Intro + What's the best way to import already established trees?

Question

Hi,

I'm Daniel Lindbergh Lang, 23-years-old and very new to WikiTree.

I'd been doing ancestry on my dad's side for a while now and want to start by importing my tree information. I tried linking with my AncestryDNA data and the GEDCOMpare, but I still seem to have to manually create to add relatives. When I manually added relatives, I eventually found a match, but the site says I need to be on the "Trusted List" to incorporate my work. I tried private messaging people but haven't heard back yet. I'd really prefer not to reinvent the wheel, so I'm unsure what to do next. Do I just wait until people add me to their Trusted Lists of our shared ancestors to proceed?

Trying to find the folks who've been researching this already. My dad's side of our Lang family traces back to Austrians and Volga Germans who ultimately settled in Kansas; Ellis for my pa's family but also in Liebenthal and Trego County for relatives. I've more specific information than that, but figuring out how to not have to reenter all my information has been tricky. Besides Lang, other family names include Eigner, Flachs, Neuburger, Weber, Haas, Gaschler, Seidel, Kraus, Schoenberger, Schaeffer, Markiewicz, Augustin, Stadler. Among the most exciting family facts to me has been how both my paternal grandfather and grandmother had ultimately descended from children of Josef Flachs and Marianna Markiewicz. I hear that many were Catholic Christians, which I assume helps with finding records.

Beyond my dad's side, I've also been researching my mom's side. My Chinese relatives gave me thorough genealogies about our Lin and Xiao sides, but they're all in Chinese. I'm unsure whether WikiTree has much on China but would love to learn. They're from Hunan, mainly Dongkou.

Cheers, and looking forward to replies,

Daniel Lindbergh Lang

Comments

Among the most exciting family facts to me has been how both my paternal grandfather and grandmother had ultimately descended from children of Josef Flachs and Marianna Markiewicz. I hear that many were Catholic Christians, which I assume helps with finding records.

You may get in touch with Jon Czarowitz. He had done a lot of research in the Bukovina, as his grandfather originates from there. Maybe he can give some advice on finding sources from that area?

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Thanks for the tip!

Answer 1

Hey Daniel,

As WikiTree uses the concept of a unique profile for each person, it is important to try not to create duplicates. Then, if you find a profile that you want to link to your profiles, you can do this yourself if the privacy on the profile is 'open'. In your case it sounds like you hit profiles that have some privacy lock. Then you need to ask the profile manager to create the link or add you to the 'trusted list'. That means you become like a co-manager of that profile.

The profile managers will look at your suggestion. They will see if you have real sources to prove the link. A real source is the real document, not a published family tree on a website. They also look at locations and dates. The more precise you can be, the better.

If the profile manager does not respond within about a month, you can follow the steps at the non-responsive managers. Basically then you ask the staff to remove the manager from the profiles. This is not a website for people that want to put their trees and then leave it again.

The reason for this is because WikiTree wants to be a precise place, with proven links and thus well documented profiles. This takes time, a lot of time.

There is no automated linking. There are simply too many untrustworthy familytrees out there, it is impossible to know which are correct and which are not. The commercial website you mention can be great, but also very bad. Unfortunately there is no real linking to sources either, everything is text in the biography. Some or us are working hard to make that smarter, but at this moment it is just copy-paste of the full source (please, no familytrees).

Hope this helps

Comments

Hi,

Thank you for your explanation. Having a better sense of this website helps. Well, I will be patient then and look forward to hearing from those profile managers, then.

Thank you for your attention to detail! I understand this could take a while, but accuracy definitely beats hastiness.

Best,

Daniel