Just out of curiosity. I don’t have a real need for this.
So I’ve been trying to find info on my great-grandparents but after snooping around in ancestry.com and familysearch.com I realise there are no records for any of my parents, grandparents or great grandparents online. At least not on those sites.
And so I’m here wondering, what happened with those records? Anyone had any luck searching elsewhere? I’ve tried googling the names and nothing comes up either. Hooray for privacy I guess?
I like the collaborative nature of https://www.wikitree.com/
It’s fucked up, but you could try the Mormons. They do this thing, retroactive conversion, so someone becomes Mormon, and they go back and make all that person’s ancestors “Mormon”. So they have incredibly good ancestry records. Just a thought.
Well, some places found that scanning the originals and providing them online not only saved money storing them, but also improved access. For other places, it’s a matter of going to the town clerk (or equivalent), filling out some forms, and waiting - sometimes months.
I’ve been doing genealogy for my family and friends for a few years. Can I ask what part of the world your ancestors lived in? I find there is almost always some online documentation for any given person (after 1800 or so - depending on the location), but finding it is a complex acquired skillset that can take quite a while to learn. It seems likely you have the opposite of beginners luck - aka a steep curve. Of course, some more rural parts of the world can lag in documentation, and language issues are always a problem. You may really have invisible ancestors. Without more info, it’s hard to give more advice.
Also, there is a significant difference between paid and free accounts on Ancestry. FamilySearch can be hard to use. WikiTree has no research tools, but does have a large tree and a supportive user community. There are a lot of sites, some completely free, and some with tiered membership. Finally, a DNA test (not 23&Me) can be a huge boost to what you are able to find.
Recently, I have been contemplating going pro and charging folks. If you are interested, I can look into yours for free, to see if (1) I’m good enough, and (2) I’m not just lucky in that I’ve only had easy challenges up to now. Assuming that this is a place where the documentation would be in English. So far my experience is US, Canada, UK, and some Italy. Drop me a PM. I work in financial IT - confidentiality has been critical my whole life.
Argentina. Most likely record keeping and digitization is just crap.
I don’t know if I can be bothered with dna, but thanks for letting me know. Also appreciate your offer but I really don’t feel comfortable. If I ever change my mind I’ll let you know!
I did familysearch.org (the Mormons), free and it’s great at tracing back documented lines to Europe, dead ends on any native or island ancestry but what I realized doing it is that trying to say you have some sort of bloodline is utter nonsense, we all have too many ancestors for that to be true.
They won’t push records for anyone living either, so you would need names for dead ancestors.
