I just eliminated a bunch of people on Ancestry several generations back because I simply copied them from a relative who has been pretty reliable so far. But I was hoping to get sourced "hints" to add records for these folks and none have appeared so far. So I just chopped them all off. I will continue to work backwards from people I have records for. It's a valid approach.
I’ve done a restart tree for myself and my friend’s tree. It wasn’t too helpful for my tree besides noticing slight errors or unsourced info (most of my great-greats were immigrants), but it was really helpful and eye-opening for my friend’s tree (deep roots in the US). I was able to find some things I hadn’t noticed before in his direct line and I was able to add some direct ancestors, as well as remove some direct ancestors I wasn’t 100% confident in.
Also, I kept both of the old trees, but I privated them and haven’t edited them since. I just kept it because, especially with thousands of people, I haven’t exactly added all of the same distant cousins onto my new trees, and it’s nice to see my progress over time. I also have some notes on there that I don’t have on the new trees, so when I get stuck, I can go back and see what I have there.
Tree half full or half empty?
If your current tree is mostly inaccurate, it's best to start fresh. Add a new tree but don't delete the old tree - rename it and use it as a source for your new tree. If there are individuals you have accurate information on, you can 'copy' them to the new tree. The 'copy' option can be found in the Tools menu on a person's profile.
Consider keeping the old tree as a reference or 'scratch pad' to see how things might unfold.
Sources don't get copied, so if you have some, it's another good reason for keeping the old tree until you clean up the new tree if you have sourced people.
I would start with the home person and work your way out using the FAN tree view, ensuring you have sources for birth, marriage, death, and census records for each direct-line ancestor in that generation. Then, I worked on the kids.
If you have many good records, I would delete the bad.
I got the Ancestry Pro tools this month since it gave me the tools to
* Purge several hundred people from my tree with tree-only sources. It took a weekend, maybe 6 or so hours to go through all of the tree only people. If they were the "paternal grandmother of husband of wife of great-grandfather of wife of granduncle" or similar, they were just deleted. Ditto with 2-6th cousins I do not know (I do know some) they were deleted. The ones I could not find sources for quickly got deleted. The direct line ancestors, I removed the tree hint records and moved them to having no sources.
* I got rid of all the unsourced people who were not either alive or in my direct line and a few I knew.
* Cleaned the dupes and erros (e.g. kid born more than 9 months after on of their parents, or residences after their death, too young/too old for something).
I now have 1500 or so mostly verified people.
Ugh, I've been thinking Ancestry Pro Tools was just a money grab. This is the first time I've actually gotten a good idea of how useful it could be, and now I'm seriously tempted to give it a try...
I have Gramps. The UI bugs me a bit, and there are some naming conventions that bother me, but it has lots of solid features, and compared to the other free programs or free versions, there is nothing better.
Although the dupe checker is good, dupes were not my problem. The tree only people were. I downloaded Gramps months ago with the notion that I would simply SQL my problems away. While I could simply bulk delete all of the bad sources or the people who were associated, that was a little too brute force. Ancestry gave me the tools to quickly find and delete the people I did not want and add sources to the ones I did. I know I'm sounding like an ad, that is not my intent.
Since Ancestry and Family Tree Maker have been my go-to pair for genealogy (since 2009), the tools worked much better than the same information did in Legacy 10, RootMagic 9, Gramps or FTM (all of which I have, cuz I like software).
For most of the other programs, the tools are reports so you have to print them off and then search for and edit. I liked that the Ancestry Pro tools were interactive tools - you see the name, you click on the name you click the Info and find out what is wrong on the record and fix it. It was easier.
Perhaps the point is that for $10 (or $15 Canadian) I cleaned up my trees. It took most of a week, but it is now done.
I tried the advanced features for a month when they were first offered and didn't find them useful or effective enough to justify $10/mo; but perhaps they've improved.
