Posted by Bryony Partridge on June 7, 2016 in In The Community

Something we never tire of hearing are the stories our customers have uncovered through their research. From tales of simple but content lives lived to the fullest, to bold settlers and radical activists, it’s encouraging to see how our ancestors helped forge the ideals of the future generations.

Which is why we wanted to start bringing you ‘Ancestories’ – tales of the characters and events that you discovered in your family trees and which will go on being remembered thanks to your passion for research. Here are a few of our recent Ancestories.

Janice’s story
We’re not sure whose more passionate about their family history – Janice, or her husband! Through their research together on Ancestry, they discovered one ancestor whose passion for activism would go on to force change in Britain (and the world) during the late 19th Century.

Rob’s story
When Rob began researching his family history, he never expected to find a criminal in the family. Find out how Rob was able to trace his ancestor (and her sticky fingers) from England to Van Diemen’s Land.

Rob and Annie’s story
How would you feel if you discovered your ancestor was responsible for burning down one of the most iconic architectural structures in Britain? Tim and his daughter Annie share the story of their (slightly complacent) ancestor, Patrick Furlong.

Jo’s story
After her father passed away, Jo began exploring her family’s history and the stories surrounding her connection to the ‘father of advertising’. Remember those cute Pears soap ads? Yeah, her great great great uncle, Thomas Barratt, created them.

Watch all of Ancestry UK’s testimonial films and ‘how to’ videos on Youtube.

Bryony Partridge

Bryony is the International PR Manager for Ancestry where she implements strategic communications and social media programs that bring increased media awareness for the company.

Comments

  1. I really liked their stories of their families they had learned a lot about their ancestors. Even when you have a bugger in your family you must be true full and tell about them after all they are part of the story of your family and to not tell about them you’ve lost some parts of the family. Even the bad parts are your ancestors story. So to leave them out its as if you killed them off or they never were part of your family. I enjoyed their stories very much it help me to plan to tell our story and be true full no matter how it goes it is our relative from the past and leave them out you are causing your family to have a large gap in the family history. Thank you for telling you stories.

  2. Sue

    Another good reason to publish the transcripts instead of the videos is that the sound is no good. I had to turn it up as far as it would go, but I still could only hear the 1st video. Also, it’s difficult to understand the thick British accents. I’m sure they’d have the same trouble with us speaking.

  3. Wilbur Hanson Kalb

    Many of the genealogists are deaf and I am one of them. When I went to Salt Lake City for a National Association of the Deaf convention in 1986, I saw some of the attendees doing the research at the Family History Library. Now, the “Ancestories” videos do come with closed captions but these captions were automatically made by computers. Unfortunately, the computers have tin ears so the captions are bad and the British accents are not helping. Ancestry needs to either fix the captions or, better still, provide a transcript.

  4. Janice

    I like the idea of interviewing people about their discoveries and am happy to see a feature like this. Thanks for the stories!

  5. Marjorie Younglof

    I agree with Wilbur Kalb and others who ask for decent captioning of Ancestry’s videos. An alternative to accurate captioning is providing a link to a transcript of the video. There are many, many people involved in genealogy who have hearing loss and are left out when videos are not well captioned or captioned at all. In addition, people who are not entirely fluent in spoken English would benefit from better captioning or transcripts.

    • Kristie Wells

      I would like to thank everyone for their comments around captioning on our videos. We will work to make this, and transcripts when possible, available going forward.

  6. dm Walsh

    I too would much prefer a transcript to quickly scan than a lengthy video I don’t have time for. Plus I rarely carry headphones necessary to watch a video. I do appreciate you have a budget to spend.

Comments are closed.