I use www.ancestry.com.au as I realized that when I'm gone I won't know what happens to my tree.

It costs about $220 per year...pretty cheap hobby,....for UK and Heritage....... I could be on there 24 hours per day 365 days per year.

Subscription lapsed at the moment as have no time, but still can and do access my tree to add something I might think of, or story, picture I want to add.

I have miles of photo's, stories and I have had this passion since around 1985... I think.

I did have all the folders with the certificates, photo's and stories in paper form. I joined a UK family history group, and scored big time...lucky.

This was before anyone used PC for family history.

I used to drive wherever to access the St Catherine House index, extremely time consuming, but that was the only way. The Mormon FH Rooms are the best...

I wanted my information to be used by others, who are also linked into my family, I'm not concerned that others may be ...GETTING MY STUFF...I'm happy to share. I've traced on ancestry my numerous great aunts husbands families back from whence they

came...because I could.

Have met on ancestry my Dad's Uncle's descendants...he was an ANZAC. Come across lots of other "family " who have shared. But it's the photo's you find that are just wonderful, I always send a message to say who I am, where they fit in my tree and thank you for

having that photo...that I've never seen nor would have seen.

Apologies for long post....Robyn

But in all probability, in 200 years ancestry will still be around, in some form or other and maybe my 50 x grandson/daughter will enjoy some of my stories.

Love genealogy !

Love discussing it with other geni nuts out there.

I use ancestry.com and have been tracing family and uncovering the family secrets ... And scandals ... for about 3 years.

It started with a printed tree that I saw as a child and that fascinating piece of paper that covered the kitchen table, disappeared several years back when my aunt, as custodian, who being the oldest member of the family branch, died.  I realised my brothers and I  had no idea about where the family came from because for some reason my parents and aunt never spoke about  it , and we grew up thinking all sorts of things to explain not knowing why . It was thanks to contact from a previously unknown 3rd cousin who contacted me and helped raise the curtain on the family scandals and mysteries thanks to a published diary on the life of my GG grandfather who was one of the first settlers in Port Macquarie. In the diary was the family tree listing the generations back to  Scottish nobility around 1500,  so the hard work was done and I was able to extend the tree now back a fair way thanks to recorded history. I also found out the missing Family Tree was the Gray Family Tree  and had been  provided to the eldest surviving family member of each branch of the family and it is now being updated and will be passed to all family members when completed. 

If there are any fellow researchers out there linked to the Gray family, The early  settler in Port Macquarie was a retired militray officer, Lt Col Charles George Lewis Gray for anyone who is researching the early history of that part of NSW .. The diary was a fascinating insight into the life of the landed gentry in early colonial NSW,  The name of the book is That Gallant Gentleman.

i also use various other family research sites and internet searches to check details and the tree is linked to a program on my computer which syncs the online tree with my computer so when I feel i can no longer justify the cost of Ancestry i will still have the tree on my computer. Sadly my research on the other side of my family has proven to be much more difficult as it is Irish and searching for records is very frustrating there and i have only extended that family back about 4 generations!

And, the most frustrating thing I have found is photos  that have no information on them ..... All the answers there but can't match up the questions!!!

i guess at least my grandchildren and their children will know more about their family than my generation,   And that makes it all worthwhile.  Would love to hear of anyone else who has had a similar lucky break in their research!

cheers,  Libby

I found a family, a brother to one of my ancestors, He was an Ag Lab, married had a few babies...wife dies, married again, an older spinster lady, no children, another few years pass, she dies, marries again, younger one this time...more babies, just got the first lot, heading to teens and starting again he's now not so young, 5 or 6 kids, he dies, she has to find another husband as she and kids will be tossed out of farm misery cottage, marries another Ag Lab and they all move into his misery cottage...dirt floor, thatch, no facilities, it was such a hard life. I guess making babies was what you did.

Up before sunrise and bed when dark. We've come a long way. Love the English Census...it tells you so much...every 10 years if they don't move.
I often think of him, when I feel I have something to complain about. We have no idea.

Read my earlier post for cost...

Rip and Rosie wrote:

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I have my tree on ancestry as well Chaslib (Libby), and have been manually keeping data on it and my home programme. What do you use to sync it? Would love something less tedious.

My own path to researching came through a distant cousin of my mother, who (back in the 1970's) was spending his retirement doing the research the old fashioned way by actually physically going through the old documents in the Mitchell Library in Sydney. As I was the only one really interested, his wife gave me some of his work when he died. Like your's it was a very large sheet of paper, hand drawn. My interest was drawn to one family where 4 children died in the same year.

That was enough, and I was off !

