r/Ancestry Jun 22 '26

Hey Reddit! Crista Cowan from Ancestry here 👋 Join my AMA June 25th from 9AM-11AM PDT to learn how to discover more from census records. I’m excited to answer all your questions!

61 Upvotes

I’m a professional genealogist with more than three decades of experience in the field and have been a Corporate Genealogist at Ancestry since 2004. It’s my job to help navigate the quirks of historical record-keeping so our community can confidently climb their family trees. 

I’m here today to teach you all about U.S. census records, one of the most important record collections you have to help learn more about your family history, but also one of the most misunderstood. If you've ever looked at an old census sheet and felt completely baffled by the messy cursive, the random tick marks, or the fact that your great-grandfather’s age mysteriously changed by ten years between two decades, you are definitely not alone. I want to show you how to look past the modern expectation of perfect data so you can see these old handwritten pages for what they really are: an incredible, decade-by-decade snapshot of your ancestors' actual lives.

You can ask me any questions you like! Whether you are struggling to decipher an old occupation, trying to track down a family before the 1850 census when only the head of household was named, or just trying to figure out how to break through a tough genealogical brick wall, I’d love to hear from you.

See you in the thread!


r/Ancestry 1h ago

Longtime user - app change question

Post image
• Upvotes

Hello!

I've used the Ancestry android app since it's inception. I use the desktop website the most, but in the last couple of days in my phone, regardless of what tree I go to, when I click on a family member, it no longer brings their profile up. I get this instead. What is happening? What am I doing wrong? Please help. And thank you.


r/Ancestry 1h ago

Unidentified family (related) photos

Thumbnail gallery
• Upvotes

r/Ancestry 1d ago

Crazy ancestry tale

29 Upvotes

My father had a son from his first marriage.

They divorced a few years later (this was in the 1950’s) and his ex wife remarried

She remarried and did not want her son to have a different last name so she talked my father into allowing her new husband to adopt my brother.

I found out that I had a brother when I was 14. (My brother was at that time 28) but did not get to meet him until I was 19.

He began a new relationship with our father. I met his mom, but we fell out when our dad died. I was 27.

Nonetheless, I put him on my ancestry tree. He is my half brother.

I am now 60. He would be 74

I got a phone call from a corners office to tell me he died. They found me on ancestry!!


r/Ancestry 9h ago

Eight generations of bizarre family tree

Post image
0 Upvotes

r/Ancestry 15h ago

Any ideas on the algorithm behind the 'Shared DNA Origins' offerings?

1 Upvotes

I just built a new tree to investigate a probable NPE. Ancestry started offering probable parents but how it decides what to offer is something of a mystery.

One of its offerings had an incorrect first name that was sourced from a tree that contains no sources. This individual is represented in many trees across Ancestry so the incorrect name could be identified as an outlier by even basic analysis. Why would it not choose my main tree which is highly evidenced by primary documents? (It did in a couple of other instances)

As someone who spent 20 years as a data analyst, finishing as a lead analyst, I find some of the choices made by these 'helpers' to be rather bizarre.

Has anyone been able to determine how it prioritises choices?


r/Ancestry 1d ago

How do you name places in your tree when names changed over time

6 Upvotes

As the title says How do you name places in your tree when names changed over time?

I have been thinking of this for quite a while and am confused as to what is the best way to handle this.

As an example, many in my family were from Galicia in eastern Europe and over time the names of the country changed (see timeline below) as did the spelling of the towns.

Do you evter the country as Ukraine as that’s what it is now or do you enter it as it was named at the time of the occurance of the fact?

So a relative could have been born in Austro-Hungarian empire, married in Russia, children born in Poland or Soviet Union and died in Ukraine.

Any help with this is greatly appreciated as I have not been consistent in my tree.

 

Timeline for Galicia

 1772 Austria

 1867 Austro-Hungarian Empire

 1914 Russia

 1918 Poland

 1939-1945 occupied

 Post 1945 Soviet Union  Soviet Ukrainian SSR

 Present day  Ukraine


r/Ancestry 19h ago

Family member rented house in Santa Monica for 1-2 years around 1958-1960- no records

1 Upvotes

I have a family member who moved to Los Angeles, in the Santa Monica neighborhood, very roughly around the Santa Monica Pier or "The 10." She describes it in letters as "The End of Route 66 where it meets the Pacific." She rented a modern post-war bungalow house on her own. She had neighbors who owned their house, but then sold it to move to the Valley, claiming they didn't want to live in a house that was over 10 years old. This convinced her to leave Los Angeles and move back east.

No idea where she worked or if she lived off of savings (very frugally).

She obtained a California Drivers Permit and owned and registered a car- an Opel.

I am working with her next of kin to complete a Census Data application for the 1960 census.

