Ancestry.com is packed with all kinds of mostly-undiscovered genealogical treasures, and some of them you’ll never find from a search box.
Here, expert Nancy Hendrickson shares some favorite treasures, tips for finding those treasures, and helpful reminders for improving your genealogy research.
(We provide links for your convenience to the various online resources and some may be affiliate links for which we receive compensation at no additional expense to you. Thank you for your support.)
Ancestry.com is a “genealogy giant:” one of the four biggest global records resources. Whether you subscribe or have free access through your local library or Family History Center, you should not miss exploring this website for your family history.
Ancestry is also a financial investment. If you’ve been using the site for quite a while, you may be wondering if you are really getting all you can out of it’s vast genealogical record collections and many research tools.
Nancy Henrickson, author of the Unofficial Ancestry.com Workbook
4 Tips for Using Ancestry.com More Effectively
1. Verify what you learn.
Any single record can be wrong, incomplete, or misread by you or by the person how indexed it. Double check the assertions made in the record by looking for that same information in additional sources. Be careful to make sure your sources weren’t getting their information from the same person or place. Otherwise, they’ll naturally say the same thing!
Nobody wants to discover conflicting information, of course. But you do want to know if something is inaccurate before it leads you down a wrong research path.
The best thing about verifying facts in additional sources is that sometimes you find NEW or BETTER information such as:
parents’ names,
a middle name that proves key to someone’s identity,
or a burial place.
For example, let’s say you find an ancestor’s death date in the Social Security Death Index. While it’s a great source, don’t stop there!
Like any record, the SSDI is sometimes wrong and the information it contains is definitely limited. Use the Ancestry.com Card Catalog to see what records about death may be on the site for that time and place. You’ll find the CardCatalog under Search in the main menu.
Ancestry Card Catalog
Use the filters on the left side to drill down to death records for the location you want. Remember that records collections have been created on a specific geographical level: try local, regional (such as state or province) as well as national levels.
Using the Card Catalog search filters
2. Don’t just repeat what other people’s trees say.
Seeing the same information over and over can provide a false sense of accuracy. Remember, just because seven different online trees name the same parents for one of your ancestors doesn’t mean those are the correct parents. Those Ancestry users may all be misquoting the same wrong source without actually verifying the information!
You often come across likely matches in others’ trees when you review Ancestry’s automated “leaf” hints, or when you run a general search on a name. When you do, it’s simply an indication that the tree may be worth exploring. Here’s an example:
Exploring Ancestry Hints
Let’s take a closer look at this example.
The purple arrows: You can see that multiple pieces of very specific information are the same on your tree and another one.
The red arrow: You see sources attached to that person’s profile, such as the news article thumbnail image. (Note the difference with the record shown below, with just an empty profile image.) Yes, you will definitely want to review that news article!
The blue arrow:In addition to either of the above, you also see specific information that is unknown to you.
This tree profile looks promising enough you might naturally consider reviewing the tree hint and attaching it to yours. But then you wouldn’t be able to see the news article or other sources attached to that tree.
Instead, click the checkbox and then click the name of the tree to look at it and its attached sources:
Select the tree to review it more closely.
Then you’ll be able to check out the news article along with the other sources and records attached to this person’s profile. You won’t just see what that person thinks about your common ancestor – you’ll see evidence of why she thinks it.
3. Ancestry.com has more than indexed historical documents.
Nancy reminds us that “Ancestry.com is a fantastic resource for old maps, stories, photos, published county histories, and more. For example, looking at the old maps in their collections can reveal the true nature of an ancestor’s daily life, hardships, travels, and more. And your chance of finding early American ancestors is high in county histories: there were fewer people and early settlers were talked about, even if the family wasn’t wealthy or prominent.”
Here are some of Nancy’s favorite collections at Ancestry:
This collection includes nearly 7 million records extracted from about 1,200 county and land ownership maps from across the country. These are indexed by property owners’ names.
