of those files and nothing to look at them with. It was 4 computers ago, so viewer lost, but files still saved.
Berks / Oxon: Eltham, Annetts, Wiltshire (surname not county), Hawkins, Pembroke, Partridge
Dorset / Hants: Derham, Stride, Purkiss, Sibley
Yorkshire: Pottage, Carr, Blackburn, Depledge
Sussex: Goodyer, Christopher, Trevatt
Lanark: Scott (soldier went to Jersey CI)
Jersey: Fowler, Huelin, Scott

Offline Nick_Ips

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Re: Who remembers the early days of Ancestry?
« Reply #5 on: Wednesday 12 November 25 10:28 GMT (UK) »
Quote from: LizzieL on Wednesday 12 November 25 10:15 GMT (UK)
Was it FindMyPast (then 1837online) or Ancestry that had a strange format called dejvu (or something like that) for census or bmd files? You had to download a special viewer. I have a load of those files and nothing to look at them with. It was 4 computers ago, so viewer lost, but files still saved.

Try IrfanView (freeware for non-comercial use).  There is an image type expansion plugin which includes the DjVu format.

If you've got the time to explore there are also options to batch convert to a different format like jpg.

Offline Pheno

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Re: Who remembers the early days of Ancestry?
« Reply #6 on: Wednesday 12 November 25 10:29 GMT (UK) »
When did Ancestry & 1837 start online?

Pheno
Austin/Austen - Sussex & London
Bond - Berkshire & London
Bishop - Sussex & Kent
Holland - Essex
Nevitt - Cheshire & Staffordshire
Wray - Yorkshire

Offline Wayne N

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Re: Who remembers the early days of Ancestry?
« Reply #7 on: Wednesday 12 November 25 10:39 GMT (UK) »
Officially Ancestry started online with the launch of its website in 1996 and the registration of its domain name Ancestry.com in 1995
NORTON (Kent), KEECH (Dorset), MOOR / MOORE (Kent), HOCKING (Dorset / Somerset), LEVI (City of York), SANDWELL (Kent), CHAFFIN  (Dorset / Somerset), STRONG (Dorset)

Offline jonwarrn

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Re: Who remembers the early days of Ancestry?
« Reply #8 on: Wednesday 12 November 25 10:41 GMT (UK) »
Findmypast say 1837online.com was launched in 2003

Here's a sort of announcement from December 2002
Welcome to Family Research Link
From Sunday 8th December 2002, Family Research Link will allow you to access an exact and complete replica of the indexes of Births, Marriages and Deaths in England and Wales, from 1837 to date from this website.
Before you can access the indexes, you will need to download the DjVu viewer...
https://web.archive.org/web/20021201095733/http://www.1837online.com/

It seems there was a bit of a delay in the launch!

Anyway, here is what 1837online.com looked like in December 2003
https://web.archive.org/web/20031206094633/http://www.1837online.com/Trace2web/

It's all there on the Wayback Machine, even early rootschat!
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