Tree already built: How can I help?

Levi Jacob, Farb

My family tree has received a lot of work from my father and others for years; by the time I realized the importance of doing family history work and ministering to those on the other side of the veil, I was late to the game. How can I contribute to the effort in a way that's relevant to my family when my tree is already very well-developed?

Dennis J Yancey

Genealogy work is never done - and actually the more you do - the more, in turn, there is to do.

Your father and others probably helped develop the family tree in FS - and probably ensured that much of the temple work was done for your direct ancestors.

BUT truth is - all of us literally have millions of both - ancestors and other related persons ("cousins" - at different levels of the family tree). There is no way even your father with all of his work - could have completed all the work for MILLIONS of people.

One interesting exercise is to take a distant ancestor (such as an immigrant ancestor on your paternal line - which is just one arbitrary choice among thousands of other choices) - and INSTEAD of looking at ancestors of that person - rather - turn your perspective on its head - and look at the DESCENDANTS of this immigrant ancestor. If that was like 10 generations ago - you could actually have MILLIONS of descendants of that ancestor - all of which are your COUSINS. - And interestingly it is a continually growing set of people - with each new generation the numbers get bigger and bigger.

for this reason and many others - the work for the dead - actually never reduces as you do the work for those beyond the veil - but rather keeps increasing - because more and more of your cousins are ending up on the other side of the veil.

So its wonderful your father did so much of the work

But please - dont think that means all the work is done

We have actually just barely scratched the surface of the work that has to be done.

Have you considered meeting with your closest Family History Center people?

see:

https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/what-does-the-descendancy-view-do-in-family-tree

also note a recent change to the descendants view as to how you control how many generations it shows.

Dennis J Yancey

also - if you would like to get involved in needed work beyond just your own family tree

check out the "Get Involved" section of FamilySearch

https://www.familysearch.org/getinvolved/my-opportunities

There are endless possibilities.

Dennis J Yancey

here are some links to interesting items where you might find something that piques your interest

https://yanceyfamilygenealogy.org/family_search_videos.htm

https://yanceyfamilygenealogy.org/familysearch_tools.htm

for example - check out the "audio recording" option on that last link:

https://www.familysearch.org/discovery/recordme/categories

Paul W

I came to pretty much a dead-end in researching my ancestry some years ago, so (as Dennis suggests), started looking at more distant relationships.

My current work involves tracing the families of all the "in laws" who married into my mother's large family. As a child, I was quite close to all those aunts and uncles and they often took me to see their own parents. I have been fascinated to discover the unexpected roots of "Mr B" and "Mrs C", etc. It has also led me to researching records in areas of the country (and abroad) that I would not have touched otherwise.

How I would love to be able to tell my not-long-deceased "Uncle Dave" that (going way back) his relatives were not from east London, as expected, but from the Netherlands! They anglicised their names (both first and last) on arrival in England, so no one would ever have expected their origins.

I suppose it depends on your enthusiasm for genealogy in general, as opposed to some (I am not a LDS Church member myself) who are just interested in finding names to take to the Temple.

Dennis J Yancey

and always remember - - Genealogy is so much more than simply taking names to the temple

So very much more that just that.

If we believe we will one day meet these ancestors face to face - we should probably take some time to really get to know them for who they were, who they still are. beyond just a name and a date on a piece of paper.

Family History and Temple Work -- is so much more than just a name on a temple card. . . .

LDS or not - we all must always remember that.

My goal is that at least for many of my direct ancestors -- - I will already know them - when I meet them one day- and already know in many cases what they looked like and how they made my life possible. There are a lot of people I plan to seek out when I pass through the veil and thank them for the lives they lived. People who I have come to know - even BETTER than many people I have met during my mortal life.

Gordon Collett

One thing that is different with FamilySearch Family Tree is that it is much more alive than any other online tree because of its collaborative nature. Because of that, it needs to be fed, watered, given support, pruned as appropriate. This means that you can generally always find things that need to be done.

As a very simple example, you will probably find if you start checking, that no one in your family tree has their 1950 census record attached to them yet.

Last year I put together a series of presentations on caring for your family in Family Tree. It's meant to be an in person presentation with Keynote, but I did do kind of rough recordings of each part so the people I presented it to could go back and review what I talked about. I'll send you the link to it in a private message.

Basically, my suggestion is to print out a 6-generation fan chart and starting with yourself then your parents and all their children and spouses, then your grandparents and all their children and spouses, then your great-grandparents, etc, check, clean up, and add to all the data in Family Tree. You will be surprised how much you will find to do.