What the heck? How did I mess you my family tree so much?
Ancestry.com is one of the largest genealogical family tree database
in the world. It’s a great place to build or extend your family tree. But, you can quickly
create a big ole mess if you’re not careful. A messy family tree has duplicate images,
inconsistent place names, numerous facts for the same event, or inaccurate facts. How did they get
into your family tree? More importantly, how can you PREVENT this from happening in the future?
Howdy, my name is Devon Noel Lee with Family History Fanatics. I love helping people
enjoy the journey of discovering their heritage through building a family tree.
Today, I want to invite you to slowly and carefully build your family tree.
For beginning genealogists, you will love this slow and steady walk through of adding
details to your family tree with warnings on how to keep things accurate and organized.
For experienced Ancestry users, you might think this video is too basic. However, we all can use
a refresher course to ensure we don’t have to watch videos on how to clean up our family trees.
If you’re a beginning genealogist who hasn’t built your family tree yet,
did you know that Ancestry has several helpful tutorials on getting started? I want to direct
you there if you have not created anything yet. Once you have started something, no matter how
small or large, let’s dive into building your family tree in an organized way.
As much as I love Ancestry’s hint feature in the upper right corner,
I recommend working from a person profile page. If you’re a beginning genealogist, I would
also recommend you chose a more recent ancestor and work your way to the past.
Review what you currently have available on this profile.
In this case, I have Charles Patrick Moss. Notice I have no sources attached to this
individual. I obtained this information from family sources. Now, I want to validate that
Charles is indeed married to Annie or his parents Austin and Mary Catherine.
I have two choices. I could use the search box OR I can leverage hints.
Since Ancestry hints often offers low hanging fruit, I would recommend you take a look at hints.
I recommend that you ignore the Ancestry Member Tree hints. If you want to look at them later in
your research that’s fine. Aat the onset, ignore these hints by clicking the “Ignore” Button.
Next, you may see some images that other users have uploaded to Ancestry. Some images may include
portraits, or candid photos, or artifacts, and documents. Use your discretion whether you want to
save these images to your family tree or not. Some profiles have numerous copies of the same photo.
Try to find out when the earliest photo was saved because that MIGHT
be the original person who uploaded the image. You might also see Stories. Like this one for
Charles’ father. Unfortunately, this ‘story’ is another version of a death certificate which
isn’t very helpful. However, some researchers share great stories that piece research details
together. Review those to be sure and save the ones that do not add clutter to your family tree.
After the photo hints, you may see hints for records available on Ancestry. This is where you
will want to spend the most of your time building your family tree if you’re using hints. Records
are the backbone of accurate genealogy research. It's time to begin accepting this hint, carefully,
so we don't mess up our family tree. So click on “review”
and a side panel opens up. And you could work through the record saving process from here.
However, I want more control over the saving options.
So I'm going to click on the collection title. Sometimes this view has a few more details
than the Quick View had. Before you click ‘yes’ here,
please review the actual image. We can learn more about Charles from this record.
Oh no! This record doesn't tell WHO provided this information. We will need to make note of
that just in case there are any mistakes. We can also see that his cause of death
is an auto accident. How tragic! If, after looking at the actual
record you are confident this source provides evidence about your relative,
now you can click the “Yes” button. Once you arrive on this page,
it's time to SLOW DOWN and carefully process the information from a record into your family tree.
This is the place where your tree can become a muddled mess of epic proportions.
Let's go over each detail, step-by-step, so we don't make mistakes.
First, notice Ancestry points out that Charles' name is different on the death record from
what you have on the family tree. You can click on the box beside Charles'
name to overwrite what's in your family tree. In this case, I do not want to do that because and
lose the middle name, Patrick. Next, we have the birth date and
place. I appreciate that each field is separate. If you haven't resolved which birth date is
accurate, you can click on the option to move that to your family tree.
However instead of clicking ‘preferred,’ we're going to choose ‘alternate.’ And now we have both
dates that will be saved to our family tree. Next, for the place names.
In a previous video, I discussed how to be consistent in place names. And here is
the first place we could create a huge mess. I prefer historical place names.
In this above timeline, you see the location names for Tucson. I’m still unclear what county Tucson
was in as part of the New Mexican Territory, which is why it has an asterisk. However,
I do know the historically accurate location for Tuscon would be New Mexico Territory. But,
I could add Tucson to the place now that I have a more specific location according to this record.
