Ancestry.com versus FamilySearch.org

Amateur genealogists usually fall into two general categories. There are those who want to accumulate as many ancestors as possible in hopes of finding a Civil or Revolutionary War soldier, a Pilgrim, or a Magna Carta surety. Very crazy members of this group hold out for a descent from Charlemagne who died in 814. These folks generally try to forget about the charming stable boy who stayed home while the Lord of the Manor went on crusade. The other group is not so interested in volume, but in the stories of the individual ancestors and the lives they led. In many ways this second group is indistinguishable from local historians. I've been both kinds of genealogist over the years.

One side of my mother's family, like many Americans, did a pedigree way back in the 1870s or 1880s during the first surge of interest in genealogy set off by the country's Centennial Celebration. It was a good job and made starting my research easy. On the other side my mother's mother was adopted in a rather mysterious fashion complicating research immensely. On my Dad's side of the family, my grandmother's Canadian relatives produced a family tree, but on my grandfather's side a family member found "some problem"  according to my father that caused him to stop research. Always hoped that the problem was Israel Hands, a real pirate, who sailed with Blackbeard-no luck finding that connection! I did a lot of old fashioned research in the 1970s and 1980s using the collections of the Brockton Public Library and the New England Historic Genealogical Society and visiting sites in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine.

The need to access some historical records for Easton led me to Ancestry.com where I restarted my family tree research a few years ago. Ancestry.com is the largest for-pay genealogical site on the Internet. Members can access a wide and increasing variety of records and books. If you start by entering data about yourself and your parents, Ancestry will begin building a family tree for you online. This becomes the core of your research file. Clicking on a person in the pedigree brings up your research on that person. This is also where Ancestry's famous "leaves" come in. As you may have heard on their TV ads, when you enter a name in your pedigree a leaf may appear indicating that the Ancestry database has more information on that person. That information can either be a primary or secondary source record or a connection to other researchers data. You can build a large family tree quickly by relying on "the kindness of strangers." This is the same crowd sourcing of information that takes place on Wikipedia so you better have your BS detector turned on. People's wishful thinking and lack of historical knowledge eventually becomes apparent. I've seen purported English ancestors born in Massachusetts years before anyone settled here. Straining facts to get to a famous ancestor also creates errors. Another problem with the Ancestry system is that it's entries are based on first name and surname if you finally do find Joe, First Lord Fluffy you're going to have to make up your own system of data entry.

Before there was Ancestry.com on line there was FamilySearch.org. FamilySearch organizes and presents the records of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (aka the Mormons). Family is very important to Mormons, and they believe in reconnecting living family members with their ancestors. The Mormons have made efforts to make their collection of vital records available to all. Mormons believe in proxy baptism where a living descendent can stand in and baptize an ancestor into the Mormon Church. Many Mormons believe this is necessary to get family members into Heaven. I was surprised to find many of my ancestors had become Mormons, but my reaction was mild compared to the Vatican which in 2008 directed its churches to keep parish records away from Mormons performing genealogical research. Thankfully, nothing of importance was going on at the Vatican in 2008 enabling them to catch the Mormons poaching dead Catholics.
 
Anyway, the online presence of the LDS church has improved from the early days of providing helpful research hints and directing you to one of their family research locations to increasingly full and free access to all records from the comfort of your home. The emphasis here is still on records and research.You'll need a paper and pencil pedigree form or one of the several family tree making computer programs like Reunion to record your findings. This may be changing as the website continues to evolve. You can also access the research of others in Ancestral Files or the Pedigree Resource File.

I'll give a few specific research examples to complete the comparisons of these two websites tomorrow. Right now I'd say that these two sites and Cyndi's List of Genealogy Sites on the Internet are the three most important research locations available to researchers. The New England Historic Genealogical Society is also an excellent part free and part for pay resource at www.americanancestors.org..

My research strategy lately has been to maintain my "real" family tree in a stand alone Reunion 8 file while trying to track down all my immigrant ancestors in my Ancestry.com family tree. I've added dozens of people with the plan of going back and checking the research once all potential ancestors have been located. Along the way I've discovered many interesting tidbits. For instance, my great uncle's service record in World War I-he was one of the first Marine Corp pilots. My other great uncle never made it any further than the Boston Navy Yard where the great flu epidemic of 1918 began. That uncle spent his entire service time in hospital. Meanwhile the pilot uncle managed to escape being grounded for a month for a legendary stunt by also ending up in hospital in London with the flu.