News From the Tree: May 2017

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May 032017

Greetings fellow WikiTreers! Welcome to the May 2017 edition of News from the Tree, our monthly report on new features and changes around the site, notes on community leaders, tips, etc.

What’s New?

Have you Checked your Weekly Connections in the Connection Finder?

Family History Photo of the Week Nominee

Every week you can find two new connections in our Connection Finder.

Each Monday, we showcase a WikiTreer in a Meet our Members feature on our blog and they also get to be spotlighted in the Connection Finder for that week (starting on Tuesday).

This week it’s Bea Wijma. Bea has been a member of our community since October of 2013 and is one of our wonderful Leaders. She is very active leading several projects including Dutch Roots, Cape of Good Hope, New Netherland and South African Roots. She participates in the Dutch Roots Challenge and has been instrumental in the development of the Nederlands Portaal. You can learn more about her here and check the Finder to see how you are connected!

We also highlight what we call an Example Profile of the Week. These profiles are top-notch and meet the styles and standards criteria that the community has agreed upon. The notable whose profile is used as an example is also featured in the Connection Finder for that week.

Spotlighted this week is Dr. Benjamin Spock, born 2 May 1903, in New Haven, Connecticut. Dr. Spock was renowned for his theories on intuitive parenting and his anti-war positions. See how you are connected!

And of course you can always see your connection to Queen Elizabeth II and Kevin Bacon.

Follow the tag connection_finder for weekly updates on connections.

WikiTreers Cleaned House: Over 80,000 Errors Addressed During Clean-A-Thon

Wow, what a great weekend! Huge thanks to all of you who participated in our Clean-a-Thon. We can definitely call it a success!

Here are some stats from the event:

Top 5 Teams:

A Rose By Any Other Name (Leader: Emma McBeth) – 11,977
Massachusetts 600 (Leader: Bob Keniston) – 7,592
Merry Moppers (Leader: Lucy Lavelle) – 5,468
Virginia Spring Cleaners (Leader: Liz Shifflett) – 5,457
Southern Super Sweepers (Leader: Dorothy Barry) – 5,125

Top 5 Participants:

Lucy Lavelle - 3,167
Emma McBeth - 3,046
Charlotte Shockey - 2,763
Dorothy Barry - 1,897
Anonymous J. Penny - 1,732

Top 5 Errors Addressed:

603 – USA too early in birth location – 9,497
611 – Birth location in lowercase – 4,737
633 – USA too early in death location – 4,272
811 – Uncleaned profile after a merge – 4,130
511 – Unique names (spelling) – 3,894

Almost every team and 22 participants broke 1,000 which is fantastic!

As a result of everyone’s hard work, in 72 hours we addressed 80,757 errors!

New “Ancestors” and “Descendants” Buttons

We’re excited to announce this new feature.

You can now view family trees and descendant lists without leaving a person’s main profile page.

Look for the “Ancestors” button next to the person parents’ names and the “Descendants” button next to their children’s names, e.g. on https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Whitten-20

Note that they will only appear if the person has grandparents or grandchildren. For example, Chris Whitten’s profile has an Ancestors button but not a Descendants button because he doesn’t have grandchildren. A descendant list for him wouldn’t show anything that isn’t on the main profile page.

A little extra feature: putting your cursor over a parent’s name will show the grandparents. Mousing-over a child’s name will show grandchildren.

We are not changing the existing Family Tree and Descendant List pages (e.g. Whitten-Family-Tree-20 and Whitten-Descendants-20). The main content on those pages is the same as what you can now access on the profile page, but it’s useful to have separate URLs.

Change to Open Privacy Level

We’ve been discussing changing our privacy rules for a long time.

We’ve now made a decision and are starting the process of implementing an important change.

The new rule: Profiles of people who were born over 150 years ago or who died over 100 years ago must be Open.

As of today, that applies to profiles of people born before May 1867 or who died before May 1917.

Until now the rule was that profiles of people born over 200 years ago must be Open. We aren’t changing any other privacy rules. See https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Privacy.

For details on how this change will be implemented, see this G2G post.

Are you Related to Any U.S. Presidents?

