Ancestry habit will need to be replaced, withdrawal possible.
Guess I will have to spend a lot more time on RM tutorials.
Suggestions?
not sure exactly what you are asking or need.
Are you asking how to get used to use RM vs the ancestry website?
What other software have you used (if any). RM11 is quite easy to use overall. Best of all version since Rm7 in my view.
@JacobCarter7
There are a lot of good videos etc under the links that @Charlie_Allingham shows in his screenshot as well as RootsMagic help etcāso definitely worth your time going thru some of them-- the one under RootsMagic TV are usually short ones BUT once you click on one, you will see others on the right hand side that are very interesting also..
you can still access your Ancestry tree if you have one or build one if you donāt-- you just canāt see things that you attached to your tree that are NOT freeāIām just NOT sure if you can still tree share your tree up to Ancestry or down to RM-- MAYBE SOMEONE ELSE CAN ANSWER THAT FOR SURE-- if you can, and youāve never tree shared before, I would download a copy into a new databaseā¦
As for replacing Ancestry, try checking out Family Search by BROWSING THE COLLECTION-- there are a LOT of records on there they have NOT been indexed for each stateāso say under Arkansas, you MIGHT find ( and this is only the 1st of 3 pages)
Some are indexed and some you just have to browse thru such as probates and wills for a state by county --some of these will have indexes at the front of each book and some wonāt BUT there is a lot of good stuff to be found-- same goes for their catalogādid a search for St Louis, Mo on this one
Some of these you can view at home on your computer and some you have to go to a local Family Search center to viewā¦
These you have to browse thru and usually no index BUT again a wealth of info..
When your really bored, try googling your ancestor with your favorite browser-- amazing some of the info you can find that is free or ask A I abt your ancestor ( CoPilot on Windows is free)ā¦
Also most local libraries offer free access to Ancestry and some times other companies such as My Heritage or Find My Past for their local patrons-- some also allow you to access these company at home-- so check that out also..
And have funā¦
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There seems to be a strange view that Ancestry is the be all and end all just because of treeshare.
Personally I hardly use Ancestry, preferring FindMyPast and I prefer to load everything manually to RootsMagic and keep media organised into sub-folders not thrown into one with meaningless names.
There are lots of other places to investigate once youāve got your head out of ādefault to Ancestryā mode - county archives, military records, commonwealth war graves commission etc etc.
Sites such as FreeCen and FreeReg provide free access to information (I only know UK ones) and there are paid ones too. Search engines will guide you. Have fun.
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It is great that you hardly use Ancestry, however for the American audience Ancestry contains a lot of stuff that FMP doesnāt have, so FMP is of lesser use to us. FMP has a much more European slant. RM leans toward that in its attempts to integrate Ancestry into RM to the extent that it canāt integrate with FMP, or pretty much any of the free cites you mention.
I began genealogy research with some paper records from a relative and a copy of Family Origins software I found in a sale bin. Family Origins was a predecessor to RM.
Before the advent of computer programs, most people began documenting their family history with blank family group charts and pedigree charts on paper and started by entering oneself, then parents , grandparents, etc.one generation at a time. Currently people should still begin their research this way even with using a computerized genealogy program. One can just start entering data using the pedigree view on the screen of their chosen genealogy program rather than on pedigree charts printed on paper.
Beginning oneās research by going to large shared databases and downloading random information is not a good method. So many mistakes are made by acquiring the information from Ancestry, MyHeritage, FamilySearch, etc. Although these sites have useful information, they all contain multiple errors which continue to get copied from person to person with little attention to basic vital records that researchers obtained in paper format prior to the computerization of some primary information and shared information collected from other people.
I learned so much from traveling to small towns to find vital records, church records, cemetery records, LDS family history centers, small town library collections, census documents in regional libraries, national archives, court house records including deeds and wills. Genealogy library collections offered published family genealogies, based on similar searches from previous researchers.
Now many people just collect other peopleās work collected on large sites. They often never learn good research skills themselves. Good databases need to be built carefully one step at a time.
Ancestry and other providers will come and go. Put them in their place. I am grateful for the computerized information I have found online. It is wise for individualās to keep their own research in their own database on their own computer
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So true! I too started on paper and then moved to Family Origins 4 when it came free on a PC magazine disk. Research then involved taking a day off work, taking the train up to London and fighting to get the parchment volumes that comprised the civil registration indices, or going to the FHS to view the microfilms (never did totally trust transcriptions!). To me the benefit of Ancestry is that I can view images of the actual (often mis-transcribed) documents and then save that (corrected) information to my tree. The only value of other peoples trees, to me, is to give a possible direction for further research.
The other great thing in Ancestry is āThruLinesā which has been extremely useful in tracing those elusive DNA matches to find out what happened to other family members. It managed to take my main line further back into 18th century Ireland and broaden it out.
With fairly recent changes to the official Government civil registrations index website (England & Wales - https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/Login.asp) one can now order jpgs of births and deaths from 1837 to abt 1920 for immediate download for Ā£3 - so no more guessing which death record applied to a person without very expensive certificates. The death index goes up to 2024.
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