Genealogy Chat

Can I return to the OP's question regarding Find my Past and Ancestry.

Most subscription sites deal perfectly well with BMD data from 1837 and with a paid subscription you can also gain access to census images from 1841 - 1911. There are free sites with transcripts but my limited experience is that transcripts frequently throw up errors and omissions and examining an image is always worthwhile. The crunch comes when you want to access data prior to 1837 and here the element of luck creeps in - your area may not be covered.

The material that has been indexed and transcribed is only a portion of what is available and I personally have found material on FindMyPast which was not on Ancestry and conversely. Also Family Search is brilliant and gives some excellent coverage in certain areas but unfortunately not much in others (the recent addition of Derbyshire records was very welcome).

I have to disagree with the statement by Jonesey that there is not much extra obtained from the actual parish records. Some of the images on Ancestry from West Yorkshire and London contain a comparable amount of information to actual certificates including parents names, occupations and addresses; marriages often contain the additional information of witness names (often useless but sometimes incredibly enlightening). You may also find out whether your ancestor was literate or simply signed with a mark. However, balancing that, some of these registers are simple listings (burials in particular) with no detail which will enable further identification.

Personally I use Ancestry with the occasional purchase of credits from FindMyPast. A comment was made that this is not a cheap hobby and I sometimes wonder why on earth I am spending money and doing this but I have to see it is huge fun and the buzz when you tease out some fact that has been eluding you is great and frankly I am quite happy to spend a few pounds a week to keep that going.

Hi,
Yes, I think the fault stems from my PC programme and on installation, I didn't reset the default settings to dd/mm/yy.
IIt automatically defaulted to mm/dd/yy
As I input the date to this programme, it automatically changes to the a written date 12/1/1900 = 1 Dec 1900 which is how it appears on my GR tree.

Anne

Yes, I have some experience of this too.

Commercial programs such as FTM will allow you to set different formats, so for example you can choose UK or US, i.e. Day, Month, Year or Month, Day, Year and optionally choose a separator from the list of / . or -

In addition day can be 1 or 01, month 1, 01 or Jan.

However, as Ken says, I also find from experience that sticking with the format 1 Jan 1950 is best as it is relatively unambiguous.

The problem is that not all tree programs support all possible format combinations. Formats using separators can be especially problematic and indeed in some cases are treated as field separators by some programs even causing the import to fail as data is put in the wrong slots.

Looking at GEDCOMs produced by Genes and Ancestry I find they both have dates in the 12 Jan 1900 format which seems to be the GEDCOM standard.

Be careful about how your dates are formatted!
The site that you upload your gedcom to, needs to be formatted in the same manner.
I found this out the hard way.
I only ever upload trees by gedcom which I hold on my PC
My home programme has the dates formatted as mm/dd/yy, which Genes seems to read fine, but Anc is dd/mm/yy.
Weeks after I uploaded a tree to ANC, I found a problem

1/12/1900
from my home programme= 12 Jan 1900
but Anc reads it the other way = 1 Dec 1900.
There was no way to rectify this other than amending everything on Anc manually.


Anne

Andy - I agree with you. I really don't know who designed this site but I bet it wasn't someone who wanted to use the site themselves!!

Kath. x

Click on "Family Tree" in the dark green bar near the top of the page. Then click on "import GEDCOM" When this pages comes up there is light green box on the left of the screen with headings "Your Account" and "Your Tree". Under "Your Tree" you will find "export Gedcom".

Don't know if it works as I've never used the function.

Kath. x

If you click Import Gedcom, you will find the EXPORT in the list on the left of the screen - great design or what!

Andy

Andy - Genes Reunited only had a Import option? I want to take information from here to the others, any idea
Thanks
Wendy

Thanks Andy, didn't realise it would be that simple, this will save me having numerous trees which all need updating, I've got the latest here but only partial on the others
Wendy

If you click Export GEDCOM, a file will be sent as an attachment to your email address. Save this file somewhere on your computer (I use desktop). Open Ancestry or FMP, when you are prompted to IMPORT GEDCOM, find the saved file. Your family tree will then be transferred. Note this does not work for photos and other items.

Andy

Does anyone know how I copy the information from my family tree here on GR to Find My Past and Ancestry.co.uk? I can see an Export GEDCOM? but how do I get one of those?
Grateful for any help

Thank you Andy and Jonesey for replying, will take another look at both sites and then decide, thanks again

Kath

I personally have found that Ancestry best suits my needs but as you say both sites have their good points.

As far as parish records are concerned, pre 1837 records do not generally contain that much information so what you find at Familysearch is probably as much as you are likely to get in most cases. For example pre 1837 parish register marriage entries will not record the fathers details of the marrying couple. Similarly parish baptism entries will not show the child's mothers maiden name but the original may show the child's actual birth date as well as the date of its baptism.

It's really personal preference, which one you are most comfortable using. I've used Ancestry for a long time, but then FMP has the military records I needed and address search on the census, so ended up with both.....who says this is a cheap hobby?

Andy

Hi everyone

I'm thinking of subscribing to one or the other of the above but can't decide which is the best, I've tried both on a free trial and they both have their good points but just wonder which one do most GR members think gives the best info as a whole.

FMP do address look-ups for the census which is handy. I'm interested in parish records, do they give more info than I can get on familysearch or is it about the same?

Kath