Thursday, October 25, 2012

What If Your Tree Is Blank At The Start

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints are likely to have their tree looking like a very complete pedigree chart. For many  years the church has been inputting relationships from various sources, including submissions by the members. Also, new.familysearch.org, the predecessor to Family Tree has been functioning for many years.

That fact gets many people off to a fast start. The problem with this is that much of the information in the Tree is incorrect. In their entusiasm many were sloppy in what they did. Many weren't concerned about doing careful research or documentation of what they put in the Tree. Many depended on family legends rather than research. Some came upon the mistakes and asked the Church to fix things in new.familysearch.org and some did not. This caused a great burdon on the Church missionary force, creating a need for several hundred support missionaries.

Family Tree allows one to fix the mistakes on their own, but please follow the concept of being careful and methodical. When  you fix something provide the documentation to the Tree that proves your decision.

Now, if you find that your Family Tree is blank, that might be a blessing for the reasons above. You are in a position to do it right from the beginning. However, as  you start going out several generations you are likely to connect to work that is in the Tree by a distant cousin. Follow the same process of verifying and documenting the facts you find.

The process of the software is to input details of the ancestor you are entering, letting Family Tree search to see if that ancestor is in the system - accepting that is the right person - or, adding that person as your ancestor.

These videos do a good job of showing the process of adding a person or adding information about that person.

Click here to add a person not yet in your tree.

Click here to learn how to add to the vital information

To access the entire training site, click here.

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