Finding Your Folks

By JUDY FOWLER KILGORE
jkilgore@thecitizennews.

The e-mails started coming last Friday ... one after the other. All had variations of the same message:

“The LDS is selling our stuff!”

“Pull your family trees off the Internet NOW!”

The furor appeared to be over a new service Ancestry.com was implementing called “One World Tree” and, indeed, they were charging a subscription fee to access it.

What in the world ...?” I thought. I checked a few message boards where people appeared to be panicky and even angry that someone would use their family tree information (why did they submit it in the first place if it was not to be shared?). Many had pulled their trees off the Internet.

And one e-mail from a friend stated that Ancestry.com was owned by the LDS church. I didn’t know that either.

Although no one actually stated it, I began to get the idea that the trees at Ancestry and Rootsweb would no longer be available as free access, so I wrote the Help Desk at Rootsweb.

I was told that Ancestry was not selling our stuff, but was selling subscriptions to a new search engine feature which was based, initially, on the family trees submitted to them by the general public (that’s you and me) and which currently appeared on the WorldConnect feature at Rootsweb and the Ancestry World Tree at Ancestry. Much to my relief, I was advised that family trees at Rootsweb and Ancestry would still be viewable as free access.

So what was the big deal? Why would anyone pay for a subscription for something that was already free? Sort of stupid, huh?

I went to Ancestry.com’s home page on the Internet and began to learn about the new One World Tree. But there were unclear and conflicting passages. I still didn’t understand. The “preview” subscription fee was also a little “pricey” in my book. Fifty bucks is a lot to pay for something when you haven’t even seen it.

When I got home, I called Ancestry in Provo, Utah, determined to get to the bottom of this. I spoke to a representative who, after hearing my plight and attempting (unsuccessfully) to explain the One World Tree to me, said she would have someone call me the next day. I told her this would probably be the topic of a genealogy column in the local newspaper and also would be online.

Wednesday, I received a call from Mary-Kay Evans, the public relations director for MyFamily.com, the parent company for Ancestry.com and many other genealogy services on the Internet.

Mary-Kay (a terrific gal) and I had a long, pleasant conversation and she attempted to explain the new feature. She said the One World Tree would not contain the family trees but would reference people in those family trees. Many of the current trees on Ancestry did not meet the criteria for inclusion on the One World Tree, Mary-Kay said, ... those with many missing names and dates, those with fewer than three generations and those with “loops” were not included. I never really got it straight what a “loop” was but the Ancestry site defines a loop as “ ... a person who is his own ancestor, or a person's spouse is an ancestor.” I’m not exactly sure what that means, but if it refers to all those “kissin’ cousins” we have who marry each other, few of us will have a tree that meets the criteria.

A subsequent e-mail from Mary-Kay further explained the service:

“At the end of April, Ancestry.com released a preview of a new service called the OneWorldTreeSM service. This preview is just the first step toward a powerful new tool for your genealogical research. The preview status of the release has prompted questions and speculation. We hope the following information will help clear up some of the confusion regarding the OneWorldTree service.

“OneWorldTree does two things.

“• First, it searches family history records. It does not modify or replace the original records.

“• Second, it compiles the information in an effort to group the ones that go with a given person (a process we call ‘stitching’), and provides references to the original sources.

“The first collection of records stitched into OneWorldTree was the Ancestry World Tree. Ancestry.com will continue to add records to the OneWorldTree system in an effort to provide more valuable data for our users. RootsWeb's World Connect Project is among the databases that will be searched and stitched as part of the OneWorldTree service.

“Family Trees submitted through Ancestry World Tree and Rootsweb World Connect are free and will remain free. OneWorldTree doesn't contain those trees, but it helps people find them.

“ ... if for any reason you do not want your tree to be part of OneWorldTree ...” [this sentence was incomplete, but those who do not wish to have their trees included must remove them from Rootsweb and Ancestry by May 21. If you later put them back, they will be used in the One World Tree].

Mary-Kay added that more databases will be added to the search engine as time goes by. “Over time,” she said, “everyone will be amazed at what this thing can do.”

To my question about the LDS church owning MyFamily.com, Mary-Kay replied emphatically that it definitely did not.

There was much more in the e-mail and more you need to know. That’s why I’m running this in two parts. I’m going to subscribe, get in there and see what it’s all about. More next week.

I fully intend to leave my trees on Ancestry and Rootsweb because I think my research will be beneficial to others, no matter whether they pay for it or not.

I welcome your letters about genealogy and info on south metro Atlanta families. Send them to The Citizen, Drawer 1719, Fayetteville, GA 30214; e-mail jkilgore@thecitizennews.com or jodiek444@aol.com. Any letters and/or e-mails I receive are subject to being used in the column.

Until next week, happy hunting!

(Judy regrets that time does not permit her to do personal research for others.)