Roots tech - realtives at Roots Tech
When I choose from the menu, Roots Tech Events, Relatives at Roots Tech, it takes me to a page that says, "Continue Adding Your Ancestors to Family Tree to Find Relatives at RootsTech. When I click Add Ancestors, I am launched to my tree at FamilySearch. Nothing seems to happen after that. I feel like I am missing something. Are there additional steps?
Answers
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Do you see something similar to this when you open the App?
If not, then your part of the tree may not be extensive enough to capture relatives yet.
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No
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And make sure you are signed in to FamilySearch before trying to look for Relatives at RootsTech.
you should see your picture (or name) in the top right.
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@A B Lind When you see the "Add Ancestors" button (but no View Relatives button), that means that the system was unable to find any relatives (within 12 generations or so) who have currently opted in to Relatives at RootsTech.
To understand why this might be happening, it's helpful to understand that Family Tree has one particularly large tree (with hundreds of millions of people in it). Different people will connect to that tree in various ways, but most FamilySearch users have some connection to that tree. Those who connect to that large tree are generally able to find relationships to other FamilySearch users who are also connected to that tree.
The Add Ancestors button could be appearing for various reasons:
- Your tree does not connect to that large tree. This could be because your tree is rather small or because you have not yet connected some of your distant ancestors to the large tree.
- Your ancestors happen to be from a part of the world where there are very few participants in RootsTech, and so FamilySearch can't establish a connect to them.
If you're in that first situation, then the way to fix the problem is to add more ancestors and make sure that you work diligently to connect your ancestors to people already in Family Tree. A possible starting point is to look at your tree in the Fan Chart view, showing 7 generations, to see if your family lines end early. That can give you some clues as to where to start as you add ancestors.
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First, thank you for the responce. Unfortunately, that is not the problem. I have 2,600 people in my tree and when I print the fan I go back 6 generations in Swedish, Norway and in my German line. There is something else going on. I did have a second tree that used a different login and I found recently I had two different numbers assigned to me. I suspect that has the system confused and I don't know how to fix it. Any suggestions?
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The FamilySearch Family Tree is a single tree for all, with more than 1 billion profiles. I'm not sure what you mean by "I have 2,600 people in my tree".
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It's possible to be personally connected to many ancestors, but still not be connected to the large tree. Where did those 2600 relatives come from? If you input them all, and you haven't done dozens of merges to combine individuals in your tree to existing persons in the large tree, then it's entirely possible that you are connected only to your 2600 relatives and not to anyone else.
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@A B Lind said: "I had two different numbers assigned to me. I suspect that has the system confused and I don't know how to fix it. Any suggestions?"
That situation won't confuse the system, but having two accounts increases the risk that you might get confused unless you are careful and constantly aware of which account you are signed in with. When you are signed in to one account, you will see the one copy of you and any other living persons created under that account, with their connections to both living and deceased persons. When you are signed in to the other account, you will see the other copy of you and of any other living persons created under that account. Since the topic of this discussion is Relatives at RootsTech, it's important to be aware of which account you were signed in with when you joined Relatives at RootsTech; all relationships calculated to other participants in RootsTech will be based on that account and the relationships to the copy of you associated with that account.
There are many pitfalls that come with having two accounts, and little benefit for most people. So I would suggest that you carefully look at the two accounts and decide which one is the more valuable one, and then delete the other one. Consider which one has the better set of living persons, and which one has made the most contributions on FamilySearch. Your communications with other users might also be a factor (but there is a way to preserve the messages associated with the account to be deleted). Hopefully one account is significantly more valuable than the other. Then sign in to the less valuable account and under Settings | Account choose to delete that account. There's no way to merge accounts, so you just need to delete the less valuable account and move forward with just one account. If you made contributions using the lesser account, you might want to take steps to preserve those (such as copying information on living persons or contributed memories from the lesser account to the better account) before you delete the account.
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One way to troubleshoot as to whether this is a Relatives at Rootstech problem or just that you don't have sufficient connections in your tree is to check Famous Relatives under the Activity menu in Family Tree. If you have dozens of profiles on that page, then something may be up with Relatives at Rootstech. If you have no one on that page, then the problem is your tree.
When I check Relatives at Rootstech, I see my usual clump of 3rd and 4th cousins who all trace back to the same two or three couples living in Utah in the mid 1800s. But with the vast majority we connect back 8 to 10 generations to a few couples living in England in the 1600s.