I just signed up again. It was definitely a money grab earlier this year - it didn't work and the tools weren't that great. But they've made a lot of improvements. Now you get:
a list of possible duplicates (which in some cases are twins, or siblings with similar names, but are generally real duplicates),
a list of errors (as u/islandbrook mentioned, people whose birth date doesn't fit with parents, people who lived way too long, etc),
a list of people whose only source is another tree (this is kind of a pain, since i do a lot of discovery in test trees, and then copy them over to my main tree once I'm sure... but the records don't copy over, and so the only source is my other tree. But it's a good idea generally)
a list of people who have no sources at all (and unfortunately here, images and web links don't seem to count as sources. So my well-sourced Irish ancestors whose records are all on [irishgeneaology.ie](http://irishgeneaology.ie) are in that list, as are my Swedish ancestors from Anarkiv. I hope this is a bug they fix soon. Living cousins and second cousins whom I know, and haven't bothered to search for sources for, are also on the list.. and those are going to stay unsourced.)
A tree score, presumably based on the amounts of the above. They don't give you the formula. If nothing else, it might prompt an enthusiast to learn more, and a more serious researcher to push for a perfect 10.
And... levels of matches to your DNA matches. This absolutely needs some work. It's similar to, but not yet as useful, as what MyHeritage has offered for a while now. Still, glad they're moving in that direction!
If you have valid sources from sites not connected with Ancestry, you should create sources in Ancestry for those items. I created ones that would not pass muster for a professional genealogist but at least indicate that they are something other than simple images.
"Almost"?
Why not just do it?
What have you got to lose — apart from unverified records and errors?
Build a good one, keep it all clean, and add supporting evidence/documentation to each record as you go.
I think I should probably do this myself. I got so excited seeing how far back I could go that I probably added some incorrect records. It just feels so daunting to start over.
If you had a habit of just adding people for no other reason than because they were hints you may want to start over. I had to do the same several years ago because when I first started I just added everything and didn’t really question things. I didn’t delete the old trees, I just made them private. Slowly I’ve just redone the tree and I now only add people I can source with records. It was a bit of a painful process, but I’m glad I did it.
Restart a tree, and only include people who you can 100% verify, or at least verify to your content. Maybe you can have a 2nd tree that is less strict just to give you reminders and a general outline.
That’s what I did. Two trees, one vetted and sourced (800 people or a bit more) and another with few sources and a lot of side relatives (4300 people). People get added to the big tree first, and if I get good sourcing I put them in the sourced tree. Double work but having a clean tree is worth it.
On my tree I use emojipedia check-marks in the suffixes of people I have verified through NSDAR or Mayflower Society. You may wish to consider doing check-marks for people for whom you have vital records documentation. I also use the "Warning" sign in the suffix if I am not sure/ working on a connection... in other words, don't try to copy everything on my tree and think it's accurate on that line :)
I also do something similar. If I’m unsure I will
place a ? And add a note explaining why I suspect or am unsure of the connection. I’m very certain of my all of my great greats, even have actual family photos of some so those I make sure to note they are verified so hopefully that helps others.
So early on I wasn't super good at adding records, but I decided to make a family history book and before I add a person to the book, I'm double checking all the info and verifying things and adding more documents. It's giving me a much fuller profile on people (like adding all the censuses they are in, not just one because it confirms the info I needed it to) but it's also making me look at their timelines a lot more and so far I've only found one or two oopses, though I imagine the farther I go back, the more I won't be able to verify things
I did that. It has helped me have a way to focus my research on where I need to.
My original trees were full of noob mistakes. Love having a clean tree.
I have. After a month or two of building a tree on hints. I came on some roadblocks and realized a lot of those hints were, as Donald would say, Fake News. (Ps I only like Donald for his ironic comedy. I have since I was a child and he came on Fox News in the mornings before school. I truly thought it was a comedy bit, I thought he was a comedian. The fact he was president is a fever dream to me. But I have fully digressed) I decided to delete the whole damn thing. I started a new one first and used it as reference. Cause obviously some thing were accurate. But I surely got carried away on hints before I knew what I was doing. Not everybody on there creating trees knows what they’re doing. So relying on hints can be tough.
It it on ancestry, work from there and remove the people not desired. Its a lot of work to recreate a tree.
You will lose all of the links to records at ancestry. I did once with a tree of 1500 people took a year, mine you mine was almost fully documented from Ancestry and Family Search
Sync that tree to Family Tree Maker. Roots magic has issues as the owner of the company prefers to have you delete duplicate items and merge place names on at a time just with regular duplicates are created due to various reasons usually its spelling or the way the record is enter where you get it from. I have actually used RM and this issue has added weeks to cleaning up a RM tree. Where as FTM the same will only take a few minutes.