According to the collection description, “They also indicate township and county boundaries and can include photos of county officers, landholders, and some buildings and homes.”
Example: Shenandoah Counties, Virginia – included in U.S., Indexed County Land Ownership Maps, 1860-1918
This is a browse-only collection of “more than 2,200 volumes of county and regional histories from California, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
An Illustrated Historical Atlas of Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, 1878 in the U.S., County and Regional Histories and Atlases, 1804-1984 collection
In them you’ll find history, biographical sketches, maps, business notices, statistics and population numbers, pictures, descriptions of industry and business, stories of early settlement and pioneers, colleges and universities, military history, geography, and plenty of other details.”
Reminder: you can’t search this database by an ancestor’s name. Instead, look for places, and then start reading.
A collection of maps and atlases detailing land areas that comprise the present-day United States and Canada, as well as various other parts of the world. It contains a variety of maps and atlases created for different scopes and purposes, including land ownership atlases and bird’s-eye view maps.
Warrant Plan Records in the Historic Land Ownership and Reference Atlases, 1507-2000 Collection at Ancestry
Land ownership atlases usually show the names of contemporary owners or occupants of land and structures.
Some of the maps depict countries and wider geographical areas, while others depict counties, cities, towns, and smaller geographical areas.
4. Expand your search to the other Ancestry resources on the Web
Ancestry owns a lot of other web resources. Search these too!
Nancy says, “They include Find A Grave, Fold3, and RootsWeb, one of the oldest online genealogy communities around. Don’t give up! Keep looking in other places for the information you want to find.”
Find A Grave
Search results from Ancestry.com do include Find A Grave entries. Many of these contain additional information about the deceased and links to their relatives. As always, be sure to confirm the information you find here.
Fold3
Fold3 is home to millions of U.S. military records. Ancestry.com subscribers can upgrade their subscription to include Fold3 access, or you can subscribe separately.
RootsWeb
RootsWeb is a free and long-lived family history web resource, now hosted by Ancestry.
“The primary purpose and function of RootsWeb.com is to connect people so that they can help each other and share genealogical research,” says the site. “Most resources on RootsWeb.com are designed to facilitate such connections.” You can use RootsWeb in a variety of ways: search it, contribute records, upload your family tree, post your family surnames on a board others can see, and more.
Ancestry has changed one of the ways RootsWeb users have traditionally connected: Mailing Lists. According to the website:
“Beginning March 2nd, 2020 the Mailing Lists functionality on RootsWeb will be discontinued. Users will no longer be able to send outgoing emails or accept incoming emails. Additionally, administration tools will no longer be available to list administrators and mailing lists will be put into an archival state. Administrators may save the email addresses in their list prior to March 2nd. After that, mailing list archives will remain available and searchable on RootsWeb. As an alternative to RootsWeb Mailing Lists, Ancestry message boards are a great option to network with others in the genealogy community. Message boards are available for free with an Ancestry registered account.”
Learn More about Using Ancestry
Nancy Hendrickson’s Book
Nancy shares many more Ancestry tips and treasures in her Unofficial Ancestry.com Workbook. To get the most out of this book read the section on using the Ancestry.com Catalog. Nancy does 95% of her research in the catalog. The workbook is divided into topics, such as military records, so choose a chapter that fits your current goals. It’s also important to not just read the workbook, but also do the exercises. They teach you Nancy’s thought processes for how she finds specific answers or approaches certain types of problems. Then you can apply the same concepts to your own research. Don’t miss the chapter on social history. That’s where you’ll dig into everyday life. And finally, take advantage of the forms that are included. They will help you log your findings and analyze what you’ve learned.
Genealogy Gems Article
Browse-only collections at Ancestry and other genealogy websites are sometimes viewed as inaccessible, but they are actually a hidden treasure. Click here to read How to Find and Browse Unindexed Records at Ancestry – The Better Browsing Checklist. In this article you’ll learn how to access these browse-only collections at Ancestry and expand your family history research.
