The 5 most challenging issues with the FamilySearch Family Tree

 

The FamilySearch.org Family Tree is a free, collaborative, wiki-based, universal, family tree. The Family Tree was introduced in 2013 at the RootsTech Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. I have been actively using the Family Tree since the day it was introduced. The Family Tree has evolved over the years and I am sure that those who developed and demonstrated the Family Tree back in 2013 would be astounded at the changes. However, some of the inherent and blatant issues of the Family Tree at the time of the introduction are still with us. 

I have written about all these issues many times over the years and I have to admit that significant progress has been made on minimizing the impact of some of these issues with the Family Tree but there is still a long uphill climb to resolve these 5 core issues with the Family Tree. As I go through the issues once again, I will note if there is a partial solution in the works if that information is available. In addition, I will give examples with ID numbers so you can see for yourself what I am writing about. 

1. Revolving Door Ancestors

This is the most damaging and wasteful challenge of them all. A revolving door ancestor is one whose information is constantly changing. Here is one of the most egregious examples for a Mayflower Passenger, Francis Cooke LZ2F-MM7. 

Note the dates of the changes and if you look at this list, you will see there have been hundreds or perhaps more than a thousand changes that go on almost every day. This person, as a member of the Mayflower Passengers, has been researched for about a hundred years and there is no new information that can or should be shared with the Family Tree. All the known information is contained in the Mayflower Society Silver Books and there is no conceivable reason for all these changes. Think of the monumental amount of time that has been wasted on this and other revolving door ancestors. Those people in this revolving door category include almost all those born in New England since 1630 to about 1750 AD. These people are being extensively documented by the Great Migration Study Project from the New England Historic Genealogical Society. 

Why does FamilySearch allow this constant changing to people who are exhaustively researched?

2. Impossible Pedigrees

 The Family Tree is a source-centric tree. This means that every entry in the Family Tree should and eventually must be supported by specific historical records. So, if people are entered into the Family Tree with NO sources, adding parents and additional generations of ancestors would be nothing less that a fabrication, a counterfeit, and another massive waste of time. 

Here is one example from the Family Tree.

This person has ancestors listed back to, at least, 1045 and probably further on some lines. Because Edward Morgan does not have any sources, there is no way to know if this is the right person. To add insult to injury, Edward's father John Morgan MG6J-9NX was supposedly born in Wales and some of the sources attached are for people with the same name born in England and Virginia. 

3.  Addition of GEDCOM files

A GEDCOM file is a way of transferring information from one genealogy program to another. The acronym stands for Genealogical Data Communications. See https://gedcom.io/  GEDCOM is not a "program" or an "app." It is a standard for exchanging data. 

The FamilySearch.org Family Tree is a universal tree. When someone build a family tree (pedigree) on another program or app and if the person building the pedigree has ancestors from North America or Europe, there is a significant chance that all or part of the family tree created on a website other than the Family Tree, will already be on the Family Tree. This means that the research effort expended was a waste of time. Genealogical researchers can easily avoid this problem by doing searches on the Family Tree. 

What is a disaster is when some uploads a GEDCOM file to the FamilySearch Family Tree. From what I said about doing research is turned into creating a huge number of duplicate entries on the Family Tree. Uploaded GEDCOM files should not be allowed to a family tree open to a community such as the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. 

4. Adding People who lived before 1500 A.D.

Very few people anywhere in the world are qualified to do new and accurate historical research before 1500 A.D. This limitation goes for genealogists also. There are exceptions such as Chinese Family Books  but Europe does not have the equivalent of these records. The main limitation for European research before 1500 is that the handwriting and language both require specialized learning. The pre-1500 family lines added to the FamilySearch Family Tree always make the unsupported assumption that the poor people being researched somehow magically descend from royalty or nobility. Here is an example of an entry from one of my own ancestral lines on the Family Tree. 

None of these people show any sources for the entries. The entries are nothing more than names. If I look at the entries either from the last person in this line who has any sources attached or step back from these people to some place of reality, I find a person named Elizabeth Jones MG6J-9N1 who was supposedly born in Essex England and died in New Haven Connecticut. 

 Her father's name is John Joseph Snider G9WF-DW6 who supposedly was born in Wales and died in Wales. His wife, Elizabeth Bodenham G9WF-6RY was born in Gloucestershire. I won't go any further with these examples except to say how did Elizabeth Jones fit into the family of Snider and Bodeham?

The FamilySearch Family tree has thousands if not millions of similar entries with no sources telling us how these people could have had children in America? There always seems to be a justification based on an assumption that the child was illegitimate. 

5. Adding a large number of children to a family by surname without supporting sources. 

Here is a family that is an excellent example of this challenge. 

The children are listed as being born in North Carolina, South Carolina, Unknown, and Kentucky (before it was a state),  Who was John Sanderson who shows up in the 1790 US Census in Jones, North Carolina and how did he have children in all these places. Time to do a lot more research. 

Of course, there are a lot of other minor issues with the Family Tree but over all it does a good job of giving us a place to start doing a lot more learning and hard research work. A simple way to clear up almost all the issues with the Family Tree without impacting its integrity is to require real sources showing a parent child relationship for every entry.