Sharing your family tree

There may come a time when you feel you have enough documented information that you can comfortably share your family with the world. You have amassed all these names, dates, notes and relationships and they don't do anyone much good if the only one who knows about them is you.

Of course, we all want to leave something behind us when we go, and most of us have as our main purpose to leave a family history for our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Most people write a family history book and pass it on to relatives and family members. I certainly intend to do that myself. But, in addition, in this day and age, many choose to share their family trees via the Internet and send them to Rootsweb, Ancestry, Family TreeMaker, and other Internet genealogy Web sites which display family trees.

There are two main schools of thought on this, I have found. One is held by people who are obsessed with not having a single mistake in their research. Be realistic. You are not going to have a family history with no mistakes. Absence of records, fading memories, the passing of time, and disagreements among researchers (because of the above) will force you to make educated guesses now and then. And, while you certainly want to keep mistakes to a minimum, they sometimes are unavoidable. You are going to make mistakes. You are going to be wrong. Live with it.

The other school of thought, while a little more flexible, is not without its flaws either. One person told me, "So what if there are mistakes? Someone will see them and let you know about it." That sounds like an opening for sloppy research to me, but it does have its merits and is absolutely true. That is one reason I chose recently to submit my 11,000-plus-name family tree to Rootsweb. Perhaps someone will see my dead ends and open up avenues for further research. Perhaps someone will see my question marks and uncertainties (despite concentrated and diligent research) and clear them up for me. Someone may be holding the sledge hammer that can knock down my brick walls.

And so, with a little hesitation, I went to Rootsweb's home page and read about sharing my family tree. It wasn't too difficult after all and it was up and running within 24 hours. Nobody told me how proud of yourself you feel when you see all your hard work displayed on the Internet.

But, before I submitted it, the first thing I had to do was to make a Gedcom of my family tree so Rootsweb could read my information. If you don't know what a Gedcom is, go back a couple of years in my columns online and read about them. They are pure-dee magic in this technology-filled world. Your family tree program will have this function on one of your pull-down menus. It will say, "Export Gedcom ... " or something to that effect.

Then I had to decide which "fields" I wanted to include. What had concerned me the most was my notes, because some of them contain personal information that I really wanted to share only with family. Well, I discovered that I could exclude my notes if I so desired. So, I went through the selections and checked "birth, death, burial, religion, occupation, memos and sources" ... most definitely sources because this is what gives your research credibility. This can include anything from the name and e-mail address of a person from whom you received your information, to the location of actual records you have found.

Then I had to set my "privacy" preferences. This is a function that removes the name and information on living people so that their privacy is protected. I set mine to list as "living" anyone born after 1900 with no death date. Later, I learned that Rootsweb's cutoff is 1930, but because the information was omitted from my Gedcom, they had no names of my living relatives. On persons born between 1900 and 1930, if I had no birth or death date, Rootsweb displayed their names, but nothing more.

After I made the Gedcom, I opened it in my program (as a new file) and double-checked to make sure it would appear as I wanted it to. Then I went back to Rootsweb, filled out the standard form, giving myself a user name and password, told Rootsweb where to find it on my hard drive, clicked "Upload/Update" and held my breath.

It took 10-15 minutes, but soon, there before my very eyes was my family tree, which I had named, "Fowler, Blake, Dorman, McWhorter, Payne, Boyd and Allied Southern Families." It was only a sample, the actual one would take 24 hours to be included in Rootsweb's WorldConnect Project, but I was to check it and make sure everything was exactly like I wanted it. If not, I could delete the whole thing and start over.

Well, I spent nearly an hour checking everything, but I was finally satisfied that nothing was amiss. If I did happen to find something later, I could "update" the file, add information, delete information, and make it as nearly perfect as possible. I can update as often as I choose, so new information I come across can be added later. I can also delete the whole thing if I want.And, since Rootsweb and Ancestry are the same, my file was automatically added to Ancestry's World Tree. And here's the best part ... the cost for all this? Zip.

I wrote e-mails to all those who had helped me with my research and to all my family members who were online. The response from everyone has been tremendous. I have even heard from a few new folks ... new cousins I didn't even know I had.

Thank you, Rootsweb.

I'm still looking for stories about your Atlanta area ancestors. Send them to The Citizen, Drawer 1719, Fayetteville, GA 30214; E-mail jkilgore@thecitizennews.com or jodiek444@aol.com.

Until next week, happy hunting!

(Judy regrets that time does not permit her to do personal research for others. She will willingly share research information on her own family lines, including collateral and allied lines.)