Ancestry: Family History & DNA 4+

I can’t complain about the amazing range of relatives I’ve discovered going back centuries. But sometimes the hints I get are a little frustrating, because my tree will tell me that “Joseph Smith” is the father of “Sara Brown” while the hints show that Sara is the daughter of “David Jones.” And often it’s hard on the app to navigate your way back to the more remote branches of the tree.

That being said, if you’re lucky enough, as I am, to have two parents going back to pre-Revolutionary days (who happen to be light-complected), and suspect that your parents might be distant cousins, you can sometimes find out they are, and also discover Jewish nth-degree great-grandmothers; darker-complected cousins; pastors and poets and actors; Mary Queen of Scots; a slave overseer for Thomas Jefferson 😔; figures such as Robert E. Lee and Martha Washington; Irish criminals deported to the Americas; and an assortment of French Huguenots by way of the British Empire.
Your husband might have the DNA test confirm that yes, despite a Greek name and an immigrant from Germany, he is nearly half-Jewish and is attached to storied family fur-trading company owners from Kastoria in Greece who immigrated to the US via Germany.
And your children won’t have inherited the same percentages of genes as their siblings. Viva la difference!

This information was apparently available and I believe that, but I also believe it is predatory to not make this explicitly clear. I am out $64 for an app I didn't like, and that's not because I'll have to figure out how to buy groceries this month because of that, it is the experience I've had with the product. I also realize that IS my fault, I agreed to something in which I apparently missed the clause about refunds.

But for a premium app in 2022, this really didn't impress me. Maybe I didn't give it enough time, but it felt limiting in what I could do. Perhaps it just wasn't intuitive, but I should have been able to find my great grandfather's "profile" and add him as a family member. I also couldn't figure out how to remove myself as the child of my step great grandfather which was frustrating and a tad upsetting - I'm not that man's daughter. I really hadn't looked at ancestry too much until now, heard about it for years though, and so with the policy I greatly disagree with as well as a dissatisfactory experience with the product, I don't recommend it personally. I believe it can be a great tool for those that are really dedicated, but I just find it too frustrating and unfulfilling to persisit with my own endevors.

Perhaps too it would be a much better experience with a DNA kit. I want to convey there may be a lot of reasons this seemed like a poor product to me that are just things I didn't do right.

I love ancestry, the things i’ve discovered are an amazing gift to my family. That said, the app version leaves much to be desired. The website allows you to connect with other members, view their profiles and trees (member trees are the most helpful feature on Ancestry), and send pictures. That only scratches the surface when it comes to all the goodness you’re missing out on if you use the app over the website. Additionally, the app glitches. If you delete someone on the tree it will reload you back to your home person, and often when you try to accept hints it will save the wrong one (or save one multiple times.

As for the membership, while expensive they are worth it. I do think that the first or second are the best (though depending on which part of the world you want the international records from it might not help). I find that FamilySearch works better for international records, and Ancestry works best for US records. All access is basically a scam. All the newspaper article you want to look at (i truly mean ALL of the ones for my relatives) are behind another paywall. additionally the Fold3 records are largely already available on the ancestry website (draft cards, hospital admissions etc). Keep your 1st-2nd tier ancestry membership then get the higher level newspaper membership separately.