A while ago, my husband and I did the Ancestry DNA test. The results tend to get your mind to cranking, and you wonder what information is out there regarding your family.
FamilySearch.org provides a free, easy to use website where you can create a family tree. It has a lot of information, but the holder of the information is Ancestry.com. They have it all, but they charge to access it. However, they do give you two free weeks with an automatic charge coming on that last day. If you sign in the day before and cancel the subscription you can avoid the $10-35 charge on your account depending upon which service you signed up for.
If you have some free time, two weeks really is quite a bit of time to research. You may not be able to get everything finalized, but you can round up a lot of information from census reports, city directories, marriage and death certificates, military and criminal records, grave sites, newspaper articles – it’s all there.
If you get lucky, you might even hit a part of the tree that someone else has spent a tremendous amount of time researching. When I clicked on my maternal grandmother’s side of the family, someone had traced them back to early 1500’s in England, Sr. William Bell and Lady Joan Matthew, with family emigrating to Roxbury, Massachusetts, and the rest as they say is history.
Whether you want to pay for the service or do it free of charge, your work stays on line and accessible to you. Information on deceased people is public while information on living people is private.
I’m not promoting anything, but if you do get the bug to do a little searching, there’s definitely a lot of info out there available. Happy Tuesday. 🙂
NewEnglandGardenAndThread 
Given your location, Judy, you may be able to avail yourself of another free source of less common information. Our information management group held an event at the National Archives Record Center in Waltham, Ma a couple years ago. Ancestry.com is digitizing many of NARA’s records. NARA keeps the digital record, but Ancestry.com has the rights to monetize them (NARA is prohibited from making money).
Anyway, you can visit the NARA facility and research their records yourself (unless budget cuts have put an end to that). The people at the facility were the nicest people we ever dealt with. Their office is on Trapello Rd, off 128.
NARA has records of things like: leases, business registrations, property and business sales, as well as the stuff available online.
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Thank you, Dan. 🙂
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Just around the corner, for us.
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I llove family history and researching it is addictive…. But I do envy people who live in countries like the US & the UK where history has been recorded so well. Most of my history is based in Ireland where fires have ruined many records related to my family. However, the details I have discovered have really made me feel the ancestors are real! 😀
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I keep thinking I will do this, “when I have time.” Time . . . that would be a lovely thing to have more of!
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How amazing it must be to pick up details about past generations – regardless of how small those pieces are! It’s so much more difficult when dealing with language barriers of European parents. On my father’s side, everything is a big black hole. To get a glimpse back to the 1500s would be mind-blowing!
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I must admit it is kind of addictive, but you do reach a point where you are somewhat satisfied with the results. I even sent emails to various folks looking to verify information. I received some answers. It is interesting that is for sure. 🙂
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Lucky to find some of the threads of your family’s history. I am creating a website with my family’s photos (not back to 1500s of course). My cousin is doing the research and passing it along. Come to think of it, I need to get back to that project. Have a good week Judy.
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A family website that shares photos is a wonderful project to be enjoyed and appreciated by all. Garden down time is coming. 🙂
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Fascinating! I’m so glad this has been successful for you. You’ve got some distinguished blood in your family – Sr. William and Lady Joan! – although I will always reserve the most respect and admiration for your mother’s brothers – the ones who perished with bravery in WWII.
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I’m with you. 🙂 I recently went over to the Memorial Room at UNH and saw their names engraved on the wall as having served and perished.
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Ancestry.com is a wonderful site but I am a little creeped out by their DNA program. Sure, it’s great to be connected to relatives you never knew existed but DNA is a minefield with all kinds of legal, medical and commercial implications.
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You raised an interesting point because you are only connected to unknown relatives ‘if’ they have also taken the test. That kind of narrows the field. If you want to be creeped out further, check out 23andMe.
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So interesting, Judy! I’m so happy to hear that you are making new discoveries about your family tree. My husband frequently uses Ancestry.com at our public library, taking advantage of the huge data bases. He has also used the Family History Center at different Mormon churches. They will send the files to a Mormon Family History Center in your area, where you will have access to view them at no cost. It’s an exciting time to be studying genealogy! There is so much information available! Happy hunting, Judy! ♡
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Interesting info about the sharing of files. Now that I feel comfortable enough, I wouldn’t hesitate to use the library to access the Ancestry website. The amount of info is staggering.
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Thanks for the info! The bug hasn’t bit me yet, but who knows? It could come nibbling anytime.
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A friend of mine with a subscription let me have “a go” at it, so what there is to know about me, Garry, and my son, I know. My son has a rather long and curious background on his maternal grandfather’s side … but Garry and I have nothing beyond our arrival in the U.S. There are no records for either of us before the turn of the century. There are apocryphal family stories that have morphed into legend, but that’s it.
