Ancestry.com records

LegacyUser

William Peters said: Sources from other websites such as Ancestry.com cannot be viewed. Could it be required that some sort of copy of these records be put onto Family Search so we could view? I have found records that cannot possibly match the person to whom they are attached.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Welcome to the community-powered public feedback forum for FamilySearch. FamilySearch personnel read every discussion thread and may or may not respond as their time permits. We all share an active interest in using the resources of this site and as users, we have various levels of knowledge and experience and do our best to help each other with concerns, issues, and/or questions.

What you are asking for would have to be negotiated with the non-FS sites.

In some cases, these sites are available through Family History Centers, and in the case of Ancestry, they provide an institutional portal for many public libraries, and genealogical and historical societies. But the current pandemic has many facilities closed for the duration (however long that may be).

LegacyUser

Cindy Hecker said: Since Ancestry is a paid website you will likely not get to view their record for free. It will not ever by required. Like Tom mentioned there are Family History and other libraries that do have Ancestry access for you to view things. (when not closed due to Covid).

I always try to find the same source on FamilySearch if I can and add the FamilySearch link to the information but Ancestry and many other sites have sources that are not on FamilySearch. It is better to have a source attached than no source. So even though not everyone can view the source, it is important that they be attached for documenting details about a person.

LegacyUser

A van Helsdingen said: Latter Day Saints have access of course get a free Ancestry.com account, and this is linked to their FS account, so that the system can allow them to view the records for which Ancestry is the record custodian from any computer. Whereas for non-LDS there is usually a FHC/Affiliate Library only restriction, or the records may not be avaliable at all.

I'd like to suggest a way for non-LDS to let FS know that they have an Ancestry subscription, so that they can see these records when attached as sources. It's probably complex and lower priorirty, but the benefit would be allowing people to see sources and make better edits to the FSFT.

Of course, this is subject to approval and contracts with Ancestry (and can also be extended to FMP, MyHeritage etc). That in turn may be dependent on contracts with the original record custodians.

LegacyUser

ATP said: Please provide an few examples of sources in ancestry.com that are not available in FamilySearch? Thank you.

LegacyUser

Christine said: A suggestion for those attaching the source: copy the information and put it in the the notes of the source. For instance, if you are attaching a marriage record list all the pertinent info - some from the actual record may not even be in the index like occupation, residence, fathers occupations, etc. This way someone looking at the source, who cannot see the actual record, can still verify if that source is attached to the correct person.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: In a forum that deals with issues surrounding my family tree management program, Ancestry appears to have some issues with their servers. This may be underlying some of the problems that we are seeing from FamilySearch.

LegacyUser

A van Helsdingen said: AncestryDNA appears to be trying to reduce the load on the servers. A few weeks ago several third-party services that could be authorized to access your account in order to extract information about your DNA matches were given "cease and desist" letters by Ancestry, and can no longer offer these services. Then a few days ago Ancestry announced the threshold for a DNA match is being raised, in order to reduce the number of matches people have.

LegacyUser

A van Helsdingen said: While I agree this is very good from a genealogical perspective, it may be illegal as a breach of copyright.

LegacyUser

Paul said: Nevertheless, one I have seen applied to a fair number of IDs I have viewed in Family Tree.