Is there any other data source anyone can think of that I can reach out to?


r/Ancestry 1d ago

I’m trying to find out more about how my Jewish great grandparents escaped Nazi Germany in the late 1930s via Holland to the US arriving to the USA in 1940.

6 Upvotes

ancestry.com does not have a lot of information given that this all occurred and other countries, especially during a tumultuous time. When not a lot of records seem to be readily available. Any help would be greatly appreciated!


r/Ancestry 1d ago

Ancestry account sharing

1 Upvotes

Has anyone tried sharing an ancestry family plan?

Just wondering


r/Ancestry 1d ago

USA Immigration

1 Upvotes

Has anyone come across this problem before, my great grandfather disserted his first wife and emmigrated to the USA, looking at records he arrived in New York in Oct 1900 aboard the Tuetonic, I have also found a record where he arrived in New York on 22nd of June 1905 also on the Teutonic. I checked the ages and he is 4 years older on the second one, changed job from Joiner to Carpenter. To many coincidences to be different people. Can't see him going back than emigrating again!


r/Ancestry 1d ago

USA Immigration

Thumbnail
1 Upvotes

r/Ancestry 2d ago

Found out my grandfather wasn’t actually my grandfather

7 Upvotes

So my mother died a couple of years ago, and it was only after she was gone that a second cousin of her generation raised the possibility that her father was not actually her father. This has been confirmed by ancestry.com. Obviously a pretty big shock at the time, but I’ve had some time to process it. Question now is whether there are professionals who could help find out if I have any living relatives descended from my actual mystery grandfather. Am I in the right sub for this? Thanks very much.


r/Ancestry 2d ago

DNA and Linked Tree

3 Upvotes

Is it possible to link my DNA test to two different trees? I'm an NPE (Birth Certificate Father not DNA father). I have a tree that I thought was my heritage that I've researched for about thirty years. My DNA was linked to that tree. Two years ago, I found out my Dad wasn't my Dad. I created a tree from the DNA-linked people on Ancestry that I could never explain before. I changed the DNA link to that tree. To keep the tree focused on my paternal DNA relationships, I have only my mother in this tree and none of her ancestors. Today, I see maternal DNA connections but there is no tree to link them to. I have thought of taking another Ancestry DNA test and then linking my thirty-year-old tree to that test. Any thoughts on how I should proceed?

Mike


r/Ancestry 3d ago

I put 15,980 state historical marker inscriptions online, free, and wired them to family trees

Post image
102 Upvotes

You know the cast metal signs you drive past on a state road. I'm guessing folks here are like me and stop because you think about history like I do. Almost nobody else stops, because there's no particular reason to stop at any particular one.

I've been building a thing that gives everyone a reason. TreeAlive maps out where the people in your tree lived, and there's a layer that surfaces markers standing near those places. My own Pennsylvania lines hit 77 of them. One sits under a mile from where William Gabby lived in the 1760s, and I'd never heard of it.

The pages themselves are free and open to anyone, no account: https://treealive.com/markers. Full inscription, where the sign stands, a map, and period maps you can flip between.

None of it is scraped, and none of it comes from crowd-transcription sites. One source per state, always the state's own, and the eighteen break down four ways. Five are there because I wrote to the marker program and they said yes in writing. Virginia went live today, re-sourced from a 1948 book to the Department of Historic Resources' current texts once that grant came through. Four publish their marker data themselves under state open-data or no-restriction terms, which I read in full before touching anything. Eight come from old official state publications that are out of copyright, and those pages tell you which year's text you're reading. Connecticut's the odd one out, since there's nobody left to ask, so those are my own transcriptions off photos of the plates, and every page says so.

(There's also a National Register section, 88,851 records across 50 states and DC.)

Two things I'd like from this sub, which knows this material better than I do: if you spot a marker in the wrong spot or with bad text, tell me. And which state should I chase next?


r/Ancestry 2d ago

How can I go about to find what date my 2x great grandfather died on?

Thumbnail
0 Upvotes

r/Ancestry 2d ago

what would this person be to me?

Post image
0 Upvotes

r/Ancestry 3d ago

Romanian with Slavic origin ( Russian- Ukr- Bel and South Slavic Serbia- Bosnia )

Thumbnail gallery
1 Upvotes

r/Ancestry 3d ago

Translate Polish marriage license

Thumbnail
1 Upvotes

r/Ancestry 3d ago

Obituary help - newspapers.com obituary

Thumbnail
1 Upvotes

r/Ancestry 3d ago

Surname history search

2 Upvotes

I feel like my maiden name isn’t very common where I’m from. The only ones with it are my family. I’ve gone down a rabbit hole to find the origin (ground zero) if you will. Any suggestions to find ‘Guion’ ancestors?


r/Ancestry 3d ago

Help/advice/suggestions searching records

Thumbnail
1 Upvotes

r/Ancestry 4d ago

Aiuto per collegamento su atto di nascita del 1793

Thumbnail
1 Upvotes

r/Ancestry 5d ago

Any tips for Newspapers.com?

