Ancestry and Lineage tracing.

[Meresgi]

So i'm trying to track down my family try to find proof that I am related to John Adams. I have 3 generations I know of, going back to 1848 (when they were married, not sure on birth dates), so I figure that's a decent start.

Now is Ancestry.com all it's cracked up to be or is it just marketing bullshit? Is there a better site or should I instead try to find someone who does this professionally out of an office? I know Ancestry.com charges like 13/month but till April10th apparently it's free right now, though I have no idea how easy it is to cancel with them.

[aethyr]

It's very easy to cancel with them, actually. I've paid them for about 6 months and got some interesting information off of the site but it's not always reliable. The thing about Ancestry.com is that anyone can add anything to anyone at any time. It's a bit like Wiki. People will see information on there and assume that it's correct. When in fact, drunk great uncle Jimmy in Omaha just clicked the little leaf and added everything he found. If you have birth dates, death dates, marriage dates and locations at least 4 generations back, there's a good chance you can weed through the bullshit and correct things yourself. That doesn't mean the information will stay that way, but it's a start.
If you're trying to go back to the days of John Adams (very common name, especially in that era and on the east coast) hopefully you have a lot of dates and locations for all those x5 grandfathers/grandmothers. If you use common sense and have a lot of time to delve into it, you can usually go back to around the 1700's before things get too screwy.

The most recent adventure for me on Ancestry.com ended with me adding very angry notes to the people connected to my tree who were (according to lazy people just adding information without thinking about any of it) around 10 when they had a kid, lived to the ripe old age of 104 in the 1800's, had a child with the same name as his wife's mother's parents... four times... ect. ...Then I canceled before they billed me.

So if you think about what you're looking at, expect to spend a lot of time on it, talk to relatives, take notes and compare what you find online to what people tell you- you can find a decent amount of information.

[Meresgi]

Yeah, I'll need to get more dates then before I start on this. I only have marriage dates of the generations between 1848 to 1914, after that I have everything on my grandmother's generation and so on.

Hmm already I found out my great-great-great-great grandfather was apparently murdered, and they never found the killer.

[chiyio]

If you don't mind it being run by the mormons, you can try https://www.familysearch.org/

[aethyr]

Wow o.o

If you're really hardcore, can always go to the local library where he was killed and see what the old newspaper articles say. Sounds like one of those episodes of 'Who Do You Think you Are', the Ancestry.com sponsored show on NBC. As a female over 30, I can dork out and watch that show and it's okay.

Wouldn't hurt to sign up for Ancestry.com and make a note of when they'll bill you. You might be able to find the dates you're missing on there. Probably will honestly. They've scanned records and if you have a membership, they'll let you check them all out. As long as you don't want European stuff. The World package is extra. Plus, if you find yourself burnt out, frustrated or just bored with it, just hit the cancel button and let it go before they hit your PayPal account or whatever.