Last week I finished my labour of love, downloading any historical document associated with the modest family tree I had built on Ancestry. My goal was to secure the records so I could stop paying Ancestry a monthly fee for the pleasure of hosting my family tree. My original tree was roughly 260 people, all connected directly to me.
Along the way I learned a lot about storing the information myself. Although I have my own family tree hosted on this site, I decided to download the records and store them on my computer (backed up of course!). I might link them to my tree one day when I’m not working full time.
As I went along I got sidetracked, following the direct line but also adding brothers and sisters along the way. I discovered several interesting characters and added a host of places I would like to visit one day to see the churches and villages they lived in.
Of course my original count of 260 people nearly trebled to 719 so now I come to the second phase of my project. I need to update my original Excel file of individuals, but will probably focus on direct lines, and try to ignore the branches where possible. I won’t be closing my Ancestry account just yet, but I’m hoping I can tackle this phase within a year by focusing. I’ll keep you posted.
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