Read this article by Lisa Louise Cooke at Genealogy Gems
In the digital era, it’s more important than ever to digitize your family history: tree data, photos, stories, interviews, home movies and compiled research. Digitizing preserves the information against loss and allows others to enjoy it now. And for future...
After publishing the Evernote for Genealogy Premium Video I told you that I planned on covering using Evernote for Genealogy more in the future. And we are starting with this episode!
MAILBOX:
This first email comes from Alex in Alabama who writes:
“One of the reasons I’ve become involved in genealogy is that I have the interesting aspect of researching my father, Fletcher Harvey, and my mother, Ann Harvey Harvey. Yes, she was a Harvey, too. How would you suggest setting up those initial surname folders? Just one big ol’ Harvey folder? Maybe Fletcher’s family and Ann’s family?”
Lisa’s Answer: The trick to the hard drive organization system is to stay consistent, and to fashion it after the Census – that is by “head of household”.
While it would seem logical to create two Harvey files – one for Fletcher and one for Ann – stick to head of households. So the first folder would HARVEY and the first name of Fletcher’s dad who was the head of the household. Ex: HARVEY JOHN
For Ann’s side you would have HARVEY and her father’s first name, because he was the head of the household. Ann was born a HARVEY but moved on to become a different “HARVEY”. In my system, women’s records are filed under the surname they held at the time the record was created – either their maiden name, or their married name.
Here’s a quick tip from Premium Member Christine in Houston:
I had a recent disaster where not only did my computer hard drive fail, but the backup drive was damaged as well and NONE of the contents were saved. Bye bye three years of hard work. But, I had shared with a close cousin on one side and he is gradually helping me with some of the lost bits. Luckily my main tree is also on Ancestry, but what I lost was documentation.
I was interested in the hard drive organization podcasts. I figure I might as well start over doing a little better with citing and organizing. Actually much of what you had suggested I was already doing. But I found one feature on the MAC which I would add to your suggestions.
MAC (and I’m sure Windows as well) allows you to color code both files and documents. After thinking about it a while I would suggest doing this at the great grandparent level. Just makes for a few fewer files all one color. (MAC has seven colors-or so plus uncolored that makes 8 family branches)
If you are very visual, like me, you can look at the color on the folder or the file label and tell just where it came from. I also did this AS I CITE. So I know which things have been properly cited because they are already colored.”
Watch the Hard Drive Organization videos in the Premium Video section of this website
I find that color coding can really speed up finding your way through folders on your computer. I did cover this top in Premium episode 86.
and in that episode I mentioned a freeware add-on for Windows called Folder Marker.
Folder Marker Free lets you do color code folders on the fly from the right-click menu of a folder. So there is no need to go through additional dialogs boxes! Simply select the folder you want to mark, right-click on its icon and select a color-coded icon from the drop-down menu. The icon will be assigned to the folder at once.
You can also mark several folders at a time. Simply select a group of folders with the mouse and assign a new icon from the right-click menu.
You can also assign certain logos to your folders such as “high priority”, “half-done work”, “important files” and so on. It even lets you upload a few of your own icons if you’d rather use them instead.
If you want to go full throttle with visual folders, there is a really nifty little utility program that you can use to take any picture that is BMP, JPG, or PNG file format and convert it into an ICO format. Using this program, you can take your favorite picture of an ancestor, let’s say, and convert it into a Windows Icon.
You can take an image and save it as an icon in all of the different sizes: 16×16, 32×32, 48×48, and 64×64. For you genealogy bloggers out there, the 16×16 size can be used to give your web site a logo in the IE address bar. For example, in Blogger while writing a post, you can see the orange icon in the address bar.
The program also lets your transform the images. You can scale the image to make it smaller or flip it horizontally or vertically. And if you don’t care to save the image as an icon, you can convert between any of the three formats: PNG, JPG, or BMP. Simply drag a picture into the colored area after configuring your settings and the picture is automatically converted!