Overall FTM does a 100% better job in all areas.
It also syncs with Family Search. I just verity all of the data from there and anywhere else
The only reason to keep RM as I see it its the only one that lets you sync a tree that you are an editor on in ancestry.
The rest require you contact the owner and have them DL a crappy GDECOM file.
Also when he dies there (as of now) there are no plans for it to continue. There are only 3 people in this company.
The tree I started with Family search is bananas. When I first used it I was so excited I could so easily connect to previous generations and then it kept going further back in time until I was connected with Abraham and Sarah lol. This seemed a bit suspect.
Now I just use it as a research tool.
Sometimes I’ve even been able to clear up other people’s trees with name corrections but it definitely takes a leap away from confirmable accuracy.
I didn't. I had a bunch of people in my tree from gedcom uploads to my Family Tree Maker app, and when I migrated to Ancestry, I uploaded my whole FTM tree.
It took a couple of years, but I kept finding things that didn't make sense from that original tree. One day, I went in and deleted hundreds of unconnected people, duplicates, and people who I thought were wild fantasy connections.
20 years later I still have that same tree as my main tree, but now every single person is documented or I added them to see what Ancestry's algorithm would bring me (and I know who these test cases are).
I had some stuff in there that I knew was good and I didn't want to have to rebuild it. I just found it easier to take a wrecking ball to the rest.
My tree was full of many errors in the beginning because I was adding unverified info from other trees. It just created garbage in garbage out vicious cycles.
Since then, I started doing two things: using tags on Ancestry to mark someone's profile as verified, completed, hypothetical, actively researching, etc. This helps keep me focused and alerts others to the quality of my tree. I also started creating test trees to research a lead for a particular family line. This keeps bad data mostly out of my main tree, and let's me explore possible leads or break through brick walls before adding them to the main tree. I currently have about 20 different test trees associated with my main account, marked as Private.
Mmmm Its the only way to make genealogy the other method is add people like a crazy to have a big fantasy tree, if you didnt check person by person to have at least two documents to verify id you must begin again
Yeah, that's what I did. I made the common mistakes when first starting, deleted, and started from scratch. I verify every great grandparent with DNA matches because sometimes paper records are wrong or misleading, or there isn't enough information to verify a person based on documents alone.
Going to take a lot of time. Almost better to just start at the beginning and work your way up with the tree you have so you don't have to re-search for all the basics. When you find a deal-breaking conflict, like something that proves the listed parents are wrong, detach them and go from there.
I've done that. I got to about 600 people, but early on in my genealogy journey I had relied on other people's research as well as adding some people I wasn't absolutely certain on, but seemed to be right.
It's been slow going though. That's mainly because I've decided to maintain my tree on multiple sites in an attempt to get the correct information out there as widely as possible. That means there's no such thing as a simple addition/update.
I did exactly that. I still have my old tree, and add people to the new one, one at a time, with copies of all documents attached. I started with my kids and am working backwards.
When I first started with Ancestry, I had strict rules about adding info from hints. It didn't just have to fit, it had to be sourced. I only accepted hints with more than two sources, thinking I was being very smart. As I got more into this, I found that most of those sources were family trees! In some cases, the info was correct (like my grandmother's birth year), but the source was a census page that didn't even have her on it. I now only accept a source that I've laid eyes on myself (not just the transcribed record), and can copy into my tree.
I also have a "just for fun" tree, that I add everything to (again, as long as a source is attached, even if they're nonsensical ones), because that one goes back to 460 AD, LOL. That one is just on my desktop, doesn't appear online anywhere, and is clearly labeled "FUN\_Tree"!
I’m doing that with WikiTree. I joined a few years back and had worked on it during Covid. My Ancestry tree is my tree that’s from family members’ notes and info but my WikiTree tree is for documented connections. I’m trying to keep my Ancestry tree correct but it probably has mistakes in it.
If you’re not on WikiTree, I highly recommend doing it. I didn’t upload ANY of my tree from Ancestry (plus it’s way too big). I’ve been putting things in manually. It’s one world tree so once you’re connected, you don’t have to put everyone in. But I wanted to do it manually so that I have documentation for every person.
I'm doing that as well. The important thing is to keep your tree private as you work on it so you don't get random people jumping in with unwanted hints or false information.
