How To Use Online Family Trees The Right Way
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Post updated February 25, 2022
Online family trees can be a fabulous tool in your genealogy toolkit. They can also be a trap in steering you in the wrong direction in your research.
One of the biggest online family tree mistakes many people make is to start copying other people’s trees without checking to see if the information on them is correct.
It’s so easy, right? The work has been done for us! But has it really?
Instead, we should use these trees as hints to use as a starting point and not completed work.
Image: Craig_Steffan/Pixabay
Are online family trees accurate?
While some people have shared quality trees online, unfortunately many aren’t reliable.
When coming across a tree that you think matches your family, it can be really tempting to copy it. But this can be one of the quickest ways to create problems in your genealogy research.
It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t search for family trees or use them if you find them. But it does mean it’s best to not take them at face value.
Whether it's on Ancestry, FamilySearch, or a personal website, be careful about how you use the information that you find.
Sadly, there’s a lot of careless work out there. The majority of trees don’t have sources, especially (it feels like) for the information you most want to know!
“Facts” like when and where someone was born are included without anything to back them up. Or, they may point to sources that don’t contain any evidence of that information, such as a census used as a source for a hometown.
If you look more closely, you can tell when people are copying the information off of each other because several trees will have the same, wrong information and the sources are just other people’s trees.
The main issue with copying information is that if you later figure out it’s incorrect, you may need to start from scratch. I’ve talked to several genealogy buddies who copied other trees when starting their family trees and later realized they were inaccurate and scrapped the whole thing and started over.
It might not be possible to see where you went wrong and clean up your tree from there. And even if you could figure it out, it would not be a fun project to go back and fix everything.
If you copy incorrect information, you’ll waste time researching the wrong people and have to spend even more time fixing everything.
To build your family tree accurately, you’ll want to take some steps to be sure the family trees you use as sources are reliable and avoid any problems later down the road.
Related posts:
6 Common Genealogy Mistakes And How To Avoid Them
Solve Your Genealogy Brick Wall: How To Research A Last Name In An Area
Solve Your Genealogy Brick Wall: Review and Analyze Your Research
Solve Your Genealogy Brick Wall: 10 Ways To Widen Your Research Net
How to use online family trees the right way
Like I said, family trees are a fantastic place to find hints to use in your research, but there are some best practices to using them to ensure you don’t introduce any errors into your work.
1) Check for consistency. First, create a timeline of your ancestor’s life and compare the information on the tree to it. Look at each person in an online tree with a critical eye. Things like spellings of names and dates can slightly vary but look for consistency.
Is the person born and baptized in the same place (town/county/state) – or at least a very nearby locale? Have you found them in the same region for every census and then someone has a prison record for them in another country? (See the next section for more on this.)
Does the information on the tree match the information you already have on your timeline? Is any location or event inconsistent with what you know about them?
Do some basic math. Were they 110 years old or other unlikely age when they died? Are the ages that they got married and had children appropriate? Did they have children when they were 12 or in their 50s? Were they born before their parents?
2) Verify everything. Even when a tree looks accurate and matches up with some of what you already know, verify each event yourself. If they have sources listed, even better. Double-check each source for accuracy.
If they don’t include sources, take the time to research the event, using the information as a springboard. The information may totally be true, but find the evidence for it.
Only add something to your tree after verifying the information on your own.
3) Make contact. Don’t be afraid to reach out to the person who created the tree. Politely ask where they got their information. It’s possible they have the source information but didn’t include it. Always assume they have the best intentions in their research and don’t accuse them of making a mistake. (Believe it or not, this unfortunately happens.) You may even meet a cousin and get photos and stories from it!
4) Save sources. If someone provides a source and you find it’s accurate, save it to your online tree and also download it to your computer. Always, always, always make sure you have your own copy in case you cancel your membership or the source disappears. Database collections can change over time and images can be removed.
5) Document your work. Whether you have a public or private tree, always include your source citations. If you have documentation for a source that isn't available on Ancestry or FamilySearch, write a citation for the event saying where you found it.
6) Keep a separate tree. Don't rely on your online family tree as the main storehouse of your genealogy research. Maintain your family tree in software like RootsMagic or Legacy Family Tree. And back it up regularly!
Related posts:
Solve Your Genealogy Brick Wall: How To Research A Last Name In An Area
Why Isn’t My Ancestor in the Census?
How To Build The Best File Folder System For Your Genealogy Papers
Examples of questionable trees
Here are a couple of examples of wonky trees that I’ve come across. I’m not trying to shame the creators because we’ve all made mistakes in our research at some point. However, these are great examples of why you should slow down and double check things first.
This error is so obvious I don’t know how it’s been copied onto multiple trees.
This tree has the parents of Samuel Merrill being born about 50 years after the birth of the Samuel’s wife. His siblings are born decades after his own children. Samuel’s parents are born after their own granddaughter! No way.
This tree below is too large to show in full, but the two main questions are the Gaol Register and the parents. If you look at the gaol record, it says he was 25, so the age is about right. But it said that he was teaching Sunday school and had 10 years of that duty left. He had prior convictions. His punishment was transportation for 14 years.
This was in 1833. My Samuel Jones married Sarah Merrill in 1831 in New Hampshire. He was poor, so how did he get to England to teach Sunday school – and why? And how did he do it when he was having children in New Hampshire? This tree also names his parents but doesn’t give any citations. The birth is a decade earlier than every record I have, which is theoretically possible but unlikely.
Related posts:
How and Why to Research Your Collateral Ancestors
12 Tips For Getting Back Focus And Motivation In Your Genealogy Research
How Setting Genealogy Goals Makes You A Better Researcher
Final thoughts
Online trees are a good way to find clues to get started on your tree or to get help with solving brick walls. But always double-check everything you find on them! Be sure you’re researching the right person and have the correct information.
When you do it the right way, you may attract long lost relatives through your own online tree!