You can change the settings by click on the Options menu item. Icon Settings allows you to pick the size of your final icon. Image Transform lets you pick the transformations you want if you are converting between picture formats (JPG to PNG).
GEM: Evernote VS. One Note
Genealogy research requires a lot of note taking, and it doesn’t take long for notes to pile up everywhere: stacks of paper on your desk and floor, sticky notes surrounding your computer monitor screen, and binders full of organized pages.
Migrating to a digital note taking system will save you time, space and headaches. But which one should you use? The two top contenders are Evernote and OneNote, and one question I get asked a lot is which one should I use?
In this gem Evernote and OneNote go head to head in a comparison match. If you already have a favorite then you’re good to go because the good news is they are both great programs. But for those on the fence, it can help to look a bit closer at what each offers so you can pick the one that’s right for you. Both programs are noteworthy – the choice really comes down to your computing needs and work style.
Evernote vs One Note Comparison
What is it?
Evernote: A suite of downloadable software (desktop client), mobile apps, and Web based services focused on note taking, web clipping, and archiving.
OneNote: A Microsoft software program designed for note taking, organizing, and integration with Microsoft software. Mobile apps also available.
Types of Notes
Evernote: Allows you to create a wide range of notes including typed text, web clippings (customized screen shots using the Web Clipper), audio, video, photographs, and tables. Evernote’s free Skitch program and app lets you annotate your notes and do free hand drawing.
OneNote: Allows you to create a wide range of notes including typed text, web clippings, audio, video, photographs, “Inking” (free hand drawing with your finger or stylus), tables, and Excel spreadsheets.
Cost
Evernote: Free account allows you to download the Evernote program and provides you with 60MB of free synchronized cloud storage per month.
For $5.00 per month or $45.00 per year Evernote Premium gives you much more uploading capacity, greater sharing options, access to note history, PDF searching, faster image recognition, and no ads.
OneNote: OneNote is included in the Microsoft Office software suite along with programs such as Word and Excel. You may already have it on your PC. Check under Programs in your PC’s Control Panel. New version slated for 2013.
Sign up for a free SkyDrive account for cloud storage (7GB free, additional storage available for a fee.) Available as a stand alone software program for $79.95 at www.microsoft.com/office/onenote
Operating System
Evernote: PC and Mac
OneNote: PC Only
Apps
Evernote: Free iOS and Android Apps. Loads of additional apps that integrate with Evernote are available in the “Evernote Trunk” at trunk.evernote.com
OneNote: Free iOS and Android Apps. The OneNote app has very limited capabilities compared to software program.
Web / Screen Clipping
Evernote: Yes – When the Evernote desktop client program is open on your computer the web clipper can be found in your Task Bar by right-clicking the Evernote icon. You can also download a web clipper plugin to your favorite browser.
OneNote: Yes – The screen clipper is built into the program. You will find it under the Insert menu.
Cloud Synchronization
Evernote: Automatic synchronization through the Evernote system when connected to the Internet.
OneNote: OneNote syncs with SkyDrive and SharePoint (must be signed into a Microsoft account or a Microsoft Online Services ID)
Unique Strengths
Evernote:
Tagging allows sorting of notes regardless of which notebook they reside in.
Web sharing flexibility including unique URL links, and social media
Alphabetical organization of notebooks
OCR technology applied to images making text searchable
OneNote:
You can mix note taking mediums (that is include typed text, scribble “ink” notes, graphics, etc.)
Integration with other Microsoft software programs
Here’s what you need to know before you encourage your relatives to join you on your genetic genealogy journey. There are a few things to think about before they spit in that tube and our DNA Guide, Diahan Southard, is here to help!
Did you see those holiday price wars on DNA testing over the holidays? I’m guessing we haven’t seen the end of these now that it’s becoming so trendy! Genealogists are seeing the research payoffs of DNA testing and now another major genealogy website (MyHeritage) is offering testing services, as well.
