To take full advantage of using the MyHeritage genealogy website for your family history
research, you need to build a family tree. Now, I'm going to share with you today three ways
that I recommend that you build your tree over on MyHeritage whether you're a beginner or you have
been climbing your tree for a while. If you're new to genealogy, be sure to check out the link
in the description below for our FREE Guide on how to get started successfully in family history.
Now, when you're climbing your family tree, you need to put information into an organized way.
And when you do this on MyHeritage, then you kick in a research assistant
that can help you climb your family tree while you're not doing genealogy.
Which is always a bonus. But the first thing you need to do is get your tree onto MyHeritage.
Now, if you're just starting out, then you need to build your tree manually. Let's show you how to do
that right now. Now, when you start a MyHeritage account, you have to sign up. After you fill in
the information about yourself, they want you to add information about your parents. And if
you've already built your family tree elsewhere, you can do a GEDCOM upload right here. However,
let's just focus on manually building our family tree. To build your tree on MyHeritage, you have
to sign up for an account. They offer various free trials, but they do require account information,
credit information some type of payment. So, that after your trial that you can pay them.
So, once you do that, then it's time to manually build your family tree. So, the first thing to
build your manual family tree is to start adding your relatives' information. So, you can type in
as much information you can about your mother as possible. So, I'm going to go ahead and type
in this information. Now, when I was typing things, I had to be very, very careful. So,
this is your mother's mother, and this is your mother's father. After keying in the information,
you can click NEXT. And then you repeat the process for all of your ancestors. Now,
after you've completed all of those steps, you get a thank you message that says, "Welcome,
you have so many people in your tree." Because you may or may not have added everybody during
the setup process. So, let's show you how to add somebody to your family tree.
Let's say you want to do the parents of Emma Virginia Townsend. So, we can click on ADD FATHER.
And then we're going to get this profile. And we can type in the information about Emma's father.
Now, one of the things that's unique on the MyHeritage tree that I haven't found on other
websites, is that when you start entering in the dates, you can change from EXACT. I know
this is their exact birth date. Let's say you know that they were born before [...] 18 years before
your ancestor's birth date. So, you could put in your ancestor birth date like 1918
and put in BEFORE they were born. They had to have been born about 18 years before my
ancestor was born. That's an option you can use. AFTER. CIRCA, meaning about. And there's also...
This is an older gentleman between 1841 and 1843. I'm not exactly sure when. So, that are those are
some options for your research. So, I'm just going to go ahead and use 1842. Now, over in the place
names, there are no standardizations on MyHeritage there. But there is a drop-down list of places. As
you start adding places into the family tree, they will have some places that you can choose from.
I'm going to go ahead and choose one but take off that front. So now, I have the county in Ohio. And
because there's no standardization, you won't know that is this Franklin, a city in Ohio or
Franklin County. So, you might actually have to put the County in there. So, I'm going to
finish filling out the rest of the information and click OK, And now, I have William James
Townsend ready to go. And you can keep adding people. And you'll just get this little quick
guide. And you'll add in the information. The next way you can build your family tree on MyHeritage
is to upload a GEDCOM file. There is a link in the description to a video on how to create GEDCOM
files from other platforms. So, be sure you check that out. Once you have a GEDCOM, you can either
upload it during your registration process, or you can import a GEDCOM file by going to FAMILY
TREE - IMPORT GEDCOM. Browse your computer for the file. And then go ahead and upload.
You'll get this message that says, "it's being processed." And once it's complete,
you will receive a notification that it is complete. Once that process is complete,
then you will see that your trees are here in your tree. And how did I get there? From any page
on MyHeritage website, I went to MANAGE TREES. And now, I am here. So, I can begin viewing my
tree. When I clicked VIEW THE TREE, because of my personal preference settings. It took me to
a fan chart. So now, this is a very, very small tree so that I could build it quickly for you.
But I'll show you an example of another one that I had imported that has a few more people. You
would have to change the different views because there are 21 people in this tree, but you only see
the direct ancestors of Geraldine Rang. So, siblings are in the tree, but you're
going to have to check different profiles to get there. And if you want to build out your tree,
then you should just do the ADD A FATHER. And go through that process that I showed you earlier
in the manually build. Before we continue, I want to personally invite you to our live streams.
They happen every other Friday. be sure to check the channel page of Family History Fanatics to
find out when we have the next live stream. or sign up for our newsletter so you'll never miss
another episode or when we go live. Now, the next way to build your family tree is something I will
tell you no matter where you build your family tree. And that is to build your family tree
based on records. So, let's go over to MyHeritage and show you how you can
build your family tree based on records. When this person has record hints,
you're usually going to find it either by going to the full profile and seeing the record hints.
or if you're in the fan view and you click on a profile, there's the records hints right there.
here is a list of record matches. Now, don't be confused by record matches.
some of the records are other trees, such as the FamilySearch family tree and the Geni world tree.
In a way, it's a record. I define records as actually documents- primary source information.
So, I would highly recommend you choose records first and then go to trees. So, let's start
with a record. Now, this record does apply to my ancestor. So, I'm going to go ahead and confirm
that information. And it's going to bring the source information over. And I can bring in the
source information for six more individuals. It'll bring the residence information over
for all of these individuals, which is really great. And then I can go through and click
SAVE TO TREE. And now, the match was confirmed. And the information was saved to the tree. Now,
I didn't actually add any new individuals. So, let me go back to that FamilySearch hint. So, here's
a FamilySearch hint, and we're going to review that. I will be getting a spouse's information.
And I will be getting the death place as well as a son's name. So, we're going to go ahead
and show you how to [..] We need to confirm that match. And I want to extract the information. I'm
going to start extracting the information from the FamilySearch family tree into to my my MyHeritage
tree. So, here's new information. I have a partial marriage date, and I can bring that over.
I have a match where this is Plymouth Village, and this says a more accurate place. And I can
add as an alternative, or I can overwrite it. I'm actually going to go ahead and overwrite it.
And then I have a death date in place. And then I can match through
all of his brothers and sisters. For now, I'm just going to hop down to the new people.
So now, we have a new person we can add to the tree. So now, we can add a son. Add a son,
and they just bring all the information over. Once you're done, for every new person you want
to bring over, click SAVE TO THE TREE. So, this confirms that the information was saved
to my tree. And I can go back to the profile of Winfield Scott right here. So, on this profile,
you can see that it has the information that I added in. And that I have one more record that I
can go and review. I have his children. or his son and his wife, as well as his other family members.
So, all the information I can build out using the record building process, and I can keep building
record by record. Now, there are other ways to build your tree on MyHeritage. I like to build
accurate family trees. So, I'm going to tell you to stick to manually building your tree
or building based on records. And do it one at a time after you start your initial tree,
even if you upload a GEDCOM. So, use those three ways to build your family tree. If you
want to learn more things about how to use MyHeritage, check out this playlist right
here. And if you're ready for something new, check out this playlist right there.
So, let's go over to fit my hair. If you want to see more videos on how to use my slide over