There have been a lot of G2G posts lately from people who are curious if and how they are related to any of the U.S. Presidents. We’ve made it easier for you to check. Just go to our Relationship Finder and you’ll see a list of all the Presidents. You can quickly click through and see if you are related.

Question of the Week

Have you participated in the Question of the Week yet? Every Monday a genealogy-related question is posed to community members in our G2G Forum. You can join in the fun and share a little about yourself and learn about your fellow WikiTreers! Follow the tag “question_of_the_week” to get the new question each week.

We recently asked “What is your most memorable genealogical discovery?”

Here are just a few of the answers we received:

My great-grandfather was eight months old when his mother died, or at least that was the story as he knew it. As it turns out, his mother left his father and went on to have three daughters, two of whom became nuns and one who went on to have a descendant on ancestry.com. He was a Methodist minister; wouldn’t he have been surprised to know he had two half-sisters who were nuns? Of course, there is much more to this story and by far it’s one of the most memorable discoveries. ~ Pendy

I recently discovered that 6th great-grandparents are the grandparents of General Sam Houston – which makes us 1st cousins 6x’s removed. Also, descended from the same line – my 7th great-grandparents are the 5th great-grandparents of actor Bill Paxton, making us 6th cousins 2x’s removed. I’m sure they would both be equally excited to find they are related to me haha ~ Michelle

The first mention of my great great grandmother in the newspapers (and she seems to feature a lot) is when she discovers a baby’s body in Nelson Harbour in 1865. The mother of the child was charged with infanticide and my gg grandmother, who was only about 18 at the time and newly married, had to give evidence at the trial while about 4 months pregnant herself. ~ Fiona

Many years ago my sister and I visited the state historical building, which houses the states genealogical collection. I was newly married and thrilled to have new lines to search. We were discussing where to go with our research when told my sister I thought I would look into the Stephenson line from Kosciusko County Indiana. My sister looked at me oddly and said her husband had Stephenson’s in Kosciusko County, Indiana. Needless to say, our husbands are related through the Stephenson line. ~ Deena

I was just starting out in genealogy and was working on my biological lines and adoptive parents lines. I knew I had two older siblings and started searching and posting on websites, both genealogy and adoptive. A year and a half later I received an email that said, “I think you’re looking for me, I’m your big sister” Sure enough it was. ~ Shelly

Tree-Tips

Family History Photo of the Week Nominee

Remember point IX of our Honor Code: We are united in a mission to increase the world’s common store of knowledge. We always respect copyrights and privacy, but we keep information as free and open as possible.

Have you been through our New Member How-To pages yet? Check out How to Start Climbing our Tree for suggestions on how to get going.

We often get questions about the costs of joining WikiTree. See here for our pledge to keep WikiTree 100% free!

Prioritize your profile updates. From your Watchlist click the fourth header ‘Last Edit’ to sort the list so that the first profile listed is the one that’s gone the longest time without being edited. Check it out – maybe there’s something you can add or improve!

Do you have an issue, concern or problem with another member? If so, start here: http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Problems_with_Members

Community Accomplishments

Top 10 contributors for last month:

Gregory Rose (8,406 edits in April)
Esmé van der Westhuizen (8130)
Stephanie Ahles (6739)
NJ Penny (6241)
John Noel (5587)
Michelle Brooks (4959)
Kaye Mansfield (4908)
Charlotte Shockey (4865)
Michael Sheffield (4771)
Bea Wijma (4732)

Super Star recipients (recognized by a Leader for extraordinary contributions that go far beyond what is normally seen on WikiTree):

Thank you so much for your hard work and dedication: Paul Gierszewski, Emma (McBeth) MacBeath, Hans Hofmann and Lucy (Kelleher) Lavelle!

Project Updates

Project Spotlight: Puritan Great Migration

The purpose of the Puritan Great Migration Project is to improve profile pages and research of up to 40,000 early New England colonists—both Puritans and non-Puritans—who arrived during the period of the Great Migration generally associated with the Puritans, between 1621 and 1640. PGM project members actively work on the research and improvement of project profiles, following the Project Guidelines and collaborating with fellow PGM team members.

If you would like to participate, click here to join.

Don’t Miss These!

