Hello,
 I do not consider Ancestry.com as a main resource, just one of many.
I am a subscriber to Ancestry.com, their general databases, census records
and newspapers.
Of course the census records and newspapers are the originals and I have been
able to check census records in California, New Jersey, New York, Texas and
more right at home. And find some articles and obits on family members in
various old newspapers.

I know some people do not like Ancestry.com for whatever reasons of their own
and that is fine, but we who are able to get at least some helfpul
information from it have the right to use it it is just a matter of choice.

As with many of us we do not have the money or time to travel the country and
go to various libraries, courthouses and historical societies and so forth.
As I say, Ancestry I don't consider a main source of genealogical information
just one source. And speaking of sources they do include original sources on
most every database of theirs.

For instance one of their databases is about Ameican Soldiers in WW I, and
while they list themselves as the first source they do have the orignal
authors, book title, year the book was published, etc.

If they have marriages listed, they list the orignal source for that too and
so on.
Of course many old records and books have some errors in them too. One can
always as I have done check original records to verify if needed. But alot of
the information I have searched for that they have I found to be accurate.

The biggest problem I have is with the World Connect databases we who have

them get our information taken by other indivduals and not Ancestry. These
started at Rootsweb and then of course they were purchased by Ancestry.com.
I place on my datbase there for people to ask permission but some do not.
That is the individual's responsibility. I do not place living persons in my
online datbase for privacy reasons. When you upload your gedcom to Rootsweb
they give you many options, one is to remove living persons, and there are
others like not allowing or allowing another to upload your database, I
choose not to allow it. I include sources for the great majority of my
information, I am afraid that when I first started doing this years ago I was
not as good as I should have been about that but we learn as the years pass.

When you see people on World Connect who have a couple of hundred thousand
people in their database while most of us have 5,000- 20,000 you tend to be
suspicious of where they got their info. :)

I have written to some of them, sometimes you get no response sometimes you
do. But the only ones responsible as I say for taking your database
information are individuals. They need to learn to do their own research.

I have noticed that even some libraries have Ancestry.com available in their
lists of databases.

All of the above are just my opinions.

God bless,
     Beth

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