Habit #14 -- AncesTree Dot Com

The blogger's paternal grandfather circa 1940

Whoever is behind Ancestry.com, is raking it in. I resisted the ads for years. I even resisted invitations to fill in blanks on family members' trees until I received a notice from an attorney in Iowa. One of my mother's first cousins who had never married or produced any children had died without leaving a will. He has a sizable estate which will be distributed to the surviving children or grandchildren of his numerous siblings. There are at least 200 hundred of us, so I don't expect to receive more than ten or twenty dollars. But still. An inheritance from a long-lost relative.

Out of curiosity, I took out a temporary "free" membership in Ancestry.com. Who was this man who never married, had children, or made a will? The first person I entered was my maternal grandfather. I didn't have any specific information about him other than his name, but that was not a problem. Ancestry lets you give approximations, so I said he was born around 1900 give or take 10 years and, voila! Ancestry.com supplied a chain of "hints" which included his World War I and II draft registration cards as well as U.S. Census reports from several decades up to the 1940s. With each hint I verified, more hints popped up and suddenly, my family tree looked more like a forest.

A basic Ancestry membership costs $19.99 per month. This gives you access to a vast trove of public information including birth and death records, telephone directory pages, and family trees developed by other Ancestry members who are somehow related. I got lost in my family forest and began filling in data on second and third cousins twice and thrice removed. After a couple of days, I realized that I had fallen into a labyrinth that teased me into moving forward rather than trying to find my way out. I simply couldn't stop myself.

$19.99 per month is a lot of money, $240 on an annualized basis. But there are many incentives to pay $34.99 per month because at some point, your ancestors lived on another continent and the only way to find out if you are descended from royalty is to check overseas archives. I keep telling myself, I can quit any time and I will only pay the monthly membership fee while I am researching, but what happens to my research if I stop paying? Will Ancestry.com hold it hostage?

I am afraid to find out and so I am praying there is a way to download everything otherwise I may spend my retirement funds keeping my ancestors alive.