| Status: | No longer meeting |
| Group email: | Ancestry group |
| When: | Monthly on Tuesday afternoons 2:00 pm-4:00 pm Monthly: 3rd Tuesday 2 pm |
| Venue: | Private Member Location |
Caters for all levels of Family History researchers, especially beginners.
Share your family history research findings and stories with like minded people, and learn about new sources and new skills.
Most people begin by gathering information about their ancestors and just writing it down, and collecting memories and family photos.
This map illustrates the distribution of DNA proportions inherited from ancestors.
We have experience of using the main online Family History websites such as:
Ancestry - Find my Past - MyHeritage - FamilySearch
You can get started with a Free of charge "Registered Guest" account, and gain access to a huge amount of information on births, marriages, deaths and census information that will provide you with some further initial insights into your ancestors lives, as well as benefiting from the research already undertaken on the various branches of your family tree by other people who you may be related to. We will be happy to advise you on how to get started with these systems, or indeed on the totally free Gramps application.
You can use these Family History reference and maintenance services via an internet browser such as Google Chrome on your own computers to display and refer to information and documents that you have included in your Family Tree, but there they will want to charge you to add information such as Census documents and various certificates. If you want to avoid these charges, you can use licenced copies of these services at various libraries (see also below).
This family tree illustration shows the Morris family from my Parents and uncles, through Grandparents and Great Grandparents with illustrative pictures that help us to envisage the persons behind the facts of their lives.
We also discuss how you can gain so many insights into your family by linking your DNA with your Family History, and find relatives who are also researching into your ancestors.
This shows a set of Thru-Lines suggestions that identify Cousins by matching their DNA to yours, and use other people's family tree entries to suggest the ancestors in each of the branches of the Family Tree. You can see the number of centimorgans of shared DNA over how many segments, and how close you may be related.
Where to access free Family History research resources
The best place for this is the Central Library in St Peter's Square Manchester. You can use their computers if you have acquired a free library card, and there are volunteers to help you from the Manchester & Lancashire Family History Society. You may know that Central Library is really convenient from St Peter's square Metro station. (The cost of parking in central Manchester is quite high, but the car park under the Manchester Central Convention Complex is convenient, if you only want to do an hour or so).
The libraries in Manchester (eg. Brooklands Library at the Dixon's Academy opposite Baguley Tesco) and Cheshire (eg. Knutsford) offer better Family History research access than those in Trafford (eg. Altrincham), which includes full access to Ancestry and Find My Past. You have free access to all the resources that you would have to pay a membership fee for, and manually transcribe the details of any event (birth, marriage, death etc) that you find in their hints into your own family tree account.
It is suggested that you have built your family tree when you have time to devote a few hours each week with a limited period chargeable membership,. This would cost between £10 to £20 per month (depending upon the extent to the resources you want to access (just UK & Ireland, or Worldwide). You can then maintain a Preserve My Tree membership in Ancestry for £40 per annum, which allows you to see and access any documents and entries you saved during your chargeable membership period. It is suggested that you regularly backup your family tree by exporting it into a GED file, which also allows you to transfer the data into another family history system.
The facilities at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Altrincham Rd, Wythenshawe, M22 4BJ are thought to be very good too. I will check again now we are out of Covid restrictions.