Public Family Trees-Can They Help You?

Hello everyone! How has your week been? Has it been crazy busy or slow and steady? Have you tried your hand at the tips I taught last week about Ancestry and Family Search? It’s super awesome, huh? I really have fun using the card catalog and the Family Search catalog. I hope you are having some good luck with them. If not, then drop me a question and I’ll see if I can help you or refresh your memory by going here to my blog post about it.

This week let’s talk about another feature of both those sites. They are the Public Member Trees from Ancestry and the Genealogies from Family Search. Now let me tell you a lesser known fact about these two features.

Professional researchers, people who get paid the big bucks, go to these features first when they are just beginning a new research project! So if you are “just” a family historian trying to find your family and are already using these features, then you are in some excellent company. It doesn’t matter whether you are a professional or hobbyist because we all use these features.

We all want to make our job easier so if someone else has already done the legwork on their family trees, then why not use it. There is a catch though. You shouldn’t believe everything you see on these trees as fact unless the information is well sourced. However, if you find something already done, then you can move on from there instead of repeating the work and wasting your time.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then let’s get into learning about them.

Ancestry’s Public Member Trees

This feature is found under the Search button on the home page. This feature gathers all of the family trees that people have put onto Ancestry. It then searches the database once you put in your ancestor’s information. It brings up many possibilities so you do have to take the time to search for your correct ancestor especially if they are Scandinavian. However, once you find a public tree that matches most of your information, then you can dig deeper and see new discoveries.

Again, just make sure the new information has good sources to back it up. Many people guess and put new information onto their trees without making sure it’s correct. Or they think it’s correct without going further into the details.

Family Search Genealogies

This feature is very similar to Ancestry. It collects all of the trees submitted by people and searches the database once you enter your ancestor’s information. I do like how Family Search states at the very beginning that “Accuracy of the data in these genealogies varies from tree to tree; we encourage you to validate all data.” You can also find this feature under the Search button on the homepage.

You can submit your own family tree on both of these sites as well. I only submit them when I know my sources are correct, otherwise I’m contributing to the problem, right?

Again, it may take some time to search the trees and find the one or ones that match the closest to your tree. So don’t get discouraged if you don’t find it right away. You may see results just by the process of elimination.

Summary

I love these features because it does make my researching life easier in some ways. It also makes it harder in other ways when I have a lot of trees to eliminate to get to the right one. However, I’ve saved myself many hours of research because I looked at the family trees first. I have a few examples where I almost repeated someone else’s work because I would choose not to look at the trees because I wanted to get started on the fun research. However, I would change my mind and find that I almost wasted my time.

So my advice from experience is to check these trees first before going into the records. You may just save yourself some work.

As always, good luck and happy hunting!

Tiffany

P.S. Need more help? Then contact me for a free 30 minute consultation and let’s go on this journey together.

P.P.S. Next week I’ll be discussing some more amazing genealogy tips! Have you subscribed to my Wednesday Wisdom email list yet? Why not! It’s where I share more tips and give you blog post updates!