This week's Tuesday's Tip is: Use the FREE Family Trees on Rootsweb WorldConnect to find clues and information about ancestors and/or find cousins with similar interests.
The
WorldConnect system of separate family trees uploaded by researchers via GEDCOM have been around for a long time. There are over 440,000 separate trees, with over 725 million names in them. Many of the person profiles are duplicated in many trees, and not many trees have sources and notes, but they can be a great resource for leads and clues. As with every family tree contributed by researchers, you have to be careful to use it for leads and clues unless sources and notes are provided, and even then a researcher should confirm the information themself by finding records that document events.
The WorldConnect is often my first online site when I find a new ancestor so that I can see if any other researcher has found more information than I have for that person.
The RootsWeb WorldConnect home page looks like this:
I put a surname of "feather" and a first name of "cornelius" in the search fields, and lcicked on "Go" and saw 21 results:
Each result shows the information for the person searched - name, birth date/place, death date/place, father's name, mother's name, and spouse's name, plus a code name for the contributor. There are 20 matches shown per screen - you can click on the "Next" button to see the next batch of 20 matches.
The symbols next to the person's name mean:
* A "Magnifying glass" means you can search on Ancestry.com (if you have a subscription).
* A "Pedigree chart" shows you a pedigree chart for the person.
* An "open book" means there are sources for the person.
* A "paper and pencil" icon means that there are notes (I think).
* A "blue face" icon means that the person has children listed in their profile.
Down at the bottom of the list of matches is the search form:
In the search box, the user can narrow the search by adding a birth year (with a range), birth place, death year (with a range), death place, marriage place, marriage year (with a range), father's name, mother's name, spouse's name, etc. Wild cards can be used for the names. The user can select "Exact" or "Soundex" or "Metaphone" for names of the person.
I selected the 20th match on the list - for the Cornelius Feather born in 1777. Here is the top of the profile for him:
At the top of the screen above is the submitter's name, the number of entries in the GEDCOM file, the upload date, and the submitter's email address. There's the potential cousin.
In blue (linked words) below the top line are links for "Index" (names of persons in the tree), "Descendancy" (a dropdown list), "Register" (a descendants narrative report), "Ahnentafel" (an ancestral narrative report), "Download GEDCOM," and "Add Post-em" (you can put a message there to the submitter).
The profile page provides the person's name, the vital record information, and any notes submitted for the person.
Further down on the person profile page is:
If there are spouse(s) names, they are listed, along with the children of each spouse. [In the screen above, there are no spouse names listed, but there are children listed] If there were sources, they would be provided after the children list.
At the bottom are the same links as at the top, plus another line at the bottom for a "Printer Friendly Version," "Search Ancestry," "Search WorldConnect," "Join Ancestry.com Today!," "WorldConnect Home," "Worldconnect Global Search," and "WorldConnect Help."
While the search capabilities are not as extensive as on Ancestry.com and other sites, the search and results are free, and the reports are free of graphics, the system works quickly, and it is the 4th largest family tree system in the genealogy world. This system used to be included in the Ancestry.com list of family tree databases as the "Ancestry World Tree" but has disappeared from the database list and from the search results list.
To me, the pluses (simple, fast, free, standard reports, contact information) outweigh the minuses (only 725 million profiles, separate trees, few sources, etc.) for a quick look at a family tree system to determine if it can help me. Many researchers think that there is "only" Ancestry.com to search, but the fact is that there are many online family tree systems, and some of them, like Rootsweb WorldConnect, are free and fairly large.
The URL for this post is:
http://www.geneamusings.com/2014/01/tuesdays-tip-use-free-family-trees-on.html
Copyright (c) 2014, Randall J. Seaver