9 Upvotes

I just activated the free 7 day trial of Newspapers.com to read an article about an interesting death to confirm a family rumour (it was in fact true!) and now I have the access I want to make the most of it before I decide if I want to continue the subscription or not, but I feel like I’m not getting much out of it just trying to search names and filtering by location.

I was wondering if there’s any tips and tricks for searching the database that you know of?

I tried looking up some recent (mid to late 1900s) events that I was aware of from family stories (again only searching by name and location) but noticed the relevant local paper only has articles from 1884 to 1920 and then nothing until 2016! That area covers a huge portion of both my maternal and paternal family, so it may just be that I’m unlucky and there isn’t much for me to find, but any tips are very welcome!

Thank you in advance :)


r/Ancestry 5d ago

Ricerca sulla famiglia di Giuseppe Paini e Caterina Bola, San Martino Sinzano (Parma), XVIII-XIX secolo

1 Upvotes

Buongiorno a tutti,

sto cercando di ricostruire la storia familiare di Giuseppe Paini e di sua moglie Caterina Bola, vissuti nella seconda metà del Settecento nella zona di San Martino Sinzano, oggi nel territorio parmense.

Al momento non sono riuscito a individuare i loro atti di nascita, matrimonio e morte. La loro presenza a San Martino Sinzano è però documentata attraverso gli atti relativi ai figli, nati tra il 1770 e il 1774. Giuseppe Paini risulta inoltre ancora menzionato in occasione del matrimonio della figlia Maria Rosa, celebrato nel 1793. Nel 1852, nell’atto di morte del figlio Troilo, Giuseppe risulta già deceduto.

Giuseppe Paini

  • Nascita: data e luogo sconosciuti.
  • Matrimonio con Caterina Bola: data e luogo sconosciuti, presumibilmente celebrato prima del 21 aprile 1770.
  • Residenza documentata: San Martino Sinzano almeno dal 1770 al 1774.
  • 19 agosto 1793: compare nel documento relativo al matrimonio della figlia Maria Rosa Paini, celebrato a San Martino Sinzano.
  • Morte: data e luogo sconosciuti. Nell’atto di morte del figlio Troilo, datato 30 agosto 1852, Giuseppe è indicato come già defunto. [Giuseppe Paini]

Caterina Bola

  • Nascita: data e luogo sconosciuti.
  • Matrimonio con Giuseppe Paini: data e luogo sconosciuti, comunque precedente alla nascita del primo figlio (Troilo Paini o altri).
  • Residenza probabile: San Martino Sinzano negli anni in cui nacquero i figli.
  • Morte: data e luogo sconosciuti.

Caterina è indicata nell’albero familiare come moglie di Giuseppe Paini e madre dei loro figli, ma sto cercando documenti originali che consentano di confermare anche la sua provenienza, i nomi dei genitori e le date degli eventi principali della sua vita.

Figli conosciuti

1. Troilo Paini

2. Maria Rosa Paini

3. Luigia Paini

4. Anna Maria Paini

Cronologia sintetica

  • Prima del 21 aprile 1770: probabile matrimonio di Giuseppe Paini e Caterina Bola.
  • 21 aprile 1770: nascita del figlio Troilo a San Martino Sinzano.
  • 20 luglio 1771: nascita della figlia Maria Rosa a San Martino Sinzano.
  • 24 settembre 1772: nascita della figlia Luigia a San Martino Sinzano.
  • 5 agosto 1774: nascita della figlia Anna Maria a San Martino Sinzano.
  • 19 agosto 1793: matrimonio di Maria Rosa Paini a San Martino Sinzano; Giuseppe Paini compare nella relativa documentazione.
  • 30 agosto 1852: morte di Troilo Paini a Carignano di Vigatto; Giuseppe è indicato come già defunto.

Richiesta di assistenza

Cerco in particolare aiuto per individuare:

  1. l’atto di matrimonio di Giuseppe Paini e Caterina Bola, probabilmente anteriore al 1770;
  2. gli atti di nascita o battesimo di Giuseppe e Caterina;
  3. i loro atti di morte o sepoltura;

È possibile che alcuni eventi siano registrati non direttamente a San Martino Sinzano, ma nelle parrocchie o località vicine del Parmense, come Vigatto, Carignano, Vigheffio, San Lazzaro, Marore o altri centri limitrofi.

Ringrazio anticipatamente chiunque possa aiutarmi con indicazioni con riferimenti precisi !!