If you don't hook into major common lines 10 generations back and if you don't have a lot of relatives who use family tree within the past 4 generations, then your chance of having a relative at RootsTech could be quite small.
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And, in my case, my 5,652 relatives (today) all connect on my maternal side to pre-Revolutionary USA. Not a single one connects to my Irish paternal side that began arriving in 1850.
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Where in Norway are your ancestors? My wife was born in Norway and has extensive ancestry in Hordaland. If you have a relative in that area, if you post the Family Tree ID number, we could check to see if you are related to her. She has signed up for RootsTech and has about 400 people on her list of relatives. If the two of you are related in Family Tree then you should show up on each other's lists.
However, she is in contact with a group of fellow genealogists in Norway and not many of them ever sign up for RootsTech. So most of her RootsTech connections tend to be through a John Grey born in England in 1601 who moved to Norway and who is her 9th-great-grandfather. The Relatives at RootsTech almost always connect at his parents or grandparents.
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Mod note: posts were edited to remove personal detail for the user's privacy. For more details see the Code of Conduct.
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I'm gonna pick a nit with what Gordon wrote: "If you have no one on [Famous Relatives], then the problem is your tree."
Not necessarily. I have zero famous relatives on FS, because I don't happen to share ancestors with any American presidents or Mormon church leaders. That's not a fault of my tree, but of FS's US-centric database of famous people.
For whatever it's worth, my Rootstech count is currently at one (my mom's fourth cousin, whom I've been in touch with). That's also not a fault of my tree, but of Rootstech's English-centric offerings, which make my sporadically-FS-using distant cousins exceedingly unlikely to sign up for anything to do with it.
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I apologize for my poorly worded post. Here is a revision:
One way to evaluate the likelihood of finding a lot of Relatives at Rootstech is to check the Famous Relatives page under the Activity menu in Family Tree. If you have dozens of profiles on that page, that means that you hook into the pool of Englishmen living in the 1500s and 1600s whose children and grandchildren all ran away to the US and who everyone with any English ancestry in the US links back to. If you have no one on that page, then you do not link into those common ancestors. Although RootsTech tries valiantly to be an international conference, still the majority of attendees have at least one line that goes back to England.
When I check Relatives at Rootstech, I see my usual clump of 3rd and 4th cousins who all trace back to the same two or three couples living in Utah in the mid 1800s. But with the vast majority we connect back 8 to 10 generations to a few couples living in England in the 1600s.
If you don't hook into major common English lines 10 generations back and if you don't have a lot of relatives within the past 4 generations who are interested in RootsTech , then your chance of having a relative at RootsTech could be quite small.
(If my wife did not have that one Englishman I mentioned as her 9th great-grandfather, her Relatives at RootsTech count would likely drop from about 400 to about 4. Because I have several English lines that go back to 1600 and earlier, my current RootsTech count is 14,931)
Here is an example of what I see on the Famous Relatives page:
Personally I really don't think being a descendant of George Washington's 5th great-grandfather and his other wife means anything as far as him and I being "relatives" but that is how the program, and Relatives at RootsTech, is designed.
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Although @Gordon Collett gave some helpful information, I would encourage people to participate in Relatives at RootsTech, even if they have no English relatives. I invariably find multiple cousins at RootsTech from Brazil and Italy who are related to me through my Italian grandmother -- no English ancestors are involved at all. I agree that the Famous Relatives page is heavily weighted towards English ancestry, but for Relatives at RootsTech the English weighting is not as significant.
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You don't need English ancestors for RootsTech and Relatives at RootsTech. You need English-speaking cousins.
I don't know about the "bigger" languages, but if I switch my FS homepage to Hungarian, there's no mention of RootsTech on it anywhere. If I switch back to English and go to the RT Online homepage, and switch that to Hungarian, it translates the error message on the video, and the notifications offer near the bottom. Everything else stays in English.
Yeah, yeah, I can get it to cough stuff up in Hungarian if I really try, but the point is, why would I? How would my distant cousins even find out about the conference, or about FS's Relatives at RT feature? What reason would they have for signing up for any of it? The answer for almost all of them is "they haven't" and "they have none".
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The Relatives at RootsTech Landing Page only offers to translate into a few languages, not the full list that the main website offers:
At 6,274 today, mine are all still maternal.
Note that my totals don't add up because my maternal grandparents were 3rd cousins.
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