Beginner questions

[Gododdin]

Hello Phil and best of luck with your searching; I feel obliged to warn you that your free trial of the two subscription services needs to be monitored closely: unless you cancel your trial subscription before it ends (read the small print) you may find that you're committed to credit/debit card payments that you didn't see coming.
Godo

[Pam Downes]

Thank you all for your very helpful comments.

Pam - I realize that my '1750' comment is rather naive. I was only talking one thin branch, not whole tree. And I realize that I have more detail to collect to get completely comfortable, especially pre 1841 census. Your comments about how to go about the more detailed stage are very helpful to me.

I know that you didn't mean that you had found all your ancestors in all your lines back to 1750. (I've been doing this family history lark for fourteen years now, and in several lines I'm still only back to 1800. )
I was trying to point out the perils of finding a piece of information and immediately tying it to your family because 'it fitted', or believing that everyone has thoroughly researched their family tree.
I got caught out when I first began when I followed a family tree on the old-style Familysearch site, believing at the time that everything on the internet was correct. John and Mary married 1859 in Sleaford; son John born 1860 in Billinghay; Mary born about 1838. The reality was that John and Mary were married in 1848 and had several children before John was born, and Mary was born in 1824. What originally confused me was that the person had John junior dying in another county to the one I know he died in as my parents knew him and probably went to his funeral. Once I'd twigged that the family tree was just plain wrong I got on OK.

Pam

[thewideeyedowl]

GRAMPS is a free family history/tree program originally developed for LINUX but also available for Windows and Mac. Find out about it here: https://gramps-project.org/.

You could give it a try? If you can't get on with it, then uninstall, and try something else, e.g. Roots Magic and Legacy both offer fully-functional free versions.

And as others have so wisely said, make sure your free trials are just that - untick auto-renew//subscribe. That puts you in control. ( Don't worry - they will, 'remember' you!) You can then decide when/if to go back, and on your own terms - monthly or annual sub or pay-per-view credits.. And while you are deciding, investigate all the free resources, e.g. GENUKI, Family Search, TNA. There are lots of threads on Brit Gen - a whole evening's browsing!

Let us know how you get on.

Owl

[phil333]

Thanks for the ' auto renew' advice, and especially the free software and free resource suggestions. I've also found that FTM have an offer which essentially makes it free if one wants to subscribe to Ancestry. FTM for Mac is £ 45 and includes 6 months at Ancestry.
( Which Peter Goodey referred to upstream...)