You can overwrite the historical place names and us the modern one. Or, you can EDIT the
one in your family tree with the new piece of information. In this case, the town of Tuscon.
So put your cursor where you would like to add the additional information. Notice how
Ancestry will try to pre-load some other options for you. But this is
acceptable and we can go ahead and click out of that field.
When we click save to your tree those changes will be saved.
Be mindful, Ancestry doesn't have a place name checker, so you could wind up with a
host of different names if you're not careful. And then you'll have to go watch my video on how
to clean up place names in your family tree using Family Tree Maker because it's faster.
This is worth stating again. Place names are one of the BIGGEST quagmires on the Ancestry
platform. So, PLEASE, PLEASE be thoughtful as you're adding places to your family tree.
It doesn't matter if you use historical place names or the modern place names,
which Ancestry seems to prefer. The thing you have to do is be consistent.
Next we have the death dates. And notice the record has a more complete date and
the tree has a partial date. So be sure to go ahead and overwrite that.
We're going to put the check mark. Keep it preferred and
now we're going to overwrite that date. Finally, we have Oreb, Pinal, Arizona,
USA. I think that's how you say it. And then we have Oracle,
Arizona. When you do a search for this place name and nothing comes up.
So it doesn't exist. This is the one that is accurate, so we don't want
to overwrite what is already in the tree. Now some of you may be thinking, “yeah,
this is all easy.” It is easy!
And because it's so easy this is why so many trees are, are, are a big old mess! I just can't even
tell you how troublesome they can be. And I also explain this because I found myself doing this
again and again and again. I would add something to the tree, whether through hints or through a
search and save to my tree. And I would go through this profile. And I wouldn't be thoughtful and
meticulous. And then my tree was a mess and I'd have to run the location cleanup or just deal with
it. But I want to have an accurate family tree. Don't you?
So that is one of the reasons why I wanted to slow down and teach you all the trouble
spots. Because it can be easily overlooked because you're going faster you're not being thoughtful.
Another problem with place names is when Ancestry adds extra detail that doesn't necessarily help
you very much. Precinct numbers change all of the time and I don't particularly like to have
Electoral Districts or Precinct numbers. I like to have a place name and then everything else that's
not mappable information, I like to put that in the description. Ancestry doesn't have a Place
Details thing that you can have on RootsMagic. It would be nice if they did. but they don't.
I zoomed in a little bit so that you can see that's better.
I'm going to highlight the precinct information.
I'm going to delete any extra coding. And then I'm going to put Precinct 1 in the description box.
Again you can have very messy locations if you are not mindful of what information is hanging out in
this list. So we're going ahead and take it out. What I also like is that, notice Ancestry actually
used a historical place name because it was recorded this way in the census record. And yet
it really wants you to not use this because that's why all of these rando,m weird recommendations are
there. Ot would actually prefer if you take the territory out. But that's another discussion.
Ancestry does not automatically update the place recommendations for everyone
that you're going to attach to the family tree. It's a little frustrating, but it is what it is.
So again, if you want to keep your tree clean take time to adjust the places as you bring them over.
Now, let me take the time to point out another mess when people add alternative facts that aren't
needed. So we've ruled out that this place does not exist. It is a misspelling of this location.
But some people will accept the places and then think, “oh, well it could exist. So I'm
going to go ahead and put it down there.” Before you add something to your tree,
research. See if it's necessary. In the case of the conflicting dates,
it may take even more research to resolve. So it's okay to add that alternative.
But a quick Google search to try to find out if this place exists or going into the record
and seeing if it was a transcription error, can prevent you from adding junk to your family tree.
Bo ahead and click ‘save,’ and now you have that hint saved to your family tree.
A messy Family Tree on Ancestry is avoidable if you are careful. Remember to avoid duplicate or
unnecessary images and stories, inconsistent place names, or inaccurate facts. The damage happens as
you add sources to your family tree without out careful consideration and consistency.
If you have a question about some challenges you’re having on Ancestry, let me know in the
comments section as well. I often use such comments to know what videos to make next.
Thanks for watching. And if you like that video, be sure to go ahead and click the like button,
the share button, and leave a comment because all of those things help support our Channel.
And if you're ready for another video about how to use Ancestry, click on the video right there.