Challenges/Contests

SOURCERERS CHALLENGE: Far too many profiles on WikiTree don’t have any sources. This challenge is about correcting that with census data, BMD records/index references, family bible references, military documents, land documents, wills, etc. Each month we’ll post in G2G to start up the month’s challenge. To participate, go to this G2G post.

CONNECTORS CHALLENGE: The goal of the Connectors Challenge is to see how many individuals you can connect to our global family tree. To join in the May Challenge, go here.

FAMILY HISTORY PHOTO OF THE WEEK: If you love old photos or if you have photos in your own family collection that you love, you can share them in our Family History Photo of the Week Facebook group so they are nominated for our Family History Photo of the Week Contest! See also Criteria for Selection and Disqualification. See previous winners here.

You might also want to check out our Saturday Sourcing Sprints and the Biography Builders Challenge.

Weekly LiveCasts

Have you watched one of the weekly LiveCasts yet? They’re fun and informative.

WikiTree LiveCasts are weekly live video chats about WikiTree. Join in and chat with Mags, Julie and whomever happens to be sitting in with them.

For the most part, LiveCasts will take place every Saturday at 3 p.m. EST.

If you missed last Saturday’s LiveCast with Mags and Emma MacBeath talking about DNA Matching and WikiTree you can still view it and any others you might have missed via the LiveCasts YouTube channel. This coming Saturday, at 3 p.m. EDT join Mags and crew here as they chat about DNA Features on WikiTree. Special guest WikiTreer and genealogy blogger, Kitty Munson Cooper, will be stopping by to join in the conversation.

If you would like to be featured on a LiveCast shoot Mags or Julie a private message. To get details on upcoming LiveCasts, go here.

WikiTree Calendar

Stay up to date with all the latest challenges, contests, LiveCasts and upcoming events via our Calendar.

Thanks for all you do, WikiTreers. You’re the best.

Sincerely, The WikiTree Team and Leaders

News From the Tree: January 2017

"How-To", About WikiTree, Current Projects, DNA, News From the Tree, WikiTree Tips No Responses »

Jan 032017

Greetings fellow WikiTreers! Welcome to the January 2017 edition of News from the Tree, our monthly report on new features and changes around the site, notes on community leaders, tips, etc. Are you ready for the New Year?

What’s New?

See your connection to Rosa Parks

We’re excited to announce that Rosa Parks was the winning profile in last month’s “Connection Combat.” Thank you to Doug Lockwood and the other Connectors for adding his genealogy as part of this month’s Connection Combat: Martin Luther King Jr. vs Rosa Parks.

Rosa Parks was an African-American civil rights activist, whom the United States Congress called “the first lady of civil rights” and “the mother of the freedom movement.” She is best known for her refusal to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama, which spurred on a citywide boycott and helped launch nationwide efforts to end segregation of public facilities.

Each time there is a new winner they are featured in our Connection Finder. This means you can check your connection with Rosa Parks here.

Follow the tag connection_combat to know when a new competition starts.

Changes to Surname Index Pages

We just released a round of changes to surname index pages. For example:

https://www.wikitree.com/genealogy/ADAMS
https://www.wikitree.com/genealogy/SMITH

The initial impetus for the changes was to make WikiTree more mobile-friendly, but you’ll notice that a lot of things have been changed regardless of how you’re viewing the page.

The first thing you may notice is that it’s now a list rather than a table with columns for name, birth date, etc. This conforms the appearance with search results. Some members probably prefer the table format, so that is still an option.

In addition to improving things for mobile users, a list enabled us to create a second column for the extras, e.g. the images, tagged G2G questions, and free-space profiles. By having them on the right there’s less clutter on top.

We’re also utilizing the right column to provide a detailed list of the options for resorting and viewing other surname-related pages.

If you want to know more about the technical “whys” for these changes, see this G2G post.

View Error Reports by Surname

Family History Photo of the Week Nominee

You can get error reports for surnames that interest you.

For example:

A WikiTreer is never bored, right?!

These are now linked from:

Your personalized Surname Navigation Page. Click “Surnames” on the “My WikiTree” pull-down menu.
The surname pull-down menu on surname index pages and other surname-related pages. It’s linked as “Error Report” like with the one on profile-related pages.
The member quick links and the detailed sidebar links on surname index pages.

