I sort of started neglecting mine and it never complained so, well you know how that goes. I installed Legacy many years ago and was very happy with it. Since I've used it for so long, I feel like we know each other. My sister, the librarian and PhD uses Family Tree Maker, but then she always had the big buck to spend on genealogy and had an Ancestry account for ever. They make Family Tree, did you know that? Anyway, their free version only lets you maintain about 200 profiles (see? I speak WikiTree in my everyday language now!) So, I kept Legacy, which has no such limit. I do pay for the advanced copy or whatever they call it because I like the extra features.
But a couple of years ago, I felt flush (in the pocketbook), and purchased a subscription to Ancestry. My sister had fallen in love and wasn't doing very much genealogy (she still isn't, unless it involves traveling), so she wasn't feeding me information. I struck out on my own. I found it so easy to find information because they do have a lot. I also maintain several trees for my varied interests. I make a new tree when I work on the Connectors Project because I invariably find a family that is interesting and requires 200+ profiles to be created before making that one connection. I'm looking at your, Staub Family. I also started on of all the people who live on Degraw Street in Brooklyn because I want to see what happened to them. I have a tree for the Buffalo Soldiers who also were awarded the Medal of Honor. I really, really want to find a success story. I've had quite a number of people on Ancestry thank me because I broke their brick wall for them. Who knew? It is very gratifying when that happens. I also have a crazy cousin who writes to me every so often on Ancestry as if I know what she is talking about. We are related on my father's side. I never knew my father, but I had met him a couple of times and have a little contact with his brother, who is not a pest, and my sweet Senecal cousin. The crazy one, hopefully isn't really crazy, but her mother apparently stepped out on her legal father, and well, through the magic of DNA, she found out her biological father was a cousin of my father. So we are cousins. She wants to invite herself over for family Thanksgivings, but I told her to cool her pits! Apparently, she has a half-sister, about her age, and wants to have a sleep-over. Another cousin (male) knows both of these people and advises against barging in on her half-sister, who may not know. So I told her to not contact her yet. I think it would be better if the male cousin who knows them both decides if its a good idea and does the deed. She just wrote me that she's been talking to another cousin who moved out of state. They are going to meet up by the end of the year. Exciting, but I digress...
So I suspect Ancestry likes to string us along. I'm still afraid if I stopped paying the ransom, they'll delete all my trees. I also suspect that they hold back information. I'll do a search and find nothing, then I'll happen upon information that has supposedly been laying in plain sight in some database since 2009! It's like, "Oh! You're looking for THAT Andrew Ream!" Isn't that what I said when I searched? So, the other day, I was working on my daughter's grandmother's family (notice how do not mention my ex-husband). So, I'm working on my daughter's family and I think I am conflating profiles. They are African American so are hard to research already. Then I hit upon the idea to use my desktop genealogy program to sort it all out. I find the layout, etc. easy to view and figure out if there are matches, blah blah blah. Then I remembered that I had configured all my sources so they can be copy and pasted into WikiTree the way I want them. I can also use it to standardize place names and stuff like that there. Well, duh! I am quite the happy camper!
