How many family trees can i have?
I have several family trees on Ancestry and I'm considering moving over to FamilySearch. How many trees can I have?
Best Answers
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Zero.
FamilySearch's Family Tree is a single, collaborative tree. None of us have individual trees here.
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FamilySearch has only one world tree with a goal that each person who ever lived has one and only one record. Therefor the tree is open edit with the expectation that you will work collaboratively with others who are researching the same ancestors. You will not have anything to call "my tree" in FamilySearch.
This may not work for you. If not, I would consider moving your trees to another environment.
Personally, I also have numerous trees in Ancestry and I work in tandem with FamilySearch. I keep most of my work in both environments but not all. I am (occasionally) working on breaking a brick wall in my lineage and am accumulating the evidence in Ancestry, not FamilySearch. At the moment it is somewhat speculative because some common names are involved and I don't think speculative evidence is welcome in FamilySearch.
Several aspects of FamilySearch are better than Ancestry.
First, you can have other type relationship. For example you can have an enslaved / enslaver relationship in FS. You can connect 2 people who you know are related but you aren't sure how. You can't do either of those in Ancestry.
Second, you can tag people in images who aren't in your tree, such as friends, business associates of your ancestors. This is clunky at best in Ancestry there is no convenient way to tag them in your uploaded images unless you create floating people. In FS, if you can find those people in the world tree you can definitely tag them in the photos you upload. Same with sources. You can apply the same source to some one who is not family, such as a marriage record source to the groom's witness or the bride's witness if they are friends and not relatives.
Finally, if you have reason to work on the ancestry of other people, you can document all your work in a way that descendants can find it. You don't have to create new trees like in Ancestry. I am a lineage researcher for a lineage society and I put all my work in FamilySearch now.
The only pitfall is other people editing your work. My advice to counter that is source, source, source. And put sources in all the generations it belongs to, not just the primary. Birth sources need to be found in both parents and the child.
As to the logistics of "moving" your trees, I recommend you simply look to see how much of your trees already exist in FamilySearch. You might be surprised.
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Hi Rick - Welcome to FamilySearch Community and asking your question about Family Trees. On FamilySearch/FamilyTree there is a significant difference between Family Tree and Ancestry. Family Tree is a universal public tree containing only one profile per person. The concept of "my tree" and different trees doesn't really exist. For example, let's say you have an individual tree on Ancestry for each of your grandparents. You select from your list of trees which one you want to see or work on. On Family Tree, it would typically open the tree view with you as the starting person. You would simply select one of your grandparents on the tree, say your paternal grandfather, and choose to view the tree with your paternal grandfather as the starting person. And while it is not defined or labeled as a separate tree, it would be the same as your designated tree on Ancestry for your paternal grandfather. In that sense, you can display a tree with anyone you choose as the starting person. Since there are 1.54 billion people on the family tree, you could choose to display a tree with any one of those as the starting person. Probably a few more that you need. In other words, rather than designating and constructing a tree like you do on Ancestry, you would just choose from the universal tree who you want to be the starting person. And when you add people to the tree, you are adding them to the universal tree which is shared with everyone.
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No, the logic will NOT eliminate duplicate people, you are supposed to go through a review process yourself. I am sure people with strong opinions about GEDCOM will be chiming in the discourage you from doing that. I am also pretty sure a GEDCOM upload will not apply sources since GEDCOM is just a text file, hopefully someone will address this too.
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@RickCouch1 You CAN create individual GEDCOMs from however many trees you have on Ancestry (or other sites) and upload each individually to the Genealogies section. Those trees will be static; they cannot be edited, but they can serve as an extra backup and/or cousin bait. Anyone can view them, unlike Ancestry where trees can only be viewed by those you have invited or by paid subscribers.
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@RickCouch1 You're getting a lot of feedback advising against using GEDCOM. I echo that feedback. The first thing to do is to review what is already on Family Search. You already have many of your family lines going back in the 1700s and 1600s on family search. Since Family Tree is univeral and public, these ancestors of yours are also the ancestors of many other people who have contributed to the universal tree. It would be pointless and a lot of work loading a GEDCOM which duplicates all those people. If in your review of Family Search, you find missing areas, you may consider a very specific GEDCOM covering only those missing areas but even with that I would be very cautious about using a GEDCOM. If you use a GEDCOM you are going to end up reviewing each individual record. Rather than that, just do an individual review between Ancestry and Family Search. This is pretty easy if you can split your monitor or better yet, have two monitors.
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I was in exactly this situation.
I created a gedcom from Ancestry and imported it into the 3rd party tool RootsMagic, which integrates with FamilySearch.
I am now gradually going through matching and comparing the data via RootsMagic's very usable comparison mechanism, which allows automated uploads into FT (no cut and paste needed), but only in a very granular way (e.g. just a marriage event). Example:
If I click the checkbox by the RM Marriage, which you will observe is missing from FS, I get this:
Sources have a separate comparison/upload mechanism - rather less usable, but does the job.
I'd advise locating and attaching any FS Record that corresponds with a specific Ancestry source and that provides comparable information, since non Ancestry users will not be able to see the Ancestry source; also , I wouldn't use Ancestry family trees as FT sources, since they are not primary sources.
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@MandyShaw1 @RickCouch1 Thanks so much Mandy for bringing up Roots Magic. This is a great solution. However, I think it is better than you portray. Roots Magic will interface directly with Ancestry through tree share and bring all your information from ancestry to Roots Magic (events, source citation, notes, photos). Just google search on Roots Magic Interface with Ancestry. You don't need to do a GEDCOM.
Then as you say, Roots Magic will interface directly with Family Search. Here again, you just google search Roots magic interface to family search
You can link individual by individual between Roots Magic and Family Search. This is an upfront one-time task. From then on, Roots Magic and Family search are linked. I use this a lot to help keep Family Search in line with my Roots Magic baseline. I work very hard to make sure my Roots Magic baseline is accurate which in turn, makes sure Family Search is accurate.
I think this is a great solution. There are other programs besides Roots Magic that will work also. Family Search does not recommend one program over another.
This is a lot of work. Is it worth it? I think so. Mandy may comment about that.
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Answers
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I See. So, would it be easier to create a GEDCOM of my tree and import it into FS? Is it safe to assume the FS algorithm would eliminate duplicate people and records or not?
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@RickCouch1, no, it is not safe to assume anything good about FS's GEDCOM-import function. It is ancient and was badly broken from the start. It routinely fails to identify duplicates, while suggesting so many spurious ones that users are practically forced to mindlessly dismiss them. And the compare-and-add process never shows you what's already in the Tree, so it basically makes it impossible to make good decisions. Also, as Gail says, the GEDCOM file format and FS's import function between them strip all sources and custom content such as notes and media (photos or scans).
In the long run, it's easiest and fastest to add profiles to the collaborative tree one person at a time. If you'd like, you can go ahead and create a GEDCOM file on Ancestry and upload it to FS's Genealogies section; that's essentially a publicly-searchable cloud backup service for genealogy files. This will format the names and dates in a way that should be relatively easy to copy-and-paste into the "add" fields of the collaborative Tree.
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Thanks everyone for the great feedback. That sure gives my something to think about.
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Very good point-I have never used the RM/Ancestry integration, I had deleted my Ancestry account altogether long before starting work in FS (I didn't do any genealogy for a couple of years).
I find it definitely worth the work to keep the information up to date in both FS and RM once I have finished the initial matching and cleanup on each person. RM tells you if the FS info has been changed by someone else (or rather, if FS says it's been changed-can't always see anything different), but it's up to you to go into the person and pull the changes from FS to RM (granular as before).
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