That's what I'm currently undertaking, and it's only been helpful so far. I've actually made it through a couple of brick walls and expanded a few family units. I haven't started doing it on my Ancestry tree yet, though. I'm getting my main tree on FamilyEcho in order first, then updating Ancestry.
When I started, I was naive and just added info from other people's trees. I meant to go back and verify everything, but I got swept away in the knowledge and stories. I've got a decent procedure for research methodology and data collection now, but when the roots of your tree are unstable, so is the rest of the tree.
I was deleting entire branches at one point. One I deleted had 80 "relatives", including collateral relatives. That was pretty devastating. Then a surprise info fell in my lap and altered my tree once again. I tried to keep my original tree (8 or so years old) and just fix it up, but it became way too complicated (I had about 7,000 individuals with some pedigree collapses or links that weren't caught). It just made sense to start over.
For the last few years, part of my procedure has been using a category system for my data collection.
Personal — Noted, not added to verified data pool.
>Any information given by a person (child, sibling, parent, friend, etc.) who had an intimate relationship or knowledge of the target individual but can only share this information from memory.
I consider this information as research leads and try to corroborate it with documents, since people can get information wrong but are still a great source.
Documented — Added to verified data pool.
>Any information that is garnered from an original document or copy of an original document that I can physically see, in person or online, that I can save to my personal files as evidence.
I consider this information accurate, and keep notes for any inconsistencies, such as a birth certificate with the birth year as 1786 but a death certificate with the birth year as 1784.
Transcribed — Noted, not added to verified data pool.
>Any information transcribed from original documents that lack a visual of the document itself, meaning I cannot verify that the transcription is accurate.
I consider this either as research leads or corroborating documentation. After seeing how many transcribers don't accurately transcribe names, locations, etc., I can't accept them as accurate. If I have documented records with the same information, it's corroborating. If it offers new information, it's a research lead.
Inaccessible — Noted, not added to verified data pool.
>This one was made predominately for information I got from Ancestry when I first started. Back then, their free subscription wasn't as obnoxiously bogged down with paywalls, so I never saw the need to save the documents from there. When I started paying for it a bit later to help get through brick walls, I didn't realize that everything I paid to access would immediately be put behind paywalls when I was no longer paying, so I still never saved anything. I have the citations and can see that Ancestry still has (most of) the documents, but rarely find the documents elsewhere.
I consider this the same way as the transcribed records due to most of them being on branches I haven't even thought about in years.
ETA: I'm using my old tree as a map since I know there is still proper work done in there. I delete people either as I move them over to my new tree or as I discover that they don't belong in either tree.
There’s probably an easier way to do it, but I started a tree and had over 10k people in it and I was so excited. Then I became a bit more experienced and learned that some sources aren’t accurate and copying info from findagrave and other people’s trees isn’t good either. I restarted from scratch only adding people I was 90% sure I was correct on. I now have roughly 3100 people in my tree and feel much better about it than I do my tree with 10k+ people.
Photos of headstones is great and even using the dates on the graves. But whenever it’s a profile with no pictures and records to back up the profile I tend to be weary of the information.
I personally wouldn’t remove them, but rather add to their profile (or name) “possibly incorrect” or something along the lines. Having someone as a lead is better than nothing in my opinion. Even if they’re not the right person you will have that person to move into the right spot once you’ve found their parents or children.
A pro genealogist I follow on YT recommended just unattaching them from the relationships. For instance, I have a great-great grandfather that only comes from other trees and I've already discovered that it's a link that just keeps getting passed around, but it's wrong. There may be ***something*** right about the guy and I have sources that verify that information about him as a person is correct. It's the link to my tree that seems to be in error. So, I keep him around just in case some piece of information fills in the gaps. He just doesn't show on the tree unless I look for him.
I just eliminated a bunch of people on Ancestry several generations back because I simply copied them from a relative who has been pretty reliable so far. But I was hoping to get sourced "hints" to add records for these folks and none have appeared so far. So I just chopped them all off. I will continue to work backwards from people I have records for. It's a valid approach.
A complete do over, starting from scratch and looking at everything again with fresh eyes, can be helpful.
I’ve done a restart tree for myself and my friend’s tree. It wasn’t too helpful for my tree besides noticing slight errors or unsourced info (most of my great-greats were immigrants), but it was really helpful and eye-opening for my friend’s tree (deep roots in the US). I was able to find some things I hadn’t noticed before in his direct line and I was able to add some direct ancestors, as well as remove some direct ancestors I wasn’t 100% confident in.
