Skip to main content

Friday Family History: Ancestry.com, Or You Thought Pinterest Was Addicting

As you might know, I use ancestry.com as a family history resource.  As I enter information about my ancestors, sometimes ancestry will have hints for me, sources that might help document the person I am researching.  I have entered enough names and received enough hints that I don't think I will ever run out of avenues to explore.

Here is a screen shot that shows that I have more hints than people entered into my family tree:


Out of 410 people in this particular tree, 177 of them have hints for a total of 433 hints.  387 of those hints are records:  census, birth, marriage, death, military, etc.  Particularly exciting are the 42 photo hints and the 4 story hints. 

As I click on the hints, I can compare the information to what I already know in order to determine if the hint really does match my ancestor.  Sometimes it doesn't, but often it does.  I can either accept or ignore each hint.  Accepted hints sometimes lead to finding other relatives, which then leads to more hints. 

I can research hints for hours.  I tell you, it is more addictive than pinterest.  (And that is saying something!)

Do you find yourself getting "lost" in the computer?  What are your favorite sites?

Thanks for the good that comes from technology.


Pin It

Comments

  1. Oh my, I don't dare try ancestry.com because I would not have time for anything else.

    Reading blogs and checking Ravelry are my time-consuming sites. I do have a Pinterest account, but rarely do any searching, which is a good thing.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I have used Ancestry before....my cousin is creating our whole family tree so I check in once in a while. It is such fun isn't it?!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Researching my ancestry is something I really want to do. My grandmother and one of her brothers had done quite a bit of that, but sadly, neither of her daughters thought the handwritten info was worth keeping. I have put off ancestry.com because I know it will be extremely time-consuming and addicting, but it is definitely on my bucket list.

    Truly my biggest addiction is blogging. A day without visiting or writing something is like a day without sunshine....lol. I know that's kind of sad, isn't it?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Conversations are so much nicer when more than one person does the talking. :-) Please leave a comment and let me know your thoughts; I'd love to hear from you!

Popular posts from this blog

Ten Things of Thankful: Live from Oregon, part 2

stock photo of old computer monitor When I was 10 or 11, I remember sitting next to my dad in our living room and reading computer code to him as he entered it into an Apple computer. We would finish the exercise and he would hit enter (or was it "run"?) and wait expectantly for the green type to appear on the screen. If we were lucky, the whole conversation would occur. Most often, there would be an error either in my dictation of the code, or in the typing of the code. We would then go painstakingly back through the lines, character by character, to find and correct the error. After what seemed like hours (and might have been), we would succeed and the computer would finally run the entire program. It was magical! My dad designed and built an earth-sheltered, passive solar home decades before solar panels were commonplace. He also was on a 9-month waiting list for a Prius, when hybrids were not seen on every street.  While my dad is definitely on the cutting edge of technol...

Monday Mentions: Equate Crutches

Have you ever needed crutches? I hadn't, until a week ago.  I'm pretty sure I strained a muscle while running a half-marathon.  (That sounds kind of cool, doesn't it? I'm not actually that cool; the last time I strained a muscle it was from carrying too many shopping bags at once.) In any case, I found myself in need of some crutches. I sent my husband to the store to get some. Photo: A pair of crutches leans against a wall  Not that crutches are all that complex, but because I hadn't used any before, I wondered if I could figure out how to adjust them to fit me properly. I shouldn't have worried. John came home from Walmart with their generic store brand of crutches, complete with instructions. First, I needed to take out a long bolt that went through the hand grip. Then I needed to find my height range, push down two metal pieces, and slide the crutches until the little metal pieces came up in the hole near my height range. (Having two people for this...

What a Wonderful World! (An #AtoZChallenge Post): Z is for Zion National Park

  Visitor Center sign in Zion National Park My husband recently re-retired, and we are front-loading travel. My #AtoZChallenge posts this year will explore our adventures--some pre-retirement, some post. Today's location: Zion National Park in Utah.  Zion is a bit of a shibboleth. People from outside of Utah (or those who are not members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) tend to pronounce Zion as "ZIE-on." Locals (or tourists who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) use more of a schwa sound, pronouncing Zion to rhyme with lion. However you choose to pronounce it, it is an amazing, beautiful national park and has some amazing hikes. The last time my husband and I visited Zion National Park, we entered from the east, and traveled through the mile-long Zion-Mt. Carmel tunnel. It is an engineering marvel, completed in the 1920s. Before we passed through the tunnel, though, we spotted a group of bighorn sheep, including some babies...