✴️ Which other Genealogical Programs or Sites do you use to build your Family Tree? ✴️
🌎️Here at FamilySearch, we work together to build a single, giant, family tree. Your contributions are welcome!
But, as the FamilySearch is a SHARED family tree, I know many others use different programs or sites where they can keep a family tree that doesn’t allow others to edit.
Which program or site do you prefer? Why?
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I prefer using both FamilySearch and Ancestry! LOL. Were you expecting people to take sides? I refuse! I have MANY reasons why both together makes my genealogy stronger. First, my research focus is on the United States and Europe as a qualifier.
I find that while parts of my tree(s) in Ancestry may be exactly the same in FamilySearch, certain ancestors, usually siblings of direct ancestors, don't get as much of my attention in Ancestry. Every now and then I find a reason to thoroughly research the life of a sibling, my first stop is FamilySearch where often someone else has often filled my void and gives me lots of research leads. Finding those breadcrumbs are helpful. I also browse through other trees in Ancestry as well. They have made it easy to get a list of sources found for a specific person in other trees. I take advantage of both sites when looking for that research boost.
Parts of my lineage is a brick wall or is ambiguous. In Ancestry I can build speculative trees just to see how my DNA matches fall out. I can also search my DNA matches for surnames in their trees that I see as possibilities in some of my lines. None of this is exact proof, but it is another way to get interesting research leads. I can also create a "person" in Ancestry who is initially going to collect a series of sources, knowing that they are for multiple people of the same name. I will eventually sort this out when I know exactly who my multiple people are, but in the meantime, I must have 2 census records for the same year on one person because I just don't who is who yet. That is not appreciated much in FamilySearch, so I avoid my speculative genealogy in FamilySearch and do it only in Ancestry.
I run into lots of evidence about the lives of my ancestors' friends, business acquaintances, love interests who died in war as well as the enslaved persons my ancestors had. None of these relationships are handled well in Ancestry. I can only fully and properly document all of these people in FamilySearch.
Research tools differ between Ancestry and FamilySearch. For a long time now whenever I am in "full on research mode" for a person, family or lineage, I have both FamilySearch and Ancestry open in different browsers. I literally use both at the same time. I'm not going to go into a compare and contrast here (although I recently gave a presentation at a genealogy workshop in which my presentation did exactly that), but I will say that each site has such powerful tools I cannot ever recommend using either site exclusively over the other. Those who do are missing out, at least for my focus areas.
Finally, I am a volunteer lineage researcher for a lineage society. I am often researching ancestral lines that do not belong to me or anyone related to me. There is no efficient way in Ancestry for me to collect up my findings by putting them in a tree, so I must do that in FamilySearch. I feel I am making the tree richer when I add those wills, land records, etc.
I hope this helps!
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I first build out a family from scratch on Ancestry. When I'm happy with it, I bring it over to FamilySearch.
Most profiles I bring over already exist in FS. This method operates as a check on the integrity of the data. If what I bring doesn't match what's on FS, something is off the rails and I need to review both profiles.
Note: On Ancestry, the building from scratch part is important because the site is rife with badly built trees. Existing trees are awesome to review and to mine for hints - but I don't assume they're accurate.
I'm not ripping on Ancestry here; their records are irreplaceable. And I think they're trying to improve the quality of trees. A while back they reduced tree hints from 10 to 3. There are fewer dodgy hints. Usually.
Most recently, Ancestry added Geneanet Community Trees Index as hints. While useful (sometimes very useful), I'm finding a high error rate with them. It's another mixed blessing.
Past Ancestry I have accounts with MyHeritage, Geneanet, American Ancestors, Find My Past and some BYU thing; I rarely use any of them. MyHeritage used to be my goto for post 1940 records but then Ancestry improved their records. I still try MyHeritage every month or two when I get stuck but the relevant hits are almost always stuff I posted on FS.
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As @Gail Swihart Watson said: In Ancestry I can build speculative trees
This is huge. Like where there are 3 families where kids and parents have the same given names and surnames - and the kids birth orders and birth years all match.
Or where cousins go living with each other's families but none of the census record their relationships properly.
Or where a family changes given and surnames between every census.
Or where just plain weird stuff happens like the 2nd wife changes her given name to that of the 1st wife. Or the husband marries 3 Josephine in a row.
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