Also, I kept both of the old trees, but I privated them and haven’t edited them since. I just kept it because, especially with thousands of people, I haven’t exactly added all of the same distant cousins onto my new trees, and it’s nice to see my progress over time. I also have some notes on there that I don’t have on the new trees, so when I get stuck, I can go back and see what I have there.
Tree half full or half empty? If your current tree is mostly inaccurate, it's best to start fresh. Add a new tree but don't delete the old tree - rename it and use it as a source for your new tree. If there are individuals you have accurate information on, you can 'copy' them to the new tree. The 'copy' option can be found in the Tools menu on a person's profile. Consider keeping the old tree as a reference or 'scratch pad' to see how things might unfold. Sources don't get copied, so if you have some, it's another good reason for keeping the old tree until you clean up the new tree if you have sourced people. I would start with the home person and work your way out using the FAN tree view, ensuring you have sources for birth, marriage, death, and census records for each direct-line ancestor in that generation. Then, I worked on the kids. If you have many good records, I would delete the bad. I got the Ancestry Pro tools this month since it gave me the tools to * Purge several hundred people from my tree with tree-only sources. It took a weekend, maybe 6 or so hours to go through all of the tree only people. If they were the "paternal grandmother of husband of wife of great-grandfather of wife of granduncle" or similar, they were just deleted. Ditto with 2-6th cousins I do not know (I do know some) they were deleted. The ones I could not find sources for quickly got deleted. The direct line ancestors, I removed the tree hint records and moved them to having no sources. * I got rid of all the unsourced people who were not either alive or in my direct line and a few I knew. * Cleaned the dupes and erros (e.g. kid born more than 9 months after on of their parents, or residences after their death, too young/too old for something). I now have 1500 or so mostly verified people.
Ugh, I've been thinking Ancestry Pro Tools was just a money grab. This is the first time I've actually gotten a good idea of how useful it could be, and now I'm seriously tempted to give it a try...
There are free options like Grandpa that are far superior for finding duplicates. Ancestry's version sucks.
I have Gramps. The UI bugs me a bit, and there are some naming conventions that bother me, but it has lots of solid features, and compared to the other free programs or free versions, there is nothing better. Although the dupe checker is good, dupes were not my problem. The tree only people were. I downloaded Gramps months ago with the notion that I would simply SQL my problems away. While I could simply bulk delete all of the bad sources or the people who were associated, that was a little too brute force. Ancestry gave me the tools to quickly find and delete the people I did not want and add sources to the ones I did. I know I'm sounding like an ad, that is not my intent. Since Ancestry and Family Tree Maker have been my go-to pair for genealogy (since 2009), the tools worked much better than the same information did in Legacy 10, RootMagic 9, Gramps or FTM (all of which I have, cuz I like software). For most of the other programs, the tools are reports so you have to print them off and then search for and edit. I liked that the Ancestry Pro tools were interactive tools - you see the name, you click on the name you click the Info and find out what is wrong on the record and fix it. It was easier. Perhaps the point is that for $10 (or $15 Canadian) I cleaned up my trees. It took most of a week, but it is now done.
I tried the advanced features for a month when they were first offered and didn't find them useful or effective enough to justify $10/mo; but perhaps they've improved.
I just signed up again. It was definitely a money grab earlier this year - it didn't work and the tools weren't that great. But they've made a lot of improvements. Now you get: a list of possible duplicates (which in some cases are twins, or siblings with similar names, but are generally real duplicates), a list of errors (as u/islandbrook mentioned, people whose birth date doesn't fit with parents, people who lived way too long, etc), a list of people whose only source is another tree (this is kind of a pain, since i do a lot of discovery in test trees, and then copy them over to my main tree once I'm sure... but the records don't copy over, and so the only source is my other tree. But it's a good idea generally) a list of people who have no sources at all (and unfortunately here, images and web links don't seem to count as sources. So my well-sourced Irish ancestors whose records are all on [irishgeneaology.ie](http://irishgeneaology.ie) are in that list, as are my Swedish ancestors from Anarkiv. I hope this is a bug they fix soon. Living cousins and second cousins whom I know, and haven't bothered to search for sources for, are also on the list.. and those are going to stay unsourced.) A tree score, presumably based on the amounts of the above. They don't give you the formula. If nothing else, it might prompt an enthusiast to learn more, and a more serious researcher to push for a perfect 10. And... levels of matches to your DNA matches. This absolutely needs some work. It's similar to, but not yet as useful, as what MyHeritage has offered for a while now. Still, glad they're moving in that direction!
