Beginning Family History Step 2-Jump Start Your First 4 Generations with Ancestry Trees

Online trees are a wonderful source for quickly extending your personal pedigree. These trees have been placed online by an individual who did some or a considerable amount of family history work and shared it for public access. The original trees may have then been copied, often many times, by others and then reposted online and shared so there could be many trees on any given family line that are quite similar.

FamilySearch has tried to create one combined family tree from all of the trees posted to their website with the hope of eliminating or at least reducing the amount of duplication of effort.

Ancestry, on the other hand, has kept their individual trees in the private space of the creator and given the owner the option of sharing their tree/trees. Because sharing is the default, most people share their trees. At last count, Ancestry says it has 100 million family trees.

The odds are pretty good someone has started a tree on Ancestry with some of your family members in it and those family members may or may not be in the combined FamilySearch tree. The validity of these trees has been a sore spot within the genealogical community for many years but with the availability of "hinting", tree information can be verified more easily than ever before.

Because we are just focusing on 4 generations the time period is within good information availability. Many or all of the individuals within those four generations may be still living are within the memory of those who are living.

Take a look at Ancestry's online trees as a first resource to see what they have to offer in extending your pedigree beyond what you may already know. It is quick and may give you what you need to jump-start a great family tree.

I have shown how to utilize the Ancestry.com trees in this PowerPoint PDF:

Beginning Family History Step 2-Jump Start Your First 4 Generations with Ancestry Trees PP PDF

NOTE: To utilize the tree resources you do have to have an Ancestry account of some kind.

NOTE: My Heritage also has useful online trees, especially for those of European descent.


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