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Judy my family got into research in a major way over the years / I have a whole section on my blog about it because it was so fascinating : the most fun was this one ( Sex and Stinky Cheese ) Lol!
http://www.frugallittlebungalow.com/family-tree-research-post-3-sex-stinky-cheese/
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My husband wasted to do one of the DNA things, so we did, but I don’t have much confidence in it. I don’t think there’s any ancestry info involved here, though. Sounds like you really had fun and found out some cool things.
janet
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I’ve been so curious to do this. A friend who was adopted 60 years ago found her father this way.
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Thanks for information Judy. I’d like to know my genealogy but I think this site can’t operate in Russia, it’s pity.
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How interesting to have one side of your family traced back so far. We recently met up with a friend who, in his mid 50s, was visiting town to meet his biological father for the first time. Apparently his mother never told his father she was expecting and he moved away. He did the DNA test and the link was made to the older man – and the rest, as they say, is history. Now he has a whole new family he never knew about before.
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What an amazing journey he had. Wow. 🙂
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And it turned out at one time they lived not far from each other and the dad used to play golf every week where the son worked. So they probably passed each other without knowing.
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Convinced my mother to take the test and found out all genes don’t pass down. She had some different ones than me. Who’d a thunk?!
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Oh the technology of the 21st century. My mother spent her last 10 years of life researching, and “willed” boxes of the research materials to one of my sisters.Mother passed away at the beginning of this millennium, and missed out on the real fun. Her research is now in the hands of her great grandson, and hopefully someday, he will open the boxes. Millennials are moving around quite a bit so I hope the papers don’t “get lost”. I took my mother to the National Archives once when she visited from California, and she was armed with tablet and coins for copies of documents. She spent hours looking at ships records. I think her goal was to establish a link to enable us all to join the DAR.
I hope you were able to add information that one day will benefit your future great great greats!
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Remember after your last post about having DNA done and there was that sale at Ancestry.com and there were other factors involved my mom and I both submitted our samples to have our dna done. We both received our results yesterday, and we’re both SHOCKED! Where we thought we came from isn’t at all, and now I want more in depth testing. What I expected to be there from family stories, and histories on my Father’s side didn’t show up at all.
My mom is really into Genealogy and getting her parent’s side of the family tree done as far as she can go. With this new info perhaps it will open up the doors that have been closed on her Father’s side. I’m sort of in a state of shock and half disbelief. I keep thinking they had to have made a mistake…but both my Mom and I came back with the same regions and the percentages would be right for Mother/child.
I hope my sister does hers now too so we can see what hers comes back with.
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Fascinating. It will be interesting if you do another one to see how the results turn out. I hope she is very successful in completing the puzzle. It is fun to add a name and then all of a sudden you can add other name. I hope it all falls into place for her. 🙂 I was hoping to trace my father and did find a couple of options. I emailed a couple of people and got quick answers from one but nothing from a couple of others. I wish I could have gotten some closure, but I console myself that I did try every avenue that I became aware of at least.
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For some reason, I’ve never had any interest in delving too far into my family history. I know that a lot of people are hooked, but maybe I’m worried about adding one more thing to my retirement “to do” list. I did find out that my great, great, great (I think there were three greats) grandfather has a Facebook page… go figure.
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Well, now, that is pretty interesting. 🙂
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Wow. Between your post and all the comments, I am swamped with the whole of it! I think I would be one of those who would get completely pulled into the hunt. How fascinating it seems. Thanks for all this information!
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It is like one of those domino creations – knock one down and they all go. You enter a couple of names and census reports start popping up showing who else was in the house at the same time. It’s a hoot. 🙂
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Our family has done the Ancestry DNA testing. Funny thing is… all the verbal accounts and ancient stories my father passed along to us about our roots turned out to be accurate!
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How fun Judy – I’ve thought about doing the Ancestry DNA thing but haven’t yet. Many of my friends have had tons of fun with it tho!
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My wife and I won free Ancestry DNA tests at an event we attended and we found our results fascinating. I spent a lot of time fiddling around on Ancestry.com. It’s an amazing resource. I had to step away though (it’s addictive!). Hoping to return to it this winter. I wonder how long before we can just prick our finger with our smart phones and have an app pull up our family tree?
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Thank you for the smile because you are probably right about the app. 🙂
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Thank you so much for this information as my parents and sisters were talking lately about genealogy and wanting to dig deeper into our family history!!
Cool to read about the fun you had doing it!
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A nice two week trial period in a cold winter month – perfect. 🙂
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🙂 going to do it!
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This is something I definitely plan on doing, when I have the spare cash – the house is eating up all our money at the moment, Judy, lol. 😮
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