Do I start all over?

Question

This is so confusing. I have my tree on Family Search and have used Ancestry in the past. I want to see if there are any trees here I connect to but the search is not easy to use. Do I have to enter my tree all over again? I want to know if it can help me before I spend hour creating profiles that could possible be duplicates.

Answer 1

Try using the Find menu and Seach option to look for some of the names you are interested in. This will give you an indication of profiles that might already exist for the people you would want to add to your part of the Wikitree tree.

Answer 2

You can create a gedcom of your tree at Family Search. Then try gedcompare just to see who might match. You don't have to do anything else with it, if you don't want.

Comments

Excellent suggestion!

Answer 3

Hi Susan,

I also use Family Search to research sources and am very familiar with the layout. If you can give me an ancestor I can find out there (perhaps a grandfather, or all 4 of your grandfathers would be even better?) then I might be able to help you in your search. We have an extensive number of profiles out there, and in most cases, a connector or family member has been able to successfully find a link to someone on the tree.

You will need to add your branch to the tree, at least any that are not currently added, but it does open up your branch to the global tree and all its connections, which is very nice. Please let us know if you need any help or we can provide assistance that will help you out.

Thanks!

Comments

Pbbt... I'll bet you don't have 4 grandfathers (although it is conceivable... just unlikely). LOL!

How about 4 grandPARENTS... anyways... just caught that.

---

Hot Dog - found you on Family Search.

And - I found you a connection. It's a bit back there, and there's probably others, but the first one I found was:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/McNatt-109

Looks like Richard McNatt - immigrant from Scotland to the British Colonies, born around 1720-1725 in Scotland, died around 1810 in Delaware, USA. I'd build towards him and see what else you can come up with along the way.

---

I have three grandfathers -- and four grandmothers :)

Answer 4

The more ancestors you show on your tree, the more likely you will find a relative and connect to the big tree. So far, there are over 15,000,000 names at WikiTree.

Answer 5

You can search using a first and last name to see if specific people have been entered here. If it is a very common name you can sort the results by date (i.e. birth date) and just look in the relevant period of time.

If the surname is not too common, sometimes it helps to search on just the surname. Again you can sort by birth date and then look for ancestors in different periods of time. It may be easy to see that all of the ones entered are for completely different locations/periods of time compared to your family.

When you start to enter a profile, you first put in some basic information - birth date and name - and Wikitree starts looking for duplicates right away. The matching used for this is very broad, to make it easier for you to see any possible duplicates. So hopefully you will not be in the situation of recreating people who are already entered here. The easiest way to make this error is if someone has not entered birthplace details for a person - this makes it tougher to know for sure that they are not *your* relative.

Keep in mind that some surnames have lots of spelling variations. So it is a good idea to try searching with various names. You will see some clues for other spellings in the top right corner where it says "Related surnames".

Good luck and have fun!

Answer 6

My answer is, yes, you will need to upload a GEDCOM here.  The process involves checking for duplicates.  Start small.  Our tree is better than the Family Search tree in many ways, with only one exception--it is convenient to be able to add a record to everyone in your tree that it applies to.  But at least your family members won't get merged out of existence without you being notified.

Answer 7

I use Wikitree, Ancestry, FamilySearch, Werelate, and the cool thing about Wikitree is when ever you begin to add a person and fill in the information Wikitree automatically looks for possible duplicates and will present them to you before you actually finish and add someone that may be a duplicate. You just check the profiles out that Wikitree thinks might be a duplicate and decided whether or not who ever your wanting to add already had a profile, if not then you can add them.