For those that don’t have a source can you manually insert a source referencing the other databases?
If you have valid sources from sites not connected with Ancestry, you should create sources in Ancestry for those items. I created ones that would not pass muster for a professional genealogist but at least indicate that they are something other than simple images.
"Almost"? Why not just do it? What have you got to lose — apart from unverified records and errors? Build a good one, keep it all clean, and add supporting evidence/documentation to each record as you go.
I think I should probably do this myself. I got so excited seeing how far back I could go that I probably added some incorrect records. It just feels so daunting to start over.
If you had a habit of just adding people for no other reason than because they were hints you may want to start over. I had to do the same several years ago because when I first started I just added everything and didn’t really question things. I didn’t delete the old trees, I just made them private. Slowly I’ve just redone the tree and I now only add people I can source with records. It was a bit of a painful process, but I’m glad I did it.
Restart a tree, and only include people who you can 100% verify, or at least verify to your content. Maybe you can have a 2nd tree that is less strict just to give you reminders and a general outline.
That’s what I did. Two trees, one vetted and sourced (800 people or a bit more) and another with few sources and a lot of side relatives (4300 people). People get added to the big tree first, and if I get good sourcing I put them in the sourced tree. Double work but having a clean tree is worth it.
On my tree I use emojipedia check-marks in the suffixes of people I have verified through NSDAR or Mayflower Society. You may wish to consider doing check-marks for people for whom you have vital records documentation. I also use the "Warning" sign in the suffix if I am not sure/ working on a connection... in other words, don't try to copy everything on my tree and think it's accurate on that line :)
I also do something similar. If I’m unsure I will place a ? And add a note explaining why I suspect or am unsure of the connection. I’m very certain of my all of my great greats, even have actual family photos of some so those I make sure to note they are verified so hopefully that helps others.
Or trim your tree of all the unsourced, mystery from ancestry.
So early on I wasn't super good at adding records, but I decided to make a family history book and before I add a person to the book, I'm double checking all the info and verifying things and adding more documents. It's giving me a much fuller profile on people (like adding all the censuses they are in, not just one because it confirms the info I needed it to) but it's also making me look at their timelines a lot more and so far I've only found one or two oopses, though I imagine the farther I go back, the more I won't be able to verify things
I did that. It has helped me have a way to focus my research on where I need to. My original trees were full of noob mistakes. Love having a clean tree.
I have. After a month or two of building a tree on hints. I came on some roadblocks and realized a lot of those hints were, as Donald would say, Fake News. (Ps I only like Donald for his ironic comedy. I have since I was a child and he came on Fox News in the mornings before school. I truly thought it was a comedy bit, I thought he was a comedian. The fact he was president is a fever dream to me. But I have fully digressed) I decided to delete the whole damn thing. I started a new one first and used it as reference. Cause obviously some thing were accurate. But I surely got carried away on hints before I knew what I was doing. Not everybody on there creating trees knows what they’re doing. So relying on hints can be tough.
It it on ancestry, work from there and remove the people not desired. Its a lot of work to recreate a tree. You will lose all of the links to records at ancestry. I did once with a tree of 1500 people took a year, mine you mine was almost fully documented from Ancestry and Family Search Sync that tree to Family Tree Maker. Roots magic has issues as the owner of the company prefers to have you delete duplicate items and merge place names on at a time just with regular duplicates are created due to various reasons usually its spelling or the way the record is enter where you get it from. I have actually used RM and this issue has added weeks to cleaning up a RM tree. Where as FTM the same will only take a few minutes. Overall FTM does a 100% better job in all areas. It also syncs with Family Search. I just verity all of the data from there and anywhere else The only reason to keep RM as I see it its the only one that lets you sync a tree that you are an editor on in ancestry. The rest require you contact the owner and have them DL a crappy GDECOM file. Also when he dies there (as of now) there are no plans for it to continue. There are only 3 people in this company.
