Ancestry.com?

Question:I want to find out the history of my family.

If I know my great-grandfather's full name, (First, Middle, Last) can I get information on his wife, their parents and so on?

Or can I only get information on people who I actually know the names of?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: I want to find out the history of my family.

If I know my great-grandfather's full name, (First, Middle, Last) can I get information on his wife, their parents and so on?

Or can I only get information on people who I actually know the names of?

Genealogy is like a jig-saw puzzle, only the pieces change and some don't fit. It isn't like proving two triangles are congruent, or "Free Cell"; in Free Cell all of the games have solutions. In genealogy you sometimes run into dead ends, and there is no solution. Sometimes you find things, though, which feels as good as solving the NY Times Sunday crossword.

If
your great grandfather was named Mortimer Periwinkle
and he spent his entire life in Pocatello,
and Ancestry had a data base of Idaho Marriages,
And it had the wife's full maiden name and age
and he married Elizabeth Rogolinski, 2 years younger than him

(Note how many ANDs there are in that statement)

Then you would have a chance of finding him as a 10-year old boy in Pocatello, living with Donald and Marie Periwinkle, on the 1880 census. You would have a chance of finding Elizabeth living with her parents too, only she would be 8.

If all you knew was that he lived in the east and moved west, and his name was Edward Miller, and he married Polly Jones, then you probably are going to find 400 men that could be him in the 1880, and another 400 women that could be her.

Your ancestors will probably be somewhere between those two extremes.

First, middle and last help, but if you were looking for James Madison Pack in the census, you should look for

James Madison Pack
James Pack
Jas Pack
Jim Pack
Jimmy Pack
Madison Pack
J M Pack
M J Pack

Then repeat for Pock, Pach, Puck, Park and Pork. (Ho Ho Ho, you say, he's making that up. No; she jests at scars who never felt a wound, as Romeo said.)

Sometimes you get lucky; you find James Madison, aged 53, living with his wife and 4 of the 8 kids you know her had, and there on the census, below the kids, is someone with relation = father, mother, father-in-law or M-in-Law. Father-in-Laws are golden, because then you know the wife's maiden name, unless it is the F-in-L of a wife who died 10 years beforehand. Mothers in Law often remarried a time or two before they moved in with their daughter and her husband, so their last name isn't reliable.

Young, unmarried brother-in-law and sister-in-laws are good for maiden names too. Sister-in-laws past 20 might have married someone who deserted them; they sometimes get recorded with the rascal's surname, but they put "single" so as to hide their shame. Brothers-in-Law over 20 might be the husband's sister's husband or the wife's brother, so they aren't as good either.

Sometimes Ancestry has specific data bases; Oregon Deaths or Kentucky marriages. Sometimes they don't.

Ancestry is wonderful if you love genealogy; it is like HBO if you love movies. If you are just mildly curious, try the free data bases and go down to your local Mormon church when the family history center is open. They don't have everything Ancestry does, but they usually have census images. Download PAF and give it a try. If you get hooked, buy Roots Magic and subscribe to Ancestry.

Best of luck!

Are you starting a subscription to Ancestry.com?
If so, when you enter what you do know, Ancestry will find records such census reports and possibly other people looking for the same people you are. You can build from there.

You start by knowing the names of your immediate family (ie parents), then go to the grandparents, etc. You USE that information to FIND the names that you don't have.
If you already have some of the names, you can find out more about them, but the purpose is to build on a solid foundation, to discover the further back.

You can find a library in your area that has the subscription. before you go in- make a list of what you know with dates.

From home if you have relatives that you know were alive in 1880 here USA or UK 1881 the records are free to search.census records are basically 1860 to 1880 then the fire in DC in the 20's destroyed the 1890 records. then 1900 1910 1920 1nd 1930. No census records are available for the censuses after 1930. I think they will be digitalized in 2012.
as an earlier answerer mentioned spelling of names is totally bizarre. I have a family name that is spelled three different ways and parents were naming their children after relatives and sometimes it can get confusing which generation you are looking at.You can't trust any of the info to be etched in stone. I have 3 Birth certificates and two death certificates that have erroneous info on them.But this is the most fun and rewarding thing you can do for yourself and future generations.

With any luck (and there usually is), ancestry.com will have more than one submitter of the same name/family that you are looking for. Some will have full information of up to 4 or 5 generations back (names, dates, places, children's names, etc), and sometimes even further. I helped a girl in Canada trace her family to the 10th century AD (some strange names, by today's standards, who were born in like 940 ) just on ancestry.com.
Just knowing your great-grandfather's full name is one step. You also need to know his birth and death date so you don't pick out the wrong one (thousands of people could be known as John W Smith, for example). What information you can't find on ancestry.com might be listed on their sister site, www.rootsweb.com (they have generation links in blue, so you can click on them and go back each generation available) Some even have "Notes" on the person involved; and what is called the "AHNENTAFAL" link that lists up to 6 generations back on that particular person. This saves a lot of time, too, because it says who was the son of whom in what generation and where they were born, who they married, how many children they had--with complete names and dates, and even the children's spouses.
Once you find the name you want on ancestry.com, you can have the option to check historical records (census, military, immigration, passenger lists, etc), or click on the FAMILY TREE tab (private trees are marked with a red circle, but there are public trees or what is called "One World Tree". The latter is more extensive and takes longer to search through, but at the left are the person's name, his or her spouse if known, the parents' names--if known--in the middle section, and the birth/death/marriage dates/places at the right side. Once you have the tree you want to look at, just click on the name and it takes you to that person's page. If more than one generation is available, click on the right-pointing arrow and it takes you back one generation on each succeeding page. Or you can click to see the entire family tree at once.
If you have a World membership on ancestry.com, you can check their other sites in England, Germany, Australia, Canada, etc. for no further charge simply by entering your user name and password. This costs $29.99 per month or $299 per year.