footnote users

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Comment by Margi Peoples on July 22, 2009 at 7:16pm

Hi,
I used Footnote at the Family History Center, but I decided to join for a year because I needed to print out some information. I was trying to find my ggggrandfather's discharge papers from the Navy during the Civil War. I couldn't find anything but I found where his widow was trying to collect his pension. Wow!! What interesting information that I found about her. Alot of it is heard to read but what a life she led. I couldn't find out if she got her pension. I have so many unanswered questions.

Comment by Kate Steere on July 22, 2009 at 3:25pm

I use both Ancestry and footnote, I still use Ancestry's old search format, because I like it better than the new version. I'm still not thrilled with Footnote's search engine, and I've been working with it from the beginning when I was using the free PA Archives. I find Footnote to be slow, I'm assuming this is because of all data they have, and because my computer is on the slow end anyway. Having said that, there is definitely information I cannot find anywhere else, like I do on Footnote. They have a great collection of City Directories, CSA documents and newspaper articles.

Comment by Tanya Hood Reeves on July 22, 2009 at 11:46am

I use both Footnote and Ancestry. I much prefer Footnote for images (the quality seems to be better). I have only been a member for a few months, but I have already found a lot of information. So far I have just been dealing with different image collections and have yet to participate in "member discoveries," annotate, or create a page. I find myself using the site more and more, as well as cross referencing my research from other areas. I think Footnote has a 30 day trial membership, and I recommend trying it. For those of you who may do that, I would also recommend having a research list made in advance (e.g. American Revolution, Civil War, Dawes Packets etc.) to enable quicker searches. Initially I found the searches to be kind of difficult; the images are often shown out of order. An easy way to overcome this is to search within a specific collection, then when you click on image that may be page #X you can look at the bottom of the image and see the collection & page #. Click just to the left of # and it will take you to the browse titles/content page where everything is in sequence. I keep my working databases (trees) on Ancestry; this way I am easily able to connect with other researchers and make changes and/or notes that are constantly evolving.

Comment by Lydia McVay on July 22, 2009 at 11:19am

I had read somewhere that you could use footnote for free at LDS Family History Centers. Surprised me. I'm a volunteer at one and had never known that. I called my supervisor and she didn't know that. She called Salt Lake City and now we can get footnote (for free) at our center. I'm looking forward to using it. I had a subscription in the beginning when footnote started and in that years subscription I never found anything of use and it was very difficult to use. I know they have added much more information since then and are one of the companies the National Archives are allowing to digitalize their records. And they've gotten easier to search. So I'm hoping to find information now.

Comment by Tonia Kendrick on July 16, 2009 at 6:17pm

I agree with Sherry. I have both Ancestry and Footnote and don't feel as though I'm duplicating memberships. I'm looking for access to original source documents and each service has a wide variety of documents with little overlap. I started both services with their initial free trials.

Comment by Sherry Hightower on July 15, 2009 at 2:17pm

If you look at the slide show of pics on my page, the CSA records were downloaded from Footnote. Personally, I would rather use them if for nothing more than document retrieval. It is still a very dollar value!
Here is a scaled down pic of a CSA record

Comment by Sherry Hightower on July 15, 2009 at 3:28am

I would ask what are you looking for? With Ancestry.com, you can build your family tree, automatically add the documentation to the tree, publish you tree and connect with others researching the same surname or even same ancestor.
You can download the images you find from Ancestry as well.

With Footnote.com you can see scanned copies of the original documents, add "footnotes" called Annotations to the images, for people's names, dates and locations. You can download the entire document (doesn't include the annotations) or just a section and I think the quality of the image is better with footnote. You can write stories and upload these to your acct for all to read, you can add photos.

This is just a snapshot comparison so without knowing what your ideas are, what are you looking for in a service, it is hard to answer. I have both and don't feel as though I am duplicating my memberships.

Comment by George Geder on July 14, 2009 at 8:56pm

Hello all,

Can someone do a comparison of Footnote & Ancestry.com?

Peace,
"Guided by the Ancestors"

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