Putting a Family Tree Online

P. Breathnach

I have been wondering about the usefulness of putting my family tree online in the hope that I might link up with others researching some of the lines I have.

I have enjoyed some very fruitful collaboration with people that I have met through genealogy forums and, as a result, I think that almost all of what is discoverable about the maternal half of my ancestry has been unlocked for me.

On the paternal line, everything I know is stuff I have found out for myself (aided by suggestions and insights I have got here). It is possible that other people with whom I share ancestral lines have also been researching, and have made discoveries that have eluded me.

So my questions are:
- Have people here tried this?
- Has it been fruitful?
- What do people think might be a good site for such a purpose?

[Yes, I can understand the pitfalls: never trust anything I can't verify for myself,]

KildareFan

I have my family tree on Ancestry.com. The subscription is expensive but it has been worth it as I have made contact with relations also searching the same tree. One example is a great aunt born in Dublin in 1852 who disappeared completely and I couldn't find any records. Then the wife of her great grandson contacted me via ancestry. It turned out that Great Aunty had run off to England and married a soldier, aged 15. All of a sudden one brick wall crumbled - they had eight children and lots of descendants. I have been contacted by lots of other far out cousins and it has been of great assistance.

pinkypinky

You don't need a permanent sub on Ancestry to put the tree up - I have an occasional month here or there. But you can't contact someone if your sub isn't current.

I only put sections up to see if hints appear. I have found 2 or 3 distant cousins that way. No alive people at all.

L1011

If you have - or even suspect you have - American branches the chance of finding someone via ancestry is quite high. Once the instigator of a message has a sub the other can reply even if lapsed so I've had some messages of use even since I stopped paying

I think I'm more use to them than vice versa but not always - got some 1820s birth records I couldn't find before the images were released via a distant relation in the US that had paid the parish

shanew

I had a tree for a while on GenesReunited which turned up a few connections, mostly UK but some in Ireland also, a free search showed a possible lead so I joined up. One of the contacts helped get me kick started on the trail of my Coastguard ancestor, she also had a a great photo of a GtGt-grandfather which I'd never seen, along with a great story to go with it. I gave up the Genes tree as there were too many irrelevant and persistent queries re some of the more common names in my tree.

I've kept a private tree going on Ancestry which has also resulted in a few contacts for connections.

Jellybaby1

My tree is private on Ancestry and I have had several contacts all over the world. I might get more if I made it public, but I really don't want to do that. Happy with what I got but two mysteries still remain. One day.....one day.

AndrewJRenko

Can I drag up on old thread to see what people are doing with family trees involving living individuals in the post-GDPR environment?

Do you need to get permission from each individual to put their information on the online tree? Have you dealt with situations where some key details are not known to everyone in the family (perhaps previous marriages not known to children of second marriage) scenarios?

Are there ways of getting the information online but obscuring some details?

pinkypinky

GDPR relates to companies and personal data, not individuals and other individuals. All the main sites hide living people by default. Please also search the forum for this topic as we have discussed before, but I'll leave this thread open for now to reflect more recent changes in netiquette.