The Military and Census images have allowed me to obtain more accurate information about males (Military records) and family members (Census records.)

Regards,

On your #7, my sarcasm was really directed not at Ancestry enticing new customers to join, as any business has to do, but rather their giving primary emphasis in record acquisition and the research of others (trees/connects) to 20th century research. Which gets you your grandparents and great-grandparents. But after that it takes early original records.

I too actually love Ancestry and it is invaluable. But as the saying goes, the enemy of the best is often the good. However the shortcomings of Ancestry are primarily in their mindset rather than execution.

I didn’t even know who three of my four grandparents were when I started, so an ad emphasizing “brick walls” wouldn’t have done anything at all for me as a beginner… I just wanted to piece together some basics!

In the advert are you going to tell the viewers the stories are heartwarming so that they will know in case they don’t feel it on their own?

I notice a commonality among those “heartwarming” stories. Which is that they all concern research in the 20th century.

Show me instead some stories about customers solving difficult problems in the typical timeframe when brickwalls occur for American researchers, i.e. the War of 1812 back to before the Revolution. Those are the kind of success stories I will think are “heartwarming”. But of course Ancestry has to provide the original records to facilitate such research (or even be honest and direct customers where to find them in B&M repositories). Unsourced trees and member connects will solve very few such frontier brickwalls.

Mike