topic Re: Genealogy question in Community Spirit

Genealogy question

bright.ton42 — Sat, 02 Aug 2014 05:38:28 GMT

Just for the heck of it I googled my deceased dad's name, and it brought up Ancestry.com where to my amazement

someone had posted that they were looking for his family - they had details of his wife and kids (us), where we used to

live, dates, and were spot on , the poster said she was a niece of my mother. I had no idea I had a cousin with her

name, say XX, and I messaged back that I am one of the kids, and would love more info.

XX lives in the UK where my mum's family came from, and the post was 12 months ago, and I haven't heard back

yet. She has a user name which I clicked on for other posts and they're all related to this question where others had replied and given her a fair bit of info about me.

Is there any way I can find out more about her without registering or setting up a family tree which I'm not ready to do? Would

Ancestry.com have an email address for her? My mother had a very common Irish surname so searching isn't bringing up anything and this person hasn't given a surname. .

Re: Genealogy question

***super_nova*** — Sat, 02 Aug 2014 06:03:27 GMT

Unfortunately, Ancestry wants your money and will not allow you to get in touch until you pay up. I am in similar position when I found daughter of my mother's cousin who was trying to get more info about her father, but I was not able to get in touch. Unfortunately, I only know her 1st name (+ her maiden name) and that she was born in Illinois. I have no idea of her married name, or where she is now.

I have also joined another genealogy site - My Heritage

which is bit more generous with the info you get for free. There they send you suggestions about relatives, and give full name. I found one distant cousin, I had no idea I had, and as her name was very unusual, I as able to find her on facebook. 🙂 If you have an idea where your relatives live then facebook could help.

Re: Genealogy question

flashie* — Sat, 02 Aug 2014 06:20:14 GMT

When you are contacted on Ancestry a message is also sent to the email adress you have attached to your account.........so your message should have gone through.

I am a member of ancestry................I am happy to try an make contact for you...............you can message me here if you chose.

Re: Genealogy question

green.fields — Sat, 02 Aug 2014 06:31:50 GMT

How did you message her, unless you are a paid up member of ancestry you can't message people thru their system. Also happy to help you as I am a paid up member.

Re: Genealogy question

bright.ton42 — Sat, 02 Aug 2014 08:06:09 GMT

Thanks flashie and rose, on the thread it says my message was sent but not as yet read. So maybe they allow you one free message?

The trouble is I don't know the surname of this niece she just calls herself Jean and has an online ID.

It's fascinating as I can't find anything on my mother's side (just random googling ) as she had a very common Irish

name but I've found a lot about my father whose name was more unusual - well when I say a lot, a lot more than I knew. He was Viennese (I knew that but hardly anything else) but now I've found names of a lot of his relatives and antecedents incl his grandfather who was born in ukraine to my astonishment.

Also about his wife and her relatives. It's tempting to start a tree on them though they'd mostly all be dead by now but I'd love to see some old photos as I never knew any of them except dad. .

It's not cheap to join though is it. 😞

Re: Genealogy question

bright.ton42 — Sat, 02 Aug 2014 08:14:54 GMT

Oh wow, I've just this minute had an email reply from this Jean - I've gone all goosebumpy as I lost all touch with my

mother's family when she died in 1990. Turns out she is the daughter of one of mum's brothers (mum had 9 brothers, being Irish, lol) but hadn't kept in touch with all of them, but Jean (my cousin) says she started a family search about a year ago. She's living

in France.

I just can't believe, I've gone from having no family to having a cousin even though I've never met her.

I've got very mixed feelings.

Isn't the internet amazing?

Re: Genealogy question

green.fields — Sat, 02 Aug 2014 08:56:32 GMT

Yes Bright ton it is amazing. Fantastic you have made this connection, gives you goosebumps doesn't it.

You don't have to belong to Ancestry to start a tree. There is a very good program from "Legacy" that you can use for your tree. If you do decide to join Ancestry do it through the UK site as it is way cheaper, for some reason they jack the Aussie subs up.

Please make sure if you do go down the route of tracing your family that you find sources to confirm the info, a lot of people do not confirm and take other peoples word for it, do your own research but by all means look at what others have, they may have some good (or bad) info, they may have hints for you. There are a couple groups on FB that you can join, lots of helpful people and very knowledgable around,

We can give you places to reseach that don't cost money.

Re: Genealogy question

bright.ton42 — Sat, 02 Aug 2014 09:17:08 GMT

Yes,lol, I've still got goosebumps - from just idly googling my dad's name I'm suddenly finding out all this info when I was regretting all these years that I knew very little of my parents' families and had no family. Even if they're dead it's still a connection . Can I just ask -....

this new cousin Jean in her message to me said we could continue to correspond by email - well I can't find any way of doing that, do I have to join Ancestry first? They've sent me an offer of a 14 day free trial so maybe I should do that, join and find out her email

address, then see if I want to continue. further.? .

Re: Genealogy question

green.fields — Sat, 02 Aug 2014 09:31:38 GMT

How did she reply to you, thru Ancestry? Did she not give her email address. I think you will still be able to reply to her since she sent you the message, ask her to send her email and in your reply give her yours. I normally after intital contact share my email with anyone I make contact with.

