Building Trees on Ancestry.com

I've discovered that some of the people using Ancestry.com don't take advantage of "tree building" feature.  I was reluctant to use it at first myself for privacy reasons.  But then I discovered how NOT using that feature was actually making my research job a lot harder.

Keep in mind that you can make it private if you like (some nobody else can see it).  So the privacy issue can be controlled.  But building a tree on ancestry.com (even for free) offers a couple of big advantages.

First, building a tree helps you make sense of your family members and information about them (dates, places, siblings, uncles, aunts, etc.).  Trying to keep this information straight in your head as you continually add to it can prove hectic.  If you confuse as easily as me, having this information in  front you is a huge help.

Another advantage of building a tree is that it makes searching Ancestry.com a LOT easier.  If you click the "search" link on Ancestry.com, you are presented with a window where you have to enter the detail of the person you're searching for.  This gets time consuming and means you have to constantly refer to handwritten notes for dates, places, names, etc.  But when you have a tree, you can easily click on a person to initiate a search (saving you the hassle of entering the search criteria each time).  This alone is a huge time saver when doing research!

The ability to get "Hints" is another big advantage of building a tree on Ancestry.com.  If you have a tree already, you may have noticed the little green leaf that appears on the top right of your boxes.  These leaves mean you have hints on that person.  In other words, Ancestry.com thinks they recognize your family member and may be able to offer more information for you. This feature again, is a big time saver and often times a big help in tracking more generations of your family member.

Not all hints prove valid, so you'll always want to review them before adding them to your tree. When reviewing hints, I personally prefer to click the source data to review it personally rather than just view the comparison data when the "review link" is clicked.

There are many other advantages of building a tree on Ancestry.com.  Others tracking some of the same family members can establish contact with you and offer more information.  If you don't have a tree, then they'll never know you're researching some of the same family members.

When you build a tree, every person in it has their own profile  which allows you to quickly view a timeline of that person's life.  The cool thing about the time line, is that it's built automatically as you attach records to that person (such as census records, death indexes, etc.).  You can also manually add events and information to your timeline that don't normally show up on census records, etc.  For example, census records are taken once a decade, but you may know when a family moved between census records.  You can manually add that information into your timeline.  You can also add information about burials or cremation.  The more information in your timeline, the more effective your searches will be in finding information your family member.

Ancestry.com even lets you print your trees so you can have a visual printout of your ancestors.  This is helpful if you like to keep your information together in a notebook.  It also makes it easier to share the information with other family members.

There really aren't any disadvantages of building a tree on Ancestry.com, but there are a plethora of advantages.  If you're new to Ancestry.com, you might find it helpful to view their video on making trees. It explains some of the features and advantages I've mentioned here.

To view the video on making family trees, click here.