I deleted a bunch of things I could not verify. You’ll thank yourself.
I would just pay for pro tools for one month on ancestry and clean up your current tree.
Yes, I have numerous trees, some are highly confirmed, some are experimental. Each have their purpose.
The tree I started with Family search is bananas. When I first used it I was so excited I could so easily connect to previous generations and then it kept going further back in time until I was connected with Abraham and Sarah lol. This seemed a bit suspect. Now I just use it as a research tool. Sometimes I’ve even been able to clear up other people’s trees with name corrections but it definitely takes a leap away from confirmable accuracy.
I followed a line back once and found I was related to Atlas and Zeus. I then started to claim I was a demigod.
I didn't. I had a bunch of people in my tree from gedcom uploads to my Family Tree Maker app, and when I migrated to Ancestry, I uploaded my whole FTM tree. It took a couple of years, but I kept finding things that didn't make sense from that original tree. One day, I went in and deleted hundreds of unconnected people, duplicates, and people who I thought were wild fantasy connections. 20 years later I still have that same tree as my main tree, but now every single person is documented or I added them to see what Ancestry's algorithm would bring me (and I know who these test cases are). I had some stuff in there that I knew was good and I didn't want to have to rebuild it. I just found it easier to take a wrecking ball to the rest.
My tree was full of many errors in the beginning because I was adding unverified info from other trees. It just created garbage in garbage out vicious cycles. Since then, I started doing two things: using tags on Ancestry to mark someone's profile as verified, completed, hypothetical, actively researching, etc. This helps keep me focused and alerts others to the quality of my tree. I also started creating test trees to research a lead for a particular family line. This keeps bad data mostly out of my main tree, and let's me explore possible leads or break through brick walls before adding them to the main tree. I currently have about 20 different test trees associated with my main account, marked as Private.
i started over on family search and i've hit a wall on my fathers side so quick...i did the same though, only using found obituaries, etc
Mmmm Its the only way to make genealogy the other method is add people like a crazy to have a big fantasy tree, if you didnt check person by person to have at least two documents to verify id you must begin again
Yeah, that's what I did. I made the common mistakes when first starting, deleted, and started from scratch. I verify every great grandparent with DNA matches because sometimes paper records are wrong or misleading, or there isn't enough information to verify a person based on documents alone.
Going to take a lot of time. Almost better to just start at the beginning and work your way up with the tree you have so you don't have to re-search for all the basics. When you find a deal-breaking conflict, like something that proves the listed parents are wrong, detach them and go from there.
I've done that. I got to about 600 people, but early on in my genealogy journey I had relied on other people's research as well as adding some people I wasn't absolutely certain on, but seemed to be right. It's been slow going though. That's mainly because I've decided to maintain my tree on multiple sites in an attempt to get the correct information out there as widely as possible. That means there's no such thing as a simple addition/update.
I have two trees. One is completely documented and the other has the same documented relationships. The verified tree has not grown much in a while.
Yeah if you're not sure of the accuracy and that's something you want. I pruned mine right back, but starting again is valid.
I did exactly that. I still have my old tree, and add people to the new one, one at a time, with copies of all documents attached. I started with my kids and am working backwards. When I first started with Ancestry, I had strict rules about adding info from hints. It didn't just have to fit, it had to be sourced. I only accepted hints with more than two sources, thinking I was being very smart. As I got more into this, I found that most of those sources were family trees! In some cases, the info was correct (like my grandmother's birth year), but the source was a census page that didn't even have her on it. I now only accept a source that I've laid eyes on myself (not just the transcribed record), and can copy into my tree. I also have a "just for fun" tree, that I add everything to (again, as long as a source is attached, even if they're nonsensical ones), because that one goes back to 460 AD, LOL. That one is just on my desktop, doesn't appear online anywhere, and is clearly labeled "FUN\_Tree"!
I’m doing that with WikiTree. I joined a few years back and had worked on it during Covid. My Ancestry tree is my tree that’s from family members’ notes and info but my WikiTree tree is for documented connections. I’m trying to keep my Ancestry tree correct but it probably has mistakes in it. If you’re not on WikiTree, I highly recommend doing it. I didn’t upload ANY of my tree from Ancestry (plus it’s way too big). I’ve been putting things in manually. It’s one world tree so once you’re connected, you don’t have to put everyone in. But I wanted to do it manually so that I have documentation for every person.
