What brought you to WikiTree?
I entered into online family trees via Ancestry.com. My mom started there in 2002. I got my own membership a few years later. Fast-forward a decade. I spent a week in 2015 with my dad's cousin Sarajane in Washington, D.C. She grew up in Youngstown, Ohio and was very close to the Swedish side of our family there. She cares deeply about family and has been a protective & loving steward of their personal stories and treasures. She has a pair of my great-grandfather Claus's wooden shoes, my great-grandmother Hilda's Swedish Bible from 1890, and my great-great-grandmother Klara's Swedish Bible from 1861.
My goal on that visit was to go through her collection and digitize everything that I could. I scanned the love letters that my great-grandparents had exchanged, postcards, death condolences, graduation programs, newspaper clippings, and hundreds of tintypes and cabinet card portraits. I'd have a question and Sarajane was there to answer, share a memory, and name the people she recognized in an unlabeled photo. There were so many stories to record between complex layers of cousin relationships across several families.
I wanted to consolidate everything into a place where I could share them with our broader family. Ancestry.com had been a useful resource for research, but the site was limited in terms of how information could be presented. There's no freeform space to construct a narrative sprinkled with photos or contextual information. Also, it's behind a paywall which discourages all but the most interested and financially comfortable. I thought I'd have to create something new, then I found WikiTree and fell in love.
What is your favorite thing about WikiTree?
I really appreciate that big blank box and all the possibilities that it allows. Storytelling is so natural for humans and I love that WikiTree provides the space for that form. I can create a narrative biography about a person and footnote it with supporting sources. For clarity or context, it can be sprinkled with links to other profiles and space-pages, an historical map, or an image of the original source document.
There's also room for research notes to record where I've already looked, list questions, dead ends, or ideas for further research. This helps keep things organized and also makes collaboration easier. I have a place to start when helping other WikiTree users and vice-versa.
If you could improve one thing about WikiTree, what would it be?
I would try to improve the naming format to be more inclusive of the many other naming conventions that don't fit easily into the existing Anglo-American model. Just with the Swedes as an example, some used patronymics, some used family names, some used the name of their farm as a kind of identifier, and sometimes more than one. In other cultures, one name is it. I live on the unceded ancestral land of the Coast Salish people, specifically the Duwamish. For them, it was traditional to use a single name which might only be given on the cusp of adulthood, such as with our local Siʔa'ɫ. Very far from the LNAB concept.
Having only one name, a mononym, is not at all uncommon in history or in many regions of the world today. I would love to see WikiTree be able to more easily accommodate for diverse naming customs.
What is an example of how WikiTree has helped you with your genealogy or how you’ve helped genealogy with WikiTree?
My Friedgen, Müller, Naylor, and Watson lines have all been furthered because of the single universal tree design of WikiTree, and the flexibility of that text box. I've reached out for help in the G2G forum where I've had translation help and been introduced to resources and research methods. There was one particularly generous and computer-savvy user named Magnus who helped me out early on. He even made a personalized YouTube tutorial in which he walked me through his reasoning, his methodology, showed me how to navigate a specific database, then updated the profiles of my ancestors. He went above and beyond to help me. And it gave me the tools to help out others in similar pickles.
Any tips for someone just starting out on WikiTree?
Go slow! It may be thrilling to charge into the past, lapping up ancestors left and right until you hit Charlemagne. You might be eager to snag a famous ancestor or have a complete 10 generations back. But it will be a hollow pride if you're undiscerning or sloppy with your sources. Give yourself time to evaluate your information and don't be too hasty. If grandma gave you a handwritten tree, or if you're importing a tree from Ancestry or FamilySearch or Geni, use this chance to double-check your facts. If you establish a strong foundation of good citations and good sourcing, it will make our whole tree stronger for everyone.