The tutorials on this page will teach you how to make the most of the http://home.ancestry.com/ website for your family history research.
(To open any link in a new tab, right click on the link and you will be given the option to do so.)
Ancestry.com is an incredible research tool and when you join, you will have access to thousands of family trees that others have researched that can help with your family history research.
Step 1a: Sign Up and Move the First Four Generations of Your Family Tree from Familysearch.org.
Click on the link below if you are a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to sign up for a free account on ancestry.com. The LDS Church has partnered with ancestry.com to bring members of the Church these free accounts on ancestry.com.
https://familysearch.org/blog/en/create-free-account-familysearch-partners/
If you are confused about what to do once you click the link above then click the link below that will show you how to use the above link to sign-up for your free ancestry.com account, if you are a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints:
http://screencast.com/t/2CWtCKYzXsRD
If you are not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Say Saints, click the following link to take you to a page that will give you some instructions about how to sign-up for a two week free trial with ancestry.com.
When you first sign up for an lds ancestry.com account using your user name and password from familysearch.org, you will be given the option to bring over the first four generations of your direct pedigree line from familysearch.org and create your first family tree on ancestry.com. Researching with ancestry.com is easiest when you do-so with family trees. Ancestry has millions of records that are in a searchable database and so when you create a family tree on ancestry.com, the ancestry search engine will automatically search for possible records for each of the family members in your family tree. These records will show as record hints that will appear in the upper right hand corner of a person’s personal information page.
Step 1B: How to manually bring over the first four generations of your direct line from familysearch.org if you somehow missed it.
http://screencast.com/t/kwEWMLApTy
Step 1C: How to manually start a family tree on ancestry.com if you do not have a family tree to move over from family search or if you just want to create a family tree from a branch of a larger tree so that it is more manageable to research.
http://screencast.com/t/A5NcZpHZ6
Step 1D: The fastest way, at present, to break off a branch of a family tree from family search to research on ancestry.com. This branch will start with someone other than yourself. Creating additional family trees on ancestry.com helps to keep your research more manageable. Also all the family trees you have on ancestry.com will bookmark the last person you have been working on and so this is an awesome way to keep track of where you were researching on a different branch.
http://screencast.com/t/ay7c22JGqR
Step 2a: How to start researching your family using a family tree. This tutorial will also show you how to review record hints, attach sources to family members included on the record and add new people from a record to your family tree.
http://screencast.com/t/eZgW1ahkI
Step 2B: Ancestry is famous for its little hints that pop up as leaves in the upper right corner of an individual’s personal identification page. However sometimes, you want to find a specific record for an individual that is not popping up as a hint. This video will show you how to quickly search for records on ancestry that are not popping up as hints.
Also sometimes when you are attaching a record to a family, individuals already existing in your tree that show up in the record will not line up right so that you can attach the record to them as well. Ancestry has a place you can click when a person does not line up right or show up from your tree called the “not a new person” link. This video will also show how to add a record to someone using the “not a new person” link that will allow you to attach the record to a person already in your tree, instead of creating a duplicate person. Watch the video and you will see what I mean by this confusing explanation, kind of like trying to explain how to play a board game without playing it, right!
(Also see Step 13 and Step 14 below to search for records for an individual using the ancestry.com card catalog. The card catalog is helpful to pull up an exact record database to search within. For example if you want to see all the records that ancestry.com has to research for New York, the card catalog is a wonderful resource or if you want to quickly search just the 1900 census for an ancestor, the card catalog is wonderful as well.)
http://screencast.com/t/4o8VU4Bv
Step 2C: How to click on the “green bar” to search specifically within a specific record database for more records for a family. This video shows how to quickly click on the “green bar” for the Philadelphia Death Index so that I could find other members of the same family in this same death index. You can click on the “green bar” to search specifically within any record database on ancestry.com that you attach to your family.
http://screencast.com/t/Mfsyj7Ja
Step 3a: How to review family trees and compare and add information from other trees to your tree.
http://screencast.com/t/yFsPTvWQgOp
Step 3b: How to review other family trees and look for errors so that you do not copy the wrong information to your tree.
http://screencast.com/t/BWZr4hT0eNiw
Step 4:How to add additional family members from familysearch.org to your family tree on ancestry.com.