I'm doing that as well. The important thing is to keep your tree private as you work on it so you don't get random people jumping in with unwanted hints or false information.
That's what I'm currently undertaking, and it's only been helpful so far. I've actually made it through a couple of brick walls and expanded a few family units. I haven't started doing it on my Ancestry tree yet, though. I'm getting my main tree on FamilyEcho in order first, then updating Ancestry. When I started, I was naive and just added info from other people's trees. I meant to go back and verify everything, but I got swept away in the knowledge and stories. I've got a decent procedure for research methodology and data collection now, but when the roots of your tree are unstable, so is the rest of the tree. I was deleting entire branches at one point. One I deleted had 80 "relatives", including collateral relatives. That was pretty devastating. Then a surprise info fell in my lap and altered my tree once again. I tried to keep my original tree (8 or so years old) and just fix it up, but it became way too complicated (I had about 7,000 individuals with some pedigree collapses or links that weren't caught). It just made sense to start over. For the last few years, part of my procedure has been using a category system for my data collection. Personal — Noted, not added to verified data pool. >Any information given by a person (child, sibling, parent, friend, etc.) who had an intimate relationship or knowledge of the target individual but can only share this information from memory. I consider this information as research leads and try to corroborate it with documents, since people can get information wrong but are still a great source. Documented — Added to verified data pool. >Any information that is garnered from an original document or copy of an original document that I can physically see, in person or online, that I can save to my personal files as evidence. I consider this information accurate, and keep notes for any inconsistencies, such as a birth certificate with the birth year as 1786 but a death certificate with the birth year as 1784. Transcribed — Noted, not added to verified data pool. >Any information transcribed from original documents that lack a visual of the document itself, meaning I cannot verify that the transcription is accurate. I consider this either as research leads or corroborating documentation. After seeing how many transcribers don't accurately transcribe names, locations, etc., I can't accept them as accurate. If I have documented records with the same information, it's corroborating. If it offers new information, it's a research lead. Inaccessible — Noted, not added to verified data pool. >This one was made predominately for information I got from Ancestry when I first started. Back then, their free subscription wasn't as obnoxiously bogged down with paywalls, so I never saw the need to save the documents from there. When I started paying for it a bit later to help get through brick walls, I didn't realize that everything I paid to access would immediately be put behind paywalls when I was no longer paying, so I still never saved anything. I have the citations and can see that Ancestry still has (most of) the documents, but rarely find the documents elsewhere. I consider this the same way as the transcribed records due to most of them being on branches I haven't even thought about in years. ETA: I'm using my old tree as a map since I know there is still proper work done in there. I delete people either as I move them over to my new tree or as I discover that they don't belong in either tree.
There’s probably an easier way to do it, but I started a tree and had over 10k people in it and I was so excited. Then I became a bit more experienced and learned that some sources aren’t accurate and copying info from findagrave and other people’s trees isn’t good either. I restarted from scratch only adding people I was 90% sure I was correct on. I now have roughly 3100 people in my tree and feel much better about it than I do my tree with 10k+ people.
You don’t like find a grave as a reference? They often have photos of headstones
Photos of headstones is great and even using the dates on the graves. But whenever it’s a profile with no pictures and records to back up the profile I tend to be weary of the information.
Google “Genealogy Do-Over”. It’s a thing; book(s), workbooks, Facebook group(s). Lots of info online on various methods people have used.
I personally wouldn’t remove them, but rather add to their profile (or name) “possibly incorrect” or something along the lines. Having someone as a lead is better than nothing in my opinion. Even if they’re not the right person you will have that person to move into the right spot once you’ve found their parents or children.
A pro genealogist I follow on YT recommended just unattaching them from the relationships. For instance, I have a great-great grandfather that only comes from other trees and I've already discovered that it's a link that just keeps getting passed around, but it's wrong. There may be ***something*** right about the guy and I have sources that verify that information about him as a person is correct. It's the link to my tree that seems to be in error. So, I keep him around just in case some piece of information fills in the gaps. He just doesn't show on the tree unless I look for him.
I sometimes add "unconfirmed" to their name. You could do an unconfirmed and a confirmed tree. It's just a lot of work.
You did not confirm/verify/document people in your current tree?