Automatic Suggestions for Place Names

We just implemented a long-awaited feature: automatic suggestions for place names. This is currently only available when editing profiles. When it seems to be working pretty well there we’ll add it elsewhere.

This utilizes FamilySearch Place Names database (thank you, FamilySearch!) and includes a cool research feature. You will see a little pin icon next to suggestions. If you click the pin you’ll go to FamilySearch place names research tool, e.g. https://familysearch.org/research/places/place/10564035.

WikiTree+ Merge Comparison Reports

On merge comparison pages and Browse Matches (Find > Pending Merges on the pull-down menu) you’ll now see links that say “see the comparison report on WikiTree+”.

These lead you to pages like this http://wikitree.sdms.si/function/WTWebDuplicates/Compare.htm?UserID1=2533386&UserID2=8767375

These reports may be overwhelming for the average member, but they might be very useful for Arborists and other advanced members.

Question of the Week

Family History Photo of the Week Nominee

Have you participated in the Question of the Week yet? Every Monday a genealogy related question is posed to community members in our G2G Forum. You can join in the fun and share a little about yourself and learn about your fellow WikiTreers! Just follow the tag “question_of_the_week” to get the new question each week.

We recently asked “If you had a time machine, where and when would you go?”

Here are just a few of the answers we received:

“Back to 1921 to prevent the fire that destroyed the 1890 census. ” - Doug Lockwood

“I don’t know that I would want to go back. If I did I would not be searching as ardently as I am. I really like figuring out where people go in my family. And as exasperating as it is, it is a journey like no other. Exciting yet disappointing, exhilarating yet crushing. So no I think I would have to pass the time machine to someone else.” - Elsie Dietamann

“I wish I could go back in time and find out what happened to one of my Rev War New Hampshire patriots — he served as a teenager, then left for Nova Scotia, and then returned. Grandmother never said more than, “This family has the right to wear Nova Scotia plaid!” But she left a chart behind, and the rest is history.” - Janine Barber

“I’d want to go back to my ancestor who first set foot on the North American continent, Dirck Volckertszen, and visit in a couple of time periods. First, I’d like to visit him before he took the journey (maybe around 1628) and find out what motivated him to go to the new world, who his parents and grandparents were, brothers and sisters, and find out all about his past.Then, I’d want to skip ahead through the journey to when he set foot in New Amsterdam around 1632 and watch a few moments in his life that were recorded – rumor has it he was a hard drinking man, a bit of a gambler, and had a terrible temper. He paid his debts, both good and bad. Took a fence post to an unruly landlord who dragged his wife out of their rented house by her hair. I wonder if I might like the guy.” - Scott Fulkerson

Who’s New

We’re thrilled to announce two new WikiTree Leaders!

Ronel Olivier: Ronel been with us since November 2014. She is quite actively involved in many projects including our Dutch Cape Colony Project and South African Roots Project. In her own words here’s what she aspires to: “My goals are to help build a global tree with as many South African profiles as possible. Giving each and every profile a place in the sun, to commemorate there joy and sorrows. Adding as many private sources to WikiTree as possible for future generations.”

Susan de Bruyn: Susan joined us in February 2014. She, too, is very engaged in our Dutch Cape Colony and South African Roots Projects. The comment posted when she was awarded a Super Star shows why she’s a valued member of our community: “Susanna is meticulous in the sheer amount of primary validation of profiles she does every week – not only searching for the primary baptismal, marriage or death records or the transcriptions thereof, but also citing the sources properly. She’s not shy to state her own conclusions and choices based on persistent actual hard research.”

Tree-Tips

Family History Photo of the Week Nominee

Do you have an issue, concern or problem with another member? If so, start here: http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Problems_with_Members.

We often get questions about the costs of joining WikiTree. See here for our pledge to keep WikiTree 100% free!

Are you new to family history? Check out our Getting Started with Genealogy help page for useful tips.

We respect privacy. We privacy-protect anything we think our family members might not want public. If that’s not enough for someone, we delete their personal information. To learn more about our privacy settings, see this help page.

Community Accomplishments

Top 10 contributors for last month:

Super Star recipients (recognized by a Leader for extraordinary contributions that go far beyond what is normally seen on WikiTree):

Thank you so much for your hard work and dedication:Loretta Leger!

