General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I just found out that one of my great great grandfathers served on the Confederate side [View all]htuttle
(23,738 posts)My uncle had done some extensive pre-internet research about his side of the tree, but he only got back 2-3 generations.
I've been researching and documenting my own tree for about 4-5 years at this point. I keep the working copy of my research on www.geni.com, since it's helped me link up with the research of others, but I've found most of my documentation on ancestry.com. Ancestry is kind of expensive for a web site, but it's cheaper and easier than driving across the country to get a copy of a census form or a city directory (not to mention being able to find someone by name, instead of by street address).
About your ancestors' shifting European roots on the census forms -- I had one or two in my own tree like that (kept switching between Prussia and Germany). I realized that they were simply writing down the current name of the place where they lived. The borders in Europe kept moving during the 1800's. Some years, their hometown was in Prussia, and others it was in Germany. You might look for an area that has been part of all of the countries that they named.
There's a genealogy group at DU, too:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=forum&id=1156