FamilySearch Family Tree

Of the three main collaborative family tree sites (Geni, Wikitree, and FamilySearch), FamilySearch’s Family Tree is the one I use the least. Today I am going to dive into FamilySearch’s tree, as it is how they find my cousins with the “Relatives at Rootstech” feature.

What is a collaborative tree?

The idea with a collaborative tree is that there is one tree and one profile per person. So, if you and 10 of your first cousins have trees on Ancestry, for example, then there are 11 different trees, and your shared grandparents would appear on each tree, so there would be 11 profiles for each of your grandparents. If you add a photo to your grandparent, your cousins would have to manually add that same photo to each of their trees. On a collaborative tree, you and all 10 of your first cousin would appear on the same tree and you would all see the same one profile of each of your shared grandparents. If you added a photo to your grandparent, it would be on the profile that you and all your 10 cousins see.

FamilySearch claims to have the largest online tree, and they claim to have 1.2 billion people in the tree. I suspect there are still many duplicates in there.

Adding and merging

I already have my parents and grandparents entered into the tree and they are connected to the rest. When you enter a person into the tree, you will be prompted to check for a profile that already exists for that person and to merge it into the tree where appropriate. This isn’t a perfect system, as to provide some privacy protections, living people are handled differently. Sometimes the system does not present the duplicates to merge promptly. If this happens, you can merge using the ID. I did like that you can hover over the ID and copy it which makes this process much faster and easier. I also liked the option to choose one of the reasons generated for why you are merging instead of having to type it out each time.

All changes made to profiles are tracked and viewable by people who can view the profile.

FamilySearch has built this tree by people entering their ancestors and then merging into the tree, but they have also made a profile for some people who appear on records they have. So, if your ancestor Jane Smith had 10 children, and all their births were recorded in the records of their area and those records are indexed on FamilySearch then they will appear, possibly, 10 times. As you work on the family tree and add records and people, you will merge so that there is one Jane Smith, linked to the birth records of the 10 children.

Research Help

As you go through the profiles, in the top right corner is Research Help. Here you will see records suggested or potential errors to investigate. This is where potential duplicates will also appear.

Research Help

As you can see, this is the profile for my 4th great grandfather Robert Simpson. It would appear that he has been given incorrect parents, so I disconnected him from the parents, and added the correct father.

Fan Chart

You can view your tree in a Fan Chart (top right corner, pull down menu). This lets you see areas of your family tree that you may know but isn’t entered yet at FamilySearch so you can add generations.