Project Updates

New Projects

Palatine Migration, a sub-project of the German Roots project, coordinated by Dave Rutherford
Descendants of The Adam Lodge arrived Sydney 13 Jul 1837, coordinated by Michael Tait and Brian Boggs

One Name Studies

Missouri Shipleys, coordinated by Sheryl Mayhew

Project Spotlight – Greeters

The mission of the Greeters Project is to welcome new Guests and confirm Volunteers for full membership. We also answer questions from our guests and new members and make sure they get the help they need to have a successful start on Wikitree.

Are you friendly? Do you like to make others feel welcome? If you would like to participate, click here to join.

Don’t Miss These!

CONNECTORS CHALLENGE: The goal of the Connectors Challenge is to see how many individuals you can connect to our global family tree. Last month Carol Keeling was the winner, connecting 13 new branches to our tree! To join in the December Challenge, go here.

Thanks for all you do WikiTreers. You’re the best.

Sincerely, The WikiTree Team and Leaders

Monday Mashup! (12 October 2015)

About WikiTree, Current Projects, DNA, Genealogy Help, Genealogy News No Responses »

Oct 122015

Hi WikiTreers!

Did you have a good weekend? Find any cool ancestors? Break any brick walls? New places to search for records? Now that it’s Monday and time to get back to the grind, here’s a few things you might have missed last week to help get you going:

From WikiTree:

This week’s collaborative profile comes from our Willam Penn and Early Pennyslvania Settlers Project. It’s never to late to jump in and add something! You can find it here.

Every weekend our notables Project Leader Bob Fields shares significant events that happened on those days in history. Catch up with his October 10th and October 11th posts.

It’s never too late to join in our Weekend Chat! This is a great way to get to know other WikiTreers and to share about yourself.

This week’s Family History Photo of the Week Winner: Margaret ‘Daisy’ Webster.

Our October Sourcerers Challenge is under way. You can join in the fun here!

Our October newsletter with reports on new features and changes around the site, notes on community leaders, tips, etc.

Last week’s Mashup (5 October 2015).

News From the Tree: April 2015

About WikiTree, Current Projects, DNA, Genealogy News, Getting Started, News From the Tree, WikiTree Tips No Responses »

Apr 282015

Greetings fellow WikiTreers!

Welcome to the April 2015 edition of News from the Tree, our monthly report on new features and changes around the site, notes on community leaders, tips, etc.

What’s New?

Family History Photo of the Week Winner Evangeline Dounda

10 Million Profiles – Here We Come!

At just over 9,700,000 so far, we’re quickly approaching 10 million profiles. We can’t thank you enough for all your hard work and efforts to grow our worldwide family tree. One of our Leaders, Peter Roberts, started a fun thread in our G2G forum for folks to guess when we’ll hit this amazing milestone. Chime in with your guess and see how close you can get.

The Global Family Reunion

The Global Family Reunion (GFR) is only 38 days away! Will you be attending? Tickets are available here. We’ll be there so stop by our tent and say hello! If you’d like to spend an hour or two volunteering we’d love to have your help. You can contact eowyn@wikitree.com for more details.

The GFR Team also just launched the SURNAME SHOWDOWN to Fight Alzheimer’s. It’s a family-friendly fundraiser where teams with the same last name compete to raise as much money as possible – and win prizes that will be awarded at GFR! Check out the video.

If you want to participate head over the fundraiser page to create/support a team for your family last name now!

New Enhancements to Descendant Pages

We released a round of improvements to descendant pages. In addition to some minor design differences, we added:

Uncertain father or mother indicators where appropriate.
Confirmed with DNA indicators where appropriate.
More complete names for everyone on the page.
Marriage dates.
Spouse’s birth and death dates.
Hover-over titles.

Here’s an example: Descendants of George Arbuthnot Sr.

Here’s an example with some DNA indicators: Descendants of Thomas Roberts.

New Form for Uploading Images

We just made a small improvement live. When you upload an image, you can now include a title, location, date, and image type (photo vs. source). For example, see http://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:UploadPhoto&person_id=19103

Before this, you could only add the location and date after upload. It took longer, and as was suggested here in G2G, this meant that many people didn’t add this important information.

