Ancestry

An assessment of the value of Ancestry.com
to Jersey family researchers

Online genealogy websites are big business, and none more so than Ancestry. Jerripedia does not promote any particular subscription sites, preferring to direct its users, where possible, to free sites. However, it is impossible to ignore the importance of Ancestry

Worldwide operation

Operating worldwide, Ancestry offers UK users the option of subscribing to Ancestry UK, which is restricted to records held in the United Kingdom, or Ancestry.com, which covers the whole world. Researchers in France, Australia, Canada and elsewhere, have their own dedicated Ancestry options.

The UK site holds an enormous range of records, from fully-indexed copies of all censuses from 1841 to 1911, with the Channel Island returns separately indexed, to parish records of births, marriages and deaths, military records, passenger lists on transatlantic voyages and family trees.

The massive collection of family trees includes many uploaded by researchers with Jersey ancestors, although it should be noted that a significent number of these are replicated at Rootsweb (www.rootsweb.com) the free site funded by Ancestry. There are trees on Rootsweb which are not available on Ancestry, their researchers preferring not to post their data to a paid-for site. Of course, most of the important Channel Island trees can be found in Jerripedia, often with considerably more detail. It is also important to understand that trees posted to Ancestry and Rootsweb are not subject to any checks, whereas trees submitted to Jerripedia undergo intensive checks and cross-referencing with church records and other data sources.

It is possible to carry out a wide range of searches on Ancestry without having a subscription. Although some of their databases can be viewed for free, others will require a subscription to view the data revealed by a search. You can try searching for records involving your ancestors, and only pay if something useful appears to be available. Payments can be made on a pay-per-view basis rather than having to take out an annual subscription. It is also possible to take out trial subscriptions which can be cancelled without any payment being made.

However, although the annual subscriptions may seem expensive to some researchers, if genealogy is an important hobby, you might wish to compare subscription rates with the cost of a round of golf, a fishing rod and licence, or a new pair of walking shoes, to put them into perspective.

Accuracy

Any recommendation to researchers to use Ancestry must be tempered with warnings about inaccuracies. Although Ancestry themselves are responsible for much of the data, their own transcription accuracy can leave much to be desired - see link below relating to census returns. As already noted, family trees submitted by Ancestry users are not checked for accuracy and can be highly inaccurate.

Regular users will quickly learn which of the trees submitted by dedicated Channel Island researchers are most reliable. The best clue is to look for obvious errors - children with birth dates shown before their parents', or several centuries apart, for example - and then be prepared to treat the remainder of a tree with considerable suspicion. And just because the same information is included in many trees from different researchers does not make it any more likely to be correct. One only has to compare the way data is presented in a variety of trees covering the same family to spot where it has been copied time and again from a single source.

However, the level of accuracy in Ancestry trees is no worse than that in trees posted to free sites (Rootsweb included); it is just that if one is paying a substantial amount to subscribe to a site, one is perhaps entitled to expect the content to be reliable.

Jerripedia does not claim to be infallible in this respect, either. Our editors frequently reference Ancestry when checking family trees submitted to us and are skilled at spotting those which are merely copies of Ancestry trees. Channel Island records from those researchers whose accuracy and attention to detail is well proven will almost certainly already be included in Jerripedia's 3,400-plus trees, but we do not slavishly copy Ancestry trees, or trees from any other source.

Earlier trees are regularly being updated as the opportunity is presented to check their content.

• Ancestry links an index of Jersey records on Ancestry, with direct links