Mightier Acorns

What, did you have other plans this weekend?

Hello, cousins!

You may notice that I refer quite often to putting my family history research on WikiTree. And I gently hint that if you’re not on WikiTree, you probably should be. Here’s why:

There are dozens of options out there for building and maintaining your family tree online. If you have purchased a DNA test through one of the major companies, you have seen their family tree builder on their websites – and if you are like the vast majority of the people who show up as matches on my list, you did not want to use it.

Maybe you felt like building that tree was a lot of work, or you didn’t trust the privacy settings. Maybe you’ve already spent a lot of time building your family tree on one platform, and you don’t want to re-do that work every time you try a new platform. Maybe you didn’t buy the test so you could connect with distant cousins you don’t know, and that’s all fine.

But, if you are willing to invest some time this weekend, you might find that WikiTree can address a lot of those issues. Here are my top five reasons to check it out:

1. It’s free.

2. You control your privacy settings.

3. You can connect with cousins across all of the major DNA sites.

4. It’s a “world tree” – everybody works together on the same tree.

5. If you and I share a connection, I’ve done a lot of the “homework” already!

My biggest complaint with the other major sites is that every user has their own tree/trees in their walled garden. That means that when I add a relative to my tree, I am probably duplicating someone else’s work – and even if I can find all of the other trees that have that relative in them, I can’t correct errors or add new information so that everyone who has that person in their tree can see it. (And this is assuming their privacy setting lets me find it.)

WikiTree is built on the idea that there is one “world tree” that everybody works on. Each person in the tree has a “profile” – that functions as the Family Group Sheet for that person – and each profile should have a “Profile manager” who is responsible for making sure the information added to that profile is accurate. There is a “Comments” section on each profile for discussing big changes.

If you visit my WikiTree profile, you should be able to see several cousins who are WikiTree members and have connected their profiles to their DNA accounts. As I make more connections with cousins on WikiTree, more will show up there – which should help me answer some of my tougher ancestor puzzles.

(And if you haven’t subscribed to this newsletter, you could get updates on those puzzles as I post them:)

Privacy is often a roadblock to collaborating on the other major websites. In Ancestry, for example, you can only set the privacy on your whole tree. That means that if you include information about a lot of living relatives in your tree, you might have to set your privacy level in a way that prevents distant cousins (like me!) from seeing your common ancestors. WikiTree requires a privacy setting on each profile, with a default for living people of the highest privacy setting.

And… WikiTree is free.

So, what I’m asking from each of you is that you take some time to set up a free account at wikitree.com and spend some time (maybe over this long weekend?) searching for your grandparents, great-grands, and great-great-grandparents.

If we have a common ancestor, I’d love to hear from you – and even if we don’t, I’m happy to help you learn how to get the most out of your new, free account. (And if we learn something new together, maybe it will end up as a post here on Mightier Acorns?)

Try it out, and let me know what you think in the comments!