Family Trees: An Online Research Tool: Difference between revisions

There are many websites on the Internet that allow you to publish your family tree (pedigree chart) online for free. [[Major Databases for Beginning United States Research|These sites]] can be an invaluable tool to the researcher to get ideas of who the parents or siblings or children might be to someone that they are researching. Many of these sites are free to search though some of them charge a yearly or monthly fee. Often there are also message boards attached that can give you additional information. However, these sites must be used with caution—verify information before relying on it.  

Often people have just looked through these family trees and decided that the people, dates and places that they found are correct, and then add that information to their own family tree without researching whether or not the information is correct. If the data you find on a website doesn't have a [[Cite Your Sources (Source Footnotes)|source attached]] or merely says something like: "Note book number 2," beware, the information may not be correct. At least 99% of the time when I have contacted an owner of a family tree regarding some information that they have published, they will respond with the answer that they found that information on someone else's online family tree. In other words, they don't know their information is correct; they are simply copying someone else's dubious posting.  

<br>Many times there are blatant errors in the family trees that are posted on line. For example, one might find inconsistencies with locations in the birth and christening fields. If someone was born in Ohio in the early 1800’s, they probably weren’t christened in England a few days (or even months or years) later. Check to see other spouses. It is doubtful that a man married to one woman in one county and having several children by her, is living in another county married to someone else even if their names are similar. It is also important to check dates out in each field. A man who died in 1793 will not get married in 1801 and have children in 1803. In some family trees, the birth places of the children can be seen jumping back and forth between two states. More than likely the family did not keep moving back and forth between the states every few years especially if the era is in the early 1800’s. Keeping an events timeline is helpful to see dates and locations of people. You will be able to see at a glance if there are inconsistencies in dates and locations. Plus you can use the timeline to know where to look in census to see if the people really did live in the area then.

You can start by looking at the censuses as well as the birth, death and marriage records of the locality listed in the family tree. You can use various search engines on different sites to look at the different people in that tree and see if they are really your ancestors or not. Adding verified sources of actual records to your family tree will not only make it more accurate but also assist others in their research efforts. You can also write to the owner of the online tree and give them the correct information along with the sources. They, too, will be grateful for the assistance. Of course it would be wonderful if all the family trees on line had sources attached. That would really help us as we verify our own research for our own family trees!