Share your research
Family history is a collaborative pastime – discover how to share (and make new) discoveries with others.
YOUR FAMILY TREE is up and running, you’ve exhausted FamilySearch’s record sets and started making use of paid-for websites like Ancestry, Find My Past and MyHeritage. RootsMagic’s built-in web hints feature helps you track down potential records by searching each site for records potentially matching each person in your tree, then providing you with a convenient means of reviewing these matches.
Hints are provided for all four websites mentioned, with results from Find My Past and MyHeritage automatically listed when you switch the feature on under Tools > File Options > Webhints. If you want to use Ancestry’s record-matching feature, you’ll need to perform some additional steps as outlined in the step-by-step guide. After you’ve performed these steps, close RootsMagic and visit www.
ancestry.com.au in your browser. Log into your account and click Trees to view your tree online – doing so will prompt Ancestry to download hints to your RootsMagic tree, allowing you to browse them within the program itself.
Hints are displayed as lightbulbs next to people in your tree. Click one to review a summary of potential matches for each provider. Click Find My Past or MyHeritage and you’ll be whisked to the relevant website in your browser; FamilySearch hints will be summarised in their own window, but to accept or reject potential matches you’ll need to click the hint to review and attach the record to your ancestor’s online record in the FamilySearch website. Once done, you’ll be able to incorporate these facts into your RootsMagic tree.
Only Ancestry allows you to review hints within the program itself. Each hint is listed separately, split into two categories: records and other member trees. Sadly, if you want to accept or reject records, or incorporate them into your offline tree, you’ll need to upgrade to the full, paid-for version of RootsMagic. The
“Other people’s trees may be a rich source of material for you to plunder for missing information”
member trees function reveals another benefit of sharing your tree with Ancestry (other sites work in a similar way too). Member trees are uploaded by other Ancestry users who share common ancestry with you – if you’re lucky this will be a close connection at the great grandparent or great-great grandparent level. Their tree may be a rich source of material for you to plunder – for example, missing information like exact dates, or perhaps even something more exciting: photos of ancestors you’ve never seen (or even knew existed).
FIND DISTANT RELATIVES
Before diving in and adding all this information to your own tree, perform the usual checks to verify that the information is accurate (hopefully the Ancestry user has provided a link to their sources). Once done, ask yourself this: what else might this distant relative know – or have – to potentially share? Most sites have their own internal messaging systems, allowing you to contact other users. Your chances of a response are pretty good too – after all you’re reaching out to people with a similar love of family history to yourself.
When introducing yourself, it goes without saying you should be polite. Don’t dive in with a question or demand – explain who you are, and what the connection is (this is particularly important if you’re not 100 percent sure that the connection is genuine, or you’re asking someone to give you access to a private tree). Also think about what you might be able to offer in return – if they have photos of a particular individual, perhaps you can reciprocate by offering photos or certificates from your own connection.
SHARE YOUR TREE WITH OTHERS
One final advantage of uploading your tree to Ancestry or a similar website: you now have a means of sharing your research with those family members who’ve shown a passing interest in your work without having embraced genealogy themselves. These online trees often provide a relatively user-friendly interface for others to browse your tree, review ancestors’ personal histories and access photos you’ve uploaded. Be sure to make your tree publicly available or – if you’re an Ancestry user – you can opt to share it by invitation only. Set this up by browsing to your tree online and clicking the Share button.
Other ways to share your research in more traditional ways can be found within RootsMagic under the Reports menu in the form of printable reports, calendars and charts. Again, many options are restricted to the paid-for version, but one that is available for free is the Pedigree Chart. Just follow the wizard to generate the easy-to-read chart, then print a copy to show to others.