Missing family on WikiTree?

Question

How likely is it that an entire family of ancestors is not yet on WikiTree? I've been trying to match my GEDcom with current profiles (many thanks to all who came before me on this site!  ), and there is one branch of the family I'm having no luck with.

My mother's mother was Effie Rae Radcliff (maiden name), b 1897 WV, d 1986 WV. I have been unable to find anyone on the site from either her father's or her mother's ancestors, for 3+ generations. I've tried Radcliff, Rad*, Ratcliff, Rat* for her father's line, and Duelly, Dooley, Dooly, Deuley, Deully, Duelley for her mother's line. I've also tried finding the spouses of these ancestors, thinking it might be easier to find someone who had a more common (read: easier to spell) name, then follow the link to their spouse; but that didn't work either.

I can understand not finding her; I don't have many cousins who are into our genealogy, & none of them are using WikiTree (that I've found). But none of her ancestors for 3+ generations? And I'm including all aunts & uncles in that search, too. (More unrelated spouses' names to try to find them sideways...)

Does anyone have any suggestions, or should I just upload my GEDcom for that branch?

Answer 1

How likely it is that a family is, or is not, already on Wikitree varies quite considerably.

Were they rich, famous, noble or otherwise 'notable'? Were they 'simple' folk - farmers, fishermen, and labourers?

Were they from a place that has free and easily accessed records? Were they from a place that lost many of its records to disaster and war?

Were they a 'well-to-do' family in the late 1800's when it was particularly fashionable to get a family genealogy published (particularly in the US)?

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To give you an example:

So far in researching up to my paternal 5G-grandparents I have found about 5 profiles that already existed to connect to, all of those in the 5GG generation. The other 111 profiles for my direct line ancestors I built myself. The 353 other 'known' children of the 64 families (Great Uncles and Great Aunts) do not have profiles yet; nor do their (approximately) 100-200 spouses and who knows how many children.

Answer 2

None of my ancestors for 5-6 generations were on here prior to my entering them. Now they are tied to the world tree. You will access the main tree quickly once you enter more generations. Most people find existing ancestors by about 1700 or so.

Answer 3

Well, we just turn our 10,000,000 profiles a few days ago and although that seems to be a big number (and it is) on the grand scale of things though it is quite small, if you count 330 millions americans roughly living now, how many would that be if you were going to count all of them since the beginning, add to that that wikitree is not only USA based and it should not come as such a big surprise to you that a whole family is missing.

Answer 4

None of mine of 3 of my trees going back 5 generations were on here!

Comments

I cannot tie my mother's father or my father's father to the tree, their mothers go back in one case to the late 1400's. The brick-wall ancestors came to America in the first quarter of the 19th century. My paternal line does go back to the 16th century in Germany but hasen't been connected.

Answer 5

I also found that several generations of my family weren't on here yet until I added them.  5-6 generations sounds about right along my New England lines and on other lines I'm still the only one to have worked on the profiles in my family tree going back to 1800 and even before.  So yeah, someone born in 1896, I'm not at all surprised you didn't find them.    

So, you know what that means, Kitty, it means it's up to you to get their profiles on here.   It looks like you have enough information to do it, and I'm guessing you have sources, too.