Moreover, there is a special field for the source of the photo. You’re asked to include whether you took the photo or scanned it from a family collection, etc. If you got the image from somewhere else on the web, you’re asked to include the URL and an explanation of why it isn’t copyrighted by someone else.

The source explanation is posted as a comment on the image page.

Finally you are now warned if you are uploading an image that already exists on WikiTree. This is significant because it saves WikiTree server space (and money) to not have duplicates. It also helps connect profiles when one image is tagged for multiple people.

Who’s New?

We’re excited to announce three new Leaders this month:

Doug Straiton has been a WikiTreer since May of 2014. He has a keen interest in genealogy and in history in general. Born in Scotland and having Scottish ancestors it makes sense that Doug would head up the Scots in Foreign Service Project which is looking to fill gaps in our understanding of those Scots that fought abroad until about 1700 and also the Scots Abroad Project that is looking to find the migration patterns of our Scottish ancestors before the American, and later, migrations.

Lena Svensson joined WikiTree just 10 days after Doug did in May of last year. She grew up in Hylte municipality in the county of Halland and the province of Småland, Sweden. Lena is active in many of our projects including European Aristocrats, Categorization, Global Community Outreach and Profile Improvement. She is the Project Leader for one of our brand new projects, the Swedish Project.

Guy Constantineau has been a member since December 2012 and he is everywhere on WikiTree! He is a Greeter, a Mentor, an Ambassador and a Ranger as well as super friendly and helpful in our G2G forum. If you reach the Club 100 or Club 1000 badge during a month, don’t be surprised if you get a congratulations message from him on your profile page. Guy excels at making our members feel welcome and appreciated.

Mentor Tips

Family History Photo of the Week Winner William Wills

Have you run up against a brick wall in your family? Well WikiTree has a category for that! Family Brick Wall. For information on adding categories to your brick wall profiles, or any other profile, check out the using categories page.

Speaking of categories, when a category or subcategory is named improperly and has to be changed, a whole new one must be created, and all of the content from the original entry has to be redirected to the new page. This is especially important for categories that include many subcategories and/or profiles, such as cemeteries. If your project makes extensive use of categories and new ones are needed, please check with a project leader or coordinator to review the setup procedures. For example, the setup for U.S. cemetery categories is outlined on all of the Global Cemetery Project’s state-level project pages pages, such as the one for Texas. If you’re unsure of how to set up a category, you can also post in the G2G forum and tag it “categorization” to get help from the Category Project.

Are you wanting to write biographies for your ancestors and relatives but aren’t sure what to include? Check out this help page with lots of helpful suggestions!

If your research includes anyone that might be historically significant check carefully for duplicates in any project that might contain them. For example European Aristocracy has almost all Kings and Queens of Europe and their families, all US presidents and Mayflower passengers are already here. Please check with the relevant Project for naming conventions and other information. Go to your Find drop down menu, then Projects.

Project Updates

Do you have Shaws on your tree? The Shaw Name Study is looking to add every Shaw on WikiTree to the Category:Shaw Name Study. Have Shaws? Add them!

The One Name Study Project passed a great milestone this week as well. There are now over 200 One Name Studies on WikiTree! 214 as of today to be exact. The purpose of this project is to provide you with a potentially valuable resource that will help you coordinate with other WikiTree members who are researching the same surname and to provide a space for collaboration. See the one name studies page for the full list of surname studies.

Several new Projects and sub-projects have kicked off recently. Here are a few of them:

Cymru_Welsh_Royals_and_Aristocrats_742-1535
The Hatfields and McCoys
India
Chilean Roots
Mexican Roots
Puerto Rican Roots
The Great War 1914-1918
United Empire Loyalist

You can view all the Current Projects here.

Community Accomplishments

Top 10 contributors for last month:

Vincent Piazza (11,394 contributions in March)
Robert Hathaway (10426)
Paul Leonard (7332)
Linda Gauvin (6053)
Greg Rose (5015)
Katharine E (4975)
Don Reis (4970)
Bea Wijma (4644)
Susan Tye (4569)
Wayne Burnie (4182)

Super Star recipients (recognized by a Leader for extraordinary contributions that go far beyond what is normally seen on WikiTree):

Thank you so much for your hard work and dedication: Ronel Olivier and Susanna de Bruyn!