When you bring your four generations over from family search and create a family tree on ancestry.com, it only brings over direct line ancestors. If you want to bring over aunts and uncles and cousins you need to watch this video so that you can learn how to quickly bring over additional family members.
http://screencast.com/t/n6N1sGi9fl
Step 5: This shows you how to move information between your trees on familysearch.org and ancestry.com for individuals.
http://screencast.com/t/KSzs3mib
Step 6: How to manually add a person to your family tree that you know belongs there.
http://screencast.com/t/fudn2avvu4Cq
Step 7: How to delete a person from your family tree that does not belong.
http://screencast.com/t/jETcf3kWIdT
Step 8: How to edit information for an individual.
http://screencast.com/t/qVacKVHAoTx
Step 9: How to add more than just four generations of your family tree from familysearch.org to ancestry.com.
http://screencast.com/t/TmgeMmhp
Step 10: How to get back to the last person you were researching on your tree on ancestry.com. Also how to get to the home person in your tree and how to find a specific person on your tree.
http://screencast.com/t/ODY3c8fT
Step 11: How to merge duplicate persons on your family tree on ancestry.com with each other.
http://screencast.com/t/jhqHHDefB
Step 12: How to research an individual who is not on one of your family trees.
http://screencast.com/t/8Orred8Jx2V
Step 13a: Sometimes the record hints or general searches for your specific ancestor will miss the specific records that you want to find your ancestor in. The card catalog on ancestry.com is helpful to pull up an exact record database to search within. For example if you want to quickly search just a specific record database like the 1900 census for an ancestor, the card catalog can quickly take you there.
The following video will show you how to search for a specific record for an individual using the card catalog on ancestry.com
http://screencast.com/t/hpNiGsryuEHt
Step 14: More about the card catalog on ancestry.com. The card catalog is also a wonderful way to quickly locate all the records available for a specific place. For example, if you want to know all the records that ancestry has for New York or another specific place the card catalog can quickly bring up all the records available for the area you are looking for. The following video will show you how to look for all records available for a specific area that your ancestor lived in. Sometimes your ancestor’s name has been transcribed a bit wrong or maybe they are using a nickname, narrowing the search with the card catalog produces amazing results!
http://screencast.com/t/AeyvkOOT
Step 15: How to add pictures to an individual.
http://screencast.com/t/unkRDjLLCahJ
Step 16: How to add a picture to more than one person on ancestry.com.
I will add a tutorial about this soon.
Step 17: How to use the Social Security Index to try to find a married named for a lady using her exact birthday. Note these women must have died between 1935 and 2014.
http://screencast.com/t/wshbENG4D
Step 18: How to specifically search for another family tree on ancestry.com that has information about your ancestor.
http://screencast.com/t/yYdni0NFN
Step 19: How to connect a person from ancestry.com to the same person on your family tree on familysearch.org and copy information back and forth between the two places.
http://screencast.com/t/TMtKExWwto
Step 20: How to add a family member from one of your ancestry.com family trees to your family tree on familysearch.org.
http://screencast.com/t/lVGk3MBTHFU9
Step 21: This is a review of how to copy family members from your familysearch.org family tree to your ancestry.com family tree.
http://screencast.com/t/3z0CHPwG
Step 22: How to remove a record from someone when you realize you copied the wrong source to the wrong person.
http://screencast.com/t/sqKVWDA0utTm
Step 23: How to get rid of a citation that did not go away when you deleted the source.
http://screencast.com/t/KyhUrMSt8E
Step 24: An example of putting it all together. How to search for a birth place for someone and when you cannot find it, how to search for them in a specific record. Also how to attach a record to an existing husband that is on the record instead of adding a new husband, when the person’s name has been transcribed wrong. How to compare and decide if a record really belongs to someone or not.
http://screencast.com/t/C3i8rhT8xAHM
Check back later, more tutorials for this page will be created soon.
Family History Tips For You 