RootsChat.Com

My wedding anniversary present from my husband is the offer of a subscription to a genealogy site and I'd really appreciate some suggestions on where to spend it, bearing in mind some has already been 'diverted' for certificates.

Just to give some idea of where I am re: researching - I have, with a few notable exceptions, found most of the census entries I need and free sites (BMD, LDS etc.) never seem to have records of the people I seek, so I need Parish Record access.   

I've been using Ancestry (Essentials) to good effect for some time since all but one tiny twig of my family were born, lived and died in England.   Recently however, I've found less and less that's of real use and I'm not absolutely certain my (or should that be 'his' money!) would be best spent there.

I did have some vouchers for FindMyPast, (which I 'spent' on the 1911 census) but they seemed expensive to use - although this was quite possibly because they were vouchers.

Someone suggested The Genealogist and from a quick look at their site and from what they say they offer, it does seem quite good.

Finally however, there is my bête noir - having spent 15 years working for the Serious Fraud Office, I refuse to give my credit card details to any company (online or indeed anywhere else) which places the onus on me to cancel a subscription by automatically renewing it on my behalf thus, it is the ability to pay by cheque which draws me (at the minute anyway) to The Genealogist.

Some 'user' suggestions on any sites would be really helpful and very much appreciated.

  I have seen father's two years older than their children,
Kerry

In my case, the 5 'trees' I've found all show the same person as being the father of a particular individual - fine, except even the most rudimentary grasp of arithmetic (had they bothered to work it out, rather than just blindly copying so called 'information') would have shown that this 'father' would have been 187 years old when his son was born - a feat even Henry Allingham would be hard pressed to achieve.

My approach to this sort of thing is pretty much the same as others have said.   

In most cases where I've exchanged information, the 'living' have merely been included 'for information' and referred to in terms such as 'living child b. 1960' etc., and we've taken it for granted that that's where references to living relatives end.

As for the copying of everything, I think we've all come across this.   I, like most people I guess, have a particularly 'sticky' problem with one part of my family.   So far I've found 5 versions of this particular branch on various sites, all of which are identical - but - my own research, is totally different.   Under normal circumstances, if 5 people tell you the same thing, (which is different from your own opinion) you start to doubt yourself - but I've wasted too much time checking and rechecking this 'information' and I've come to the conclusion that it's merely been a copy and paste job, and thus although in a minority, I'm sticking firmly to my version, the one I can back up by certificates, copies of parish records etc.   And am I going to tell these people?   Am I hell as like.

When a fairly distant relative (knowing I'd 'done some research') mentioned that she knew little or nothing about her Mother's family, she was far more interested in the 'meat' rather than just the genealogical bare bones.   I printed out the tree then, in book form, followed it up with separate pages on each individual, using their name and Record ID to identify family members with same name - the really fun part was doing the index (proving that, even in the computer age, there is definitely still a place for the 5 x 3 index card!)