As the prices and sales generally become more attractive, more of you will want to expand your personal genetic database to include aunts, uncles, and cousins. But what is the best way to proceed? How exactly do you ask someone for his or her DNA? You may just have one shot at this. If so, which test? Which company? Here are three tips to consider before spitting into the tube!
Tip One: Test the Eldest Generation First
You likely have a limited amount of funds with which to populate your family genetic database, so you’ll want to use them wisely. Anyone who does not have both parents living should be tested first. Here’s what I suggest:
ordering an autosomal DNA test for everyone
ordering a YDNA for one male delegate for each surname you want represented
As for the testing company, you now have four choices:
1. FTDNA
2. 23andMe
3. AncestryDNA
4. MyHeritage
While there are several factors to consider when choosing a company, database size is probably the number one factor. Currently, AncestryDNA has the largest DNA database. The reason this is important is because your DNA will be matched and compared to others who have taken a DNA test. By testing with a company that has done lots of tests, your chance of finding matches goes up tremendously. You can also go to the International Society of Genetic Genealogy’s wiki for a full list of characteristics of each company.
Tip Two: Take Care of Everything for the Person Being Tested
Depending on the needs and interest of your relative, you can handle everything from ordering, payment, to even correspondence. All they have to do is spit or swab! This will often alleviate feelings of trepidation on part of the person being tested, especially if they aren’t really into this genealogy craze in the first place. Here are my recommendations:
If testing at Family Tree DNA: You will need to keep track of the log-in credentials for each relative.
If testing at AncestryDNA: Make sure all kits are registered under your account. The easiest way to do this is to have the family member take a photo of the activation code on the sample collection tube and send it to you so you can register it after you have logged into your Ancestry account. Hint: Register everyone’s DNA test results under the family member who has a subscription to Ancestry!
If testing at MyHeritage: Make sure that all kits are registered under your account. To the best of my knowledge, you order the kit under your account.
If your relative does want to be involved, all the better! You can have them share their Family Tree DNA or 23andMe login with you, or they can share their AncestryDNA results with you. To share their AncestryDNA results with you, visit my website at https://www.yourdnaguide.com/sharing-ancestrydna.
If you haven’t tested with a particular company yourself, familiarize yourself with the sample collection so you can be helpful when they have questions:
First of all, nothing speaks louder than your own experience. Before asking your relative to take a test, consider starting with a short summary of your own DNA journey. Keep in mind what might interest them – do they like deep history? If yes, you could share the ethnicity results of your own test. Did they have a special connection to Great-grandpa Joe? In this case, you could show how your DNA connected to a 2nd cousin who was also a descendant of Joe. Maybe you could bust out the photo album. Remind them that while Joe is gone, there are threads of DNA that can speak for him and we need as many of his descendants as possible to be tested in order to preserve his genetic legacy and unravel the mystery of his past.
Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links and Genealogy Gems will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on these links (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for supporting Genealogy Gems!
A Cup of Christmas Tea with Best-Selling Author Tom Hegg
(This post includes affiliate links. If you decide to make a purchase we will be compensated at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support!)
“A Cup of Christmas Tea” New York Timesbest-selling author Tom Hegg joins me for an inspiring conversation about this story of the importance of touching base with our fellow man. It’s a message we can benefit from any time of year. It’s also a wonderful reminder of the importance of family and how our older family members hold a piece of our own history in them.
In this special audio version of the interview, listen to Tom recite this wonderful story A Cup of Christmas Tea set to beautiful music. You’ll also hear him recite the children’s classic Peef the Christmas Bear. To Listen click the media player below (AUDIO ONLY):
Watch the Original Video
This audio comes from my YouTube video series Elevenses with Lisa. You can watch the video interview at the Elevenses with Lisaepisode 38 show notes page.
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Don’t miss the Bonus audio for this episode. In the app, tap the gift box icon just under the media player. Get the app here.
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Music: FairyTale Waltz by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100232 Artist: http://incompetech.com/ We Wish You a Merry Christmas by Twin Musicom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Artist: http://www.twinmusicom.org/