Like you Turtle Trekker (Louise), I appreciate how much is online, but still need those primary documents. I sometimes wonder how much further my cousin would have gone if computers were around when he was working on the tree. However, what he did teach me was the value of seeing the original documents for myself. In recent years the Trove project has enabled very easy access to original newspapers online, and I'm with you Pam about how easy it is to get lost reading and go off at a tangent, wasting hours.

Has anyone tried the Ancestry app for iPads? I downloaded it but find it a bit of a dog, so I usually get onto Ancestry through Safari. Anyone having success with it?

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 Hi Rosie,  agree re the Ancestry app for iPad .... Useless as an ashtray on a motorbike!!  

Regarding the program on my home PC .. i have an iMac so not all programs are compatible, but out of the couple i tried i found Family Tree Maker for Mac easiest. And less problems than the others i tried. It is distributed by Ancestry so could be why,it syncs so easy, and syncs everything .. Docs, photos, syncs both ways for changes to the on line and home computer.  Well worth the money.  Once i have everything i need i will just cease the membership and continue to cross check everything manually against libraries and other things.  It is My project sitting in the wings until we no longer travel!!! ,

I have my tree on ancestry as well Chaslib (Libby), and have been manually keeping data on it and my home programme. What do you use to sync it? Would love something less tedious.

My own path to researching came through a distant cousin of my mother, who (back in the 1970's) was spending his retirement doing the research the old fashioned way by actually physically going through the old documents in the Mitchell Library in Sydney. As I was the only one really interested, his wife gave me some of his work when he died. Like your's it was a very large sheet of paper, hand drawn. My interest was drawn to one family where 4 children died in the same year.

That was enough, and I was off !

Like you Turtle Trekker (Louise), I appreciate how much is online, but still need those primary documents. I sometimes wonder how much further my cousin would have gone if computers were around when he was working on the tree. However, what he did teach me was the value of seeing the original documents for myself. In recent years the Trove project has enabled very easy access to original newspapers online, and I'm with you Pam about how easy it is to get lost reading and go off at a tangent, wasting hours.

Has anyone tried the Ancestry app for iPads? I downloaded it but find it a bit of a dog, so I usually get onto Ancestry through Safari. Anyone having success with it?

Yes, it can get expensive if you let it get control of you. I had the basic UK access and then found lots of USA links to my fathers family which was Heffernan with roots in Ballylynan in Laios, Ireland.  I kept that for a year when I decided It was too hard and too many people left Ireland in the days of the potato famine headed for USA with the same name, so reverted to UK membership when all leads came up empty

a word of warning and I am sure anyone researching will agree, there are lots of errors in trees on Ancestry because people just accept without checking details and documentation.  The cost of BDM certificates can chew into your bank account ,  so please be careful, especially the so called Researchers who may just provide answers that you or any novice can find. I was taken early in my researching and it cost me a few hundred dollars, but i learnt a lesson and will not fall into that trap again.

perhaps if this is a genealogy sub forum, would it not help to let us know which names you are interested in ... Mine are

Gray - Scotland to Australia

Heffernan - Laois Ireland to Australia

Dodd - Chester UK To Australia

McEwan - Bangor Ireland to Australia

you just never know where family may be lurking ....

cheets

I don't know how many holidays I have spent alone while my husband goes looking for rellies - the dead ones. I tell him I'd like to meet a few live ones sometimes! And I just can't convince him to put it on the computer. He handwrites it all and we have many many folders. If he dies before me I will have buckleys of finding anything.

He has scared our daughter recently by telling her he thinks she and her boyfriend are cousins. His grandma was excited but I don't think they are.

One of the boys started putting it all on computer at the beginning, in fact, I even started writing it up for him, but now there are just too too many twigs for me to cope!

This is what I have discovered so far.  It becomes very time consuming, but once I get a new lead I am on to it like a woman possessed.

Happy to share for anyone interested.  There is a link to another family branch at the bottom of the blog.

The main names so far are Dean, White, Mantell, Leu, Malcolm,

http://10generationsofdeans.blogspot.com.au/2007/11/dean-family-begins-with-my-great-great.html

Rip and Rosie wrote:

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We went to the Deniliquin Geni Muster last year.... excellent !!
We enjoyed Deniliquin so much we stayed an extra week!

Genealogy is a great excuse to travel, lots to do and see, and lots to find.

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 I went last year also and was hoping to go this year but my MH won't be ready and I have used all my annual leave.  So I am planning to head up again for a few days and continue the searching. Did find the house my Grandmother lived in before coming to Melbourne.

Pam wrote:

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Deniliquin Genealogy will be holding a Genie Muster again in October 2014.
Genealogy is a great way to waste a lot of time. You just start wondering and searching and then go off on another tangent and...........
I love getting on Trove to look at old newspaper snippets. They had a way with words back then.

