Off topic: chat

Anyone know if newspapers.com in the states ever has free weekends anymore? I've looked for over a year, but now can't access their facebook page.

They won't accept (non-renewable subscription) payment ways for their free 7 days trial, and they've restricted viewing of other people's clippings now too. I can usually decipher the words on their (often jumbled) "read text" consolation option, but pictures and images are fully blocked without a subscription (and they won't take my money).

yes thanks Mick I did - apparently it's not the email, it's any disposable pay card they automatically refuse.

Following the closure of the 'continuity' thread here I've made my views on contributing to Boards known over on the Business forum.

3x AncestryDNA samples posted on the same day and marked as received at various times on the same day, a few days later

One is now through fully, tree linked and waiting for thrulines to generate

The other two are still just marked as received!

I know about Thrulines being based on others data - I have to ignore a very full tree presenting as being one of my great great grandfathers, due to knowing that Achill Islanders did not possess the powers of time travel or teleportation in the 1800s!

They accepted every hint going, for an extremely common name. He apparently died twice in two different continents - I'm not even confident enough to claim the Mayo burial is him. Ironically I know for a fact they lifted some of the info from me (attached public images I uploaded, dates I have from Scotlandspeople) to begin with, but then added in parents, marriages, non existent emigration etc from the first hints going.

But they can be useful pointers towards records that may not have turned up in searches, when you do get a competent one

The other two samples have now jumped up to Extracting, pretty much in lock step, so must just have ended up in another narch

Well yes, accurate in the post-1900 period, where anyone with a bit of intelligence can easily find stuff. However, when you have a man being born in Oxfordshire in 1730 and taking a DeLorean to South Tipperary, having children there in the 1740s and being interred back in Ox., one has to wonder. Validation in Ireland pre-1800 generally is almost impossible from paper and it's very much pushing the envelope with DNA (>250yrs.).

Some of it is due to my own stupidity; about 30 yrs. ago I shared trees for three distinct male branches of my family with a distant US cousin, hoping his extensive research could help connect the three as brothers 1790 -1797. He asked another, who concluded they were brothers and it was splashed all over the internet. To make it worse he credits the research on the brothers' connection to me!

It's been a while since I've renewed my Ancestry membership. Do they tend to have Black Friday deals for the 6 month / 12 month options?

I never heard of Lostcousins. I'll check that out, although I've had the wrong experience with living cousins before. I don't want my home to turn into a hotel! 😬

Hah Jellybaby…. yes beware of 'third cousins once removed'….. snap😐️

Lostcousins asks you to fill out direct relatives in 1881 UK census with the idea of matching up others who have the same data. Each census page would have a unique reference. I have UK ones but also managed to get Irish ones in somehow. I have never had any follow up from that but the newsletter can be interesting reading. There is a discussion forum as well. It is a one man operation and he gets some income from recommending things if people click thru from his site eg to Findmypast or Ancestry offers. There were some zoom things during covid and he has organised some holiday workshops in Portugal if I remember correctly but none in recent yrs. He is in his 70's now.