This true little story happened over five years ago. At the time I was working on my husband’s ancestry lines. I noticed a genealogy tree on Ancestry® that had the wrong information, so I contacted the person who created it through the Ancestry message system, and I gave them all the information so they could locate the person in their tree.
She responded back thanking me and she told me how she’d copied a tree way back when she was first starting out. Not only did she have the wrong people on her tree, but now she will need to correct it, which she told me it took several years working on that particular line. All that time wasted because she was a copycat and did not do her own research.
I know that when first starting out it is very tempting to copy other documents from other trees as it is so much easier with just a click of a button and you think you have your tree sourced. As in the true little story, she found that by not doing her own research she made a costly mistake and the damage compounded for years to come.
Another reason you do not want to copy is that if the original person that added the document or record decides to change or delete it from their ancestry tree then what you copied is deleted too. This means that when you go to your tree you can find that what you thought was a sourced tree will be an empty tree with just names on a tree that mean nothing without their sources. Basically you have a tree with “No Proof”.
That being said, you can get a lot of valuable information from other trees, but it’s important to do your due diligence.
When I am looking at somebody’s tree for the first time, the first thing I look at is the sources. If they do not have sources listed, but have copied another tree, it will be sourced with the label “Ancestry Family Trees”.
Click on the “Ancestry Family Trees” and it will take you to a page that will say “View Individual Member Trees”. When you click “View Individual Member Trees”, it will give you a list of all the trees they copied showing information about each tree, or sometimes it will say “Zero”, meaning the person they copied that tree from removed it.
Sometimes, it is like you are on a merry-go-round when looking at the copied trees because each tree copied each other and when you finally reach the final tree that everybody copied most of the time there is something wrong with it. For example, it could be the birth date, the death date, or the wrong people. Either way, an error compounds as you go further and further back.
When working on a person in your tree you will receive hints and sometimes in the hints will be other ancestry trees. This is the perfect opportunity to see what other trees have as far as sources. I would open each of the trees to examine their documents and even open the documents up to fully examine the information.
Once you examine the record and decide that it is accurate for the person in your tree you will want to go back to that person inside your tree and search for that document from within your tree. Why? Because you want to add that record directly so it will not be copied. This way the record is showing on that person in your tree with the source and when you click on that source it will take you to the actual record. Now, you will have full control over that source and what happens to it.
By doing your own research and taking the time to add the records directly to your ancestry tree, you are building your own factual ancestry tree that will have sources that you control. Additionally, your research can give you a more personal relationship to your ancestors than if you copied.
Honestly, I too have made this same mistake but I found out early on and I was able to fix my tree. I am glad it wasn’t like my true little story where she found out years later. By writing about it, I hope I can prevent you from making this mistake too!
P.S. In the feature photo (scrabble photo) is a message for you. You might will need your special magnifying glass to decode it. 😁