New Member Comments

Family History Photo of the Week Winner Anna Kreetta Heikintytèar èOstergêard

When a guest volunteers to become a full member we ask them to leave a comment telling a little about how and/or why they’d like to volunteer with WikiTree. We get some really great responses. Comments such as:

”I’ve been doing lay genealogical research into my family’s past for over 20-years. I am excited by all the modern tools available to the private “amateur” genealogist.” - Jason

“Greetings to my fellow researchers: I am excited to help others fill in all those blank spaces with the names of real people who lived and died and prepare a way for all of us. I am also looking forward to filling in as many names that you have to share with me. I cannot believe how many different cultures are a part of my history. I come from seven different Native American tribes, English, French-Canadian, German, Swedish, et. al. Some direct line ancestors include Pocahontas from Jamestown, Virginia, Peregrine White and the Mayflower, those who fought in the Revolutionary War, both sides of the Civil War and some horse thieves along the way and a couple of really bad people. Together they make up the reality of my progenitors. I’m looking forward to finding our common ancestors.” - John

“I love family history and it is my passion. I am a mother and a grandmother who wants to leave a complete family history for them. It is one of life’s puzzles. It has brought new people into my life and I have been a part of bringing families together who have never met.” - Sharon

“I am extremely interested in the history of the people, places & events of this wonderful planet. I would very much like to see how we all fit together, connecting or crossing paths along the way. ” - Jason

Anyone can view these comments on the Volunteer Feed.

If you have a few minutes to spare they are fun to read through and a great way to find people with interests similar to your own or researching the same surnames/locations. When you see a comment that resonates for you, click the thank-you link or post a comment to make them feel welcome to WikiTree.

Thanks for all you do WikiTreers. You’re the best.

Sincerely,
The WikiTree Team and Leaders

Press Release: WikiTree Makes Finding Relationships with DNA Matches Easier

DNA, WikiTree Press Releases No Responses »

Nov 062014

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 6, 2014
Contact: Eowyn Langholf, eowyn@wikitree.com

WikiTree Makes Finding Relationships with DNA Matches Easier

6 November 2014: Today WikiTree.com is announcing two important features for genealogists who have taken DNA tests. These features make WikiTree’s Relationship Finder a uniquely powerful tool for genealogists who have taken 23andMe, AncestryDNA, and FTDNA Family Finder tests.

“One of the biggest challenges facing genetic genealogists,” according to Dr. Blaine Bettinger, author of the long-running blog The GeneticGenealogist, “is finding the elusive common ancestor. Finding genetic matches is easy, but finding the common ancestor from whom we inherited a segment DNA is very hard. WikiTree’s new Relationship Finder is a great tool for identifying the ancestors that two or more people share in common.”

All Common Ancestors

Genealogical relationship finders are generally designed to find the first common ancestor between two people. Genetic genealogists need to know about all the common ancestors they share with a match. Everyone’s family tree intertwines in multiple ways. The first shared ancestor may not be the reason for a shared segment of autosomal DNA.

WikiTree’s Relationship Finder now enables you to easily browse all your common ancestors.

Filtering for Multiple Matches

When a genealogist shares a segment of autosomal DNA with two or more other people who also match each other on that segment, it’s a big clue in discovering which ancestor it came from.

WikiTree’s Relationship Finder now enables you to filter the common ancestors shared by two people to only display common ancestors who are also shared by a third, fourth, or fifth person.

The Universal Family Tree

These Relationship Finder features are possible because WikiTree members are collaborating on a single tree for the entire human family.

“The genetic genealogy community absolutely must have a universal family tree,” says leading genetic genealogist Dr. Tim Janzen. “With smaller unlinked trees it’s frequently impossible to see all of the true genealogical connections with the people who share autosomal DNA with us. We are finally getting to the point where this vision is becoming a reality at WikiTree.”

About WikiTree

WikiTree: The Free Family Tree has been growing since 2008. Community members privately collaborate with close family members on modern family history and publicly collaborate with other genealogists on deep ancestry. Since all the private and public profiles are connected on the same system this process is helping to grow a single, worldwide family tree that will eventually connect us all and thereby make it free and easy for anyone to discover their roots. See http://www.WikiTree.com.