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 Was hoping to get up there again, but no annual leave left 

but maybe early next year I will head up for some more searching.....Last year was great

Nelly wrote:

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Yes, I like finding out about the families and how they lived. I have been fortunate that a lot of the work was done as in a book was written on my family - there was a reunion some years ago now - but of course it needs updating now with other members since then. On my husbands side - a relative in England has written the family history for a lot of the family - it actually took him 25 years - so probably not a lot of hope for me to set out and do it but I would like to add to the generations from where he left off. I think in some cases on both sides a little deeper digging could reveal things!!! Anyway all good fun. Happy camping

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 Never accept anyone else's work! It takes just a small mistake to take the rest of the line down the wrong track.... and we all make mistakes. 

In addition, no one ever has the same family tree as anyone else. For example, if you take identical female twins, their maternal and paternal lines may be exactly the same, but as they marry different individuals, their children will only share 50% of the tree, as the other half will be their paternal lines.

So, if  cousin has "done" the tree, 1) it all has to be checked and proven, and 2) you need to trace your own lines.

As you say, "revealing things" can be very exciting!

... but beware, it's addictive.

barina wrote:

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This is what I have discovered so far.  It becomes very time consuming, but once I get a new lead I am on to it like a woman possessed.

Happy to share for anyone interested.  There is a link to another family branch at the bottom of the blog.

The main names so far are Dean, White, Mantell, Leu, Malcolm,

http://10generationsofdeans.blogspot.com.au/2007/11/dean-family-begins-with-my-great-great.html

---

 I'm impressed !

One of the family scandals i unearthed was why my mother and her sister never  spoke about their father and as children my brothers and I grew up not knowing that we actually had a very large family of aunts, uncles and cousins but they also knew nothing of us!

As it turned out my grandmother was deserted by my grandfather and was left to raise alone her 2 daughters .. My mother and my aunt, both under 10 Years of age.

The new lady in my grandfathers life was my grandmothers half sister through my great grandfathers 2nd  marriage (unlike my grandfather, at least he waited for the first wife to pass away!). The more I dug into the matter the more it started to sound like Some Victorian era version of  of Days of our Lives! I am yet to find any divorce documents or a marriage registration to confirm a 2nd marriage and my grandmother retained her married name until her death!

Through Ancestry, I was able to get in contact with the descendants of the 2nd marriage and it appears the children of the 2nd marriage never spoke spoke about it either!  

Sadly, whatever the actual story was, has gone to the grave with all the cast members and it has been left to all the descendants to draw their own conclusions!

My preferred explanation is my grandfather wanted sons, not daughters, so he just hopped the fence and within a couple of years the 2 daughters were replaced by 2 sons!

Another mystery that i cant understand is how someone can arrive in Australia as an assistant immigrant in 1863 on board the Light Brigade out of UK noted on his papers as a Sawyer, and census papers previously as a farm worker and sawyer as were other family members. Then within a couple of years of settling in Australia he turns up in Toowoomba as part of the upper crust of society  as a Solicitor?  This person was actually my grandfathers father! Strangely, at first I thought I had misread the  immigration and  and census papers and it actually said Lawyer, but someone told me that the letters L and S in that period in time are often mistaken and Sawyer was correct.  I thought  for a while that it was Lawyer as that was the occupation in Australia, but when i realised I had it wrong, I could not understand how a farm worker could turn into a lawyer/solicitor in such a short period of time ....  Condensed Law Course 101 circa 1870!?

So, that's my Shame and Scandal in the Family .... Anyone got something interesting ... And scandalous would be good also ... To share???

Libby

,

,.l

Loved your story Libby.

I'm going to be exploring the syncing I understood you couldn't do it, which was always a sad thought

But due to family quickly moving away from my tree, g'children have a whole lot of added family in their ancestry.

You don't need a current ancestry subscription to access your tree/s. It is always there for you to access. You just can't GET anything. They are happy for you to be adding to your tree.

I didn't want my hard work to eventually end up at the tip.....if you want to donate it somewhere sort that out early. I think the physical storing of all these paper trees will in time lead to there loss due to age of paper, and cost of space.

I had always used family tree maker and just continued. As I used LDS family history rooms and the fact that they have so much stored on micro film and yet anyone can access was my reason for looking at ancestry as somewhere I could safely put my hard won tree.

No one cares for your tree other than you.

Yes all those shaking leaves probably have nothing to do with your tree, just occasionally they do.

Someone may find you that's when it gets exciting .... you find lines you never dreamed of, and you can attempt to exceedingly politely offer assistance when you see an error in someone else's tree, sometimes they are grateful other times...well you tried.

But it's the extra photo's....other trees have and are happy to share...when you do have a months subscription. My brother has a month or 2 a year....he's doing his wife's a wonderful lot of convicts in Tassie, they now visit some descendants still living there.

He also updates his tree from mine. Originally he helped pay for certificates...

Robyn