Re: Genealogy question

green.fields — Sat, 02 Aug 2014 09:33:42 GMT

Bright ton, if you take up the 14 day trial you will have to give your CC number and if you do not cancel before the 14 days are up they will charge your credit card for a sub, very crafty. If you feel confident that you'll remember to cancel say on day 13 go for it but don't get caught like a friend of mine who ended up with a 12 month sub before she knew it.

Re: Genealogy question

bright.ton42 — Sat, 02 Aug 2014 10:55:28 GMT

thanks for the warning rose, I would have fallen in to that. That's really sneaky isn't it.

Anyway there are other sites and I'll have a look around there as well.

It's pretty addictive isn't it, lol.

Re: Genealogy question

green.fields — Sat, 02 Aug 2014 11:53:04 GMT

Yes, very addictive. Good luck with it Bright ton, if you have any questions just ask.

Re: Genealogy question

***super_nova*** — Sat, 02 Aug 2014 23:50:38 GMT

@roserobin12 wrote:
Bright ton, if you take up the 14 day trial you will have to give your CC number and if you do not cancel before the 14 days are up they will charge your credit card for a sub, very crafty. If you feel confident that you'll remember to cancel say on day 13 go for it but don't get caught like a friend of mine who ended up with a 12 month sub before she knew it.

That is not always that easy to do. I took the free trial many years ago, and when I as trying to cancel I was not able to. It took me several days and tries, and in the end it went through just in the last moment.

So, I am not a paid up member, never was. But in one stage I was able to type in surnames of various relatives (cousins of my parents and grandparents) and was taken to members board where people were searching for those names; that was when I found the post of my distant cousin - but I was not able to contact her. If she is paid up, I imagine she was able to access all the info for her father (my grandmother's nephew), as I have info and photos of tht line, some going all the way back to 1799. Then the records get very hard to read.

Yesterday, as I opened the My Heritage site to post the link here, I went back there and found 2 messages about another 2 very distant living relatives. I am not paid up member either, but they send you info about common ancestors and you are able to access the other person's family tree with the names of recent people blanked out. You get the full name of the person who started his family tree, and age and country he is in. And you get access to his full tree however the immediate living relatives = his parents/spouses and children/grandchildren are only listed with surname. But it was great, as I had some dates he had missing, and he had some dates I had missing. One of these 2 new discovered relatives has a very common name, but the other is relatively rare. I tried the Facebook and there are 2 that look the right age.

I found most of my tree info by going through the digitised archives of birth/marriages/death. All I had on my father's side was the names and place of birth of his parents. That was enough to find their birth records, and names of their parents with places they came from. And by searching the digital books from end of 19th century all the way back 100+years, I constructed my family tree, not just for the straight line but I also included all siblings (dozen often) and who they married.

Re: Genealogy question

bright.ton42 — Sun, 03 Aug 2014 02:23:46 GMT

What a thrill supernova, I can imagine how you felt discovering all those distant rellies. I'm now learning a lot abot my

mother's side (english/irish) from my new distant cousin and feeling connected again even though a lot are dead.

My father's side would be difficult as his family was Austrian and I can't read german on the documents but am surprised how much

info I am still able to get. I would love to get hold of old photos but I suppose as none of them were famous it won't happen.

Re: Genealogy question

***super_nova*** — Sun, 03 Aug 2014 03:27:08 GMT

There was a board somewhere on one of the archives I was searching through, that people could post the info about the person/page/folio they were looking at and asked for help with translation or reading of the weird old writing, and volunteers would help. I am sure that the Austrian archives would also have a forum? And if you can copy and paste something, there is always google translate for basic getting around sites that do not come in several languages, but most do.

Re: Genealogy question

green.fields — Sun, 03 Aug 2014 09:55:07 GMT

Super Nova, Ancestry is evolving all the time. I have cancelled a few subs just before expiry and they cancel immediately however you still get the days you paid for. If there is any problem they are pretty good to speak to, quite helpful.

Never used My Heritage though a lot of people do.

There are any numbers of genealogy groups on FB where people help each other with all sorts of things. Bright ton if you would like to join any and if you are on FB send me a PM and I'll give you a link to some groups. Quite a few people don't have subs so we that do help them out.

There is also "Rootschat" with many subcatorgories/forums and people are very willing to help if they can.

Re: Genealogy question

green.fields — Mon, 04 Aug 2014 01:06:25 GMT

Bright ton I just saw this and thought I'd share.

Re: Genealogy question

bright.ton42 — Mon, 04 Aug 2014 06:28:59 GMT

Thanks so much for your offer to link me to FB - I will pm you as I am a member there though don't know if I want to

get right into tracking them all yet.

I had a good laugh at that clipping about genealogy disease, I haven't quite got it yet but I feel

the symptoms coming on, lol.

Re: Genealogy question

sineaterdoodah — Mon, 04 Aug 2014 16:02:36 GMT

my FIL suffered from that disease,and i have 6- 200 page notebooks to prove it,lol!

Re: Genealogy question

sineaterdoodah — Mon, 04 Aug 2014 17:01:01 GMT

my FIL didn't pay a dime to any website or agency. and he didn't do the genealogy for his and MIL's families in order to find anyone famous(he didn't) either. he did it to gain knowledge of the past that had been lost in many different ways.

the whole family is very grateful to him,and to me for sending them cd copies.