There's a reason I'm so awesome

[salmonpi]

So I've been playing around on ancestry.com for the last few days, filling in my family and looking at census records and joining my trees with others already in the system. Just now I decided to take advantage of the "find famous relatives" feature. In addition to some very distant relations to four first ladys, two presidents, and the current

Comments

[doxasticpirate]

Drat, I can't fill in enough of my family to give me the "green leaf" thingie

[salmonpi]

Sometimes they don't show up when they should.... you can search the census records directly if you know the names of anyone who lived before 1930

[lordameth]

Woo. Fantab for you!

I got a few green leafs, but they're just the Social Security records of the deaths of my mother and her parents. I really wish I could get anything to come up for my father's parents, because that would connect into the Old Country, and I'd actually learn something about my family history.

Sally, are you still working with a free account? I don't think it's letting me even access any of those records that might tie into older generations, without paying.

[salmonpi]

I'm still using the free account, but I think I'm on the three day free trial for looking at census records and stuff. I know they have records from England, but maybe not eastern Europe... If your grandparents imigrated before 1930 there should be a record for that. Do you know if there's an alternate spelling of your last name?

[lordameth]

There are a ton of alternate spellings which my name could have derived from - Seif, Schiff, Schiffman, Shipman ... but I don't know which, if any, were actually the ones used by my family back in Poland.

I was looking at the 14 day free trial, but I'm afeared of it carrying over and my beginning to get charged...

[galathilion]

Ancestry.com is awesome. I was on it until 1:30 this morning checking out my family tree.