I don’t know if I’m just doing something wrong but I built my family tree and the website seems to have barely any information about my family at all. I found out more just checking out our national archives then what I found on this website. It’s maybe worth noting that I’m not in the US and it does appear to be somewhat US-centric.
The best it could find was a couple of enrollment records for voting and a single immigrant notification in an old newspaper. It didn’t find these either by itself, I had to manually go though the search system to find it. The OCR didn’t even get the spelling of the name correct.
I’m not sure what I expected but it was definitely better than this, especially for all the pay walls they throw up.
You just have to keep giving them more and more private information about yourself and your unwitting family, then something magic happens.
And then cops use the data to track down DNA evidence in 40 year old cases
its just another way they collect data and track people.
Definitely US-centric. You have to pay extra to get records from some countries. Works very well for people in the US
Source?
Edit: okay, he downvoted me and the diverted the conversation. I just wanted a source, which he seems unable to provide. Just want this to serve as a reminder to people that you shouldn’t trust everything you read online, even in Lemmy comments
Interestingly, I did find links to the Singapore govt, through GIC
I’ve been paying $25 a month to run into relatives that all have their trees set to PRIVATE.
They’re my cousins / second-cousins, and I’m not sure who their parents are or how they fit into my tree.
The site lets you look at US Census data… from the 1950s or some shit. So I can piece together family information upwards half a dozen ways to my grandparents and their parents and so on, but I can’t seem to get any info from the system for anyone born after the 1950s.
I keep paying because I’m trying to solve a spooky family mystery.
I was a spooky family mystery. There are records out there, particularly for the US, but you have think laterally and use resources outside their walled garden. US census records are only released after (IIRC) 70 years, so getting the 1950 census was a pretty big development. Beyond that, there are obituaries, phone books, newspapers, yearbooks, and others. I can even say from experience that the creepy “Radaris” style sites are usually leveraging some kernels of valid information in the free teaser data they show.
Clearly, you aren’t a super white American. My family tree got filled up easily up until the 1600s because I have a bunch of family members with nothing better to do than catalog our family tree. Apparently one half of my family came from Scotland in the 16th century so I can claim that I’m Scottish-American now.
I think its so funny hearing people are American (whatever country their grandpappy came from) 😂
It’s because American doesn’t tell you anything about where your ancestry is from. You could be from anywhere in the world and be American. Scottish is a pretty specific things, as is just about any other nationality.
I still only say I’m American even though my family is largely from Scotland. WV Appalachian (I think Appalachian in general) has a large percentage of Scottish ancestry, and it also shares the same mountain range interestingly enough.
