A small ancestor tree of three or four generations involves only 30 people. Easy to keep in a scrapbook. If your goal in WEEK ONE was to collect ancestors back to colonial times, you will need a more organized approach. 300 names soon become a tangled blur. A FAMILY TREE BUILDING WEBSITE allows you to build your tree and compare it to other tree owners on their site. They have built-in research databases and links to national archive records, public documents, census, newspaper articles and historical background. Don’t confuse tree building sites with websites that contain specific data bases like newspapers, military, maps or surname blogs. These special sites are research tools. There are whole books in our Meeker library listing those sites. You should check one out just to be aware of resources that are available. There are several tree building websites around. The most popular is Ancestry.com. One of the most important considerations in storing information is longevity. Can you count on your information to be still accessible years from now? Those of you who remember the DOT.COM era of disappearing companies, realize that unprofitable companies evaporate in a few years. Ancestry.com has spent decades gobbling up smaller family tree providers, buying ginormous (I just like fun words like that) databases, public records, census, international data, and links to other sites like Find-A-Grave. It is a survivor that constantly grows. Ancestry.com and Familysearch.org have beginner friendly tutorials and picture storage. Both have international records available. Ancestry charges additional fees beyond their usual monthly subscription of about $19. Familysearch.org is free because it has support from the LDS church. It likely to last as long as the church considers it important. It has digitized many records and some of the rarer stuff is stored in Salt Lake City (the fabled Mecca of genealogy researchers). I use both sites with confidence. Familytreemagazine.com recommends Findmypast.com for those researching in the UK (English, Irish, Scotland, and Wales). They also recommend MyHeritage.com. It is an Israeli website for overseas, and recent immigrant research. I have no personal experience with either. Just be aware that researching internationally will be expensive and best tackled by intermediate to expert explorers. To verify documents often requires foreign language skills.
Next week we explore the role of DNA in family tree research. As always you can contact Ed Peck through this newspaper and RBC museum staff. Topics for future articles are welcome.
By Ed Peck
Special to the Herald Times
