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When was the last time you read and responded to your Ancestry.com messages?

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Of course, my first reaction was an internal roll of the eyes and the arrogant thought that I would educate her about how to do real genealogy research.  I immediately navigated to the man in question in my family tree.  As I began to review my research notes so I could craft a response to her (and I make extensive notes in Family Tree Maker on every person I research), I had the fleeting thought that maybe I shouldn’t have made my family tree public because clearly this woman didn’t know what she was doing and she was probably going to attach someone from my tree to someone in her tree when it was obvious that they were not the same person.

As I read my notes my ego quickly deflated to an appropriate level.

Several years ago I was searching for the husband and children of Thelda M Jones.  I knew she was enumerated in the 1910 census with her parents as a ten year old child.  She was not enumerated with them, her older brother or any other known family members in the 1920 census.  My assumption was that she married sometime between 1916 and 1920.

I knew from her father’s obituary that my Thelda married a man named Cecil Christian sometime before 1936.  I wasn’t able to locate a marriage record for Cecil and Thelda but I was able to locate Cecil in the 1920 census with his first wife.  So, where was Thelda in 1920?  Did she have a first husband?

I searched in vain for a marriage record.  I searched the 1920 census for all women named Thelda, born about 1900 in Utah.  Only two came up.  I was able to exclude one of them by tracing her to her death and finding an obituary that listed her parents’ names.  That left one possibility.

So, I added this man and these children to my family tree with a note that I needed to find a marriage record, an obituary, or further documentation to support that this Thelda and my Thelda were one and the same.

Then, as often happens, my research on that branch of the family got side-tracked.  For four years.

I made my family tree public (warts and all) a few months ago so that I could more readily connect with DNA matches.  But, in that time I have received messages from many more people than just those biological cousins.  Including this one.  As I re-read the message from this woman there were a few things that stood out to me.

She explained what she believed to be the truth about this man and his family.  She referenced the exact records she used to come to this conclusion.  She very specifically pointed out the discrepancies between our two trees.  She then said this, “I can’t see the actual documentation that you have in your tree… I am just wondering if I could find out a little more about the records that support your tree…  Thanks for any direction you can give here, I would appreciate it.”  She concluded with directions for how to find her public tree so I could view it for myself.

Between the records that she had attached to her tree and the previous research I had done on this family, I was able to conclude for myself that the Thelda in her tree and the Thelda in my tree were two different women.  I corrected my tree and sent this woman a thank you note for bringing this to my attention.

There are several things I re-learned today because of this experience.  Here are just a few lessons I hope you’ll consider:

1. Reach out to others who may or may not have accurate information in their online trees.  Be nice!
2. Not everyone approaches genealogy research the same way you do but we can all do it better if we work together.
3. Keep good notes. It will help you keep your sanity and keep you from having to redo research.

Anything else you learned?

Setting goals provides focus.  And, if anything needs focus, it’s genealogy.  It is so easy – and sometimes fun – to get distracted as we chase down various branches of the family tree.  Reporting on goals you have set provides accountability and keeps you moving forward.  So here is my report:

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1. Backup, Backup, Backup

I now use Family Tree Maker 2012 for all my genealogy files.  My main family tree is now synced with my online tree at Ancestry.com.  This provides one backup.  At the beginning of the year I set a reminder on my calendar to back up my tree to “the cloud” twice a month.  I have done this faithfully.

What haven’t I done yet?  I haven’t given my parents a copy of my files at all this year.  I think I will send them a link right now so they have access to my cloud backup.

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2. Get More Family Members Involved

In June I did a Barefoot Genealogist episode and wrote a blog post about sharing your family history.  I have two specific projects (with deadlines) in the works.  I am creating a slideshow of digitized family pictures for my grandmother’s 90th birthday later this month.  And, I have created a maternal only family tree for my cousin who is having a little girl in a few weeks.

I have also created a few more ancestor pages on Facebook, connected with some (previously unknown to me) cousins, and tried to share family stories more often.  I have a lot more ideas brewing but maybe they will make good 2013 goals.

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3. Digitize, Digitize, Digitize

After much sorting, my mom took over 1500 slides (from both sets of grandparents) to be digitized.  She has the original DVDs that were created.  We copied them to my computer and also backed them up to the cloud.  I’ve spent the last few months meeting with family members – dad, grandma, great-aunt – to make sure I know who everyone is in each of these old pictures.  Now, we just have to share them with the rest of the family.

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4. Make Sure Everything Has A Source

This is probably the goal I have spent the most time working on this year.  I knew it was a huge task.  Sometimes I feel like it will never be done.  However, because I have been working on this, I have pruned over 1200 people out of the family tree over the last few months. I discovered two different branches were there was no documentation to prove a connection and a third where documenting what I had, proved that the connection was wrong.  I think this goal may stay on the list for many years to come.

For those who will ask, I use the notes feature in Family Tree Maker pretty heavily as I work on proving connections in my family tree.  Ancestry Anne has created a couple of videos on sourcing that have helped as well.  You can find them here and here.

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5. Respond to Messages

I set a goal at the beginning of the year to spend a little time every Friday going through message I receive from other Ancestry.com members. I haven’t done that as consistently as I expected.  I have managed to get through most of the backlog of messages.  The problem? I find that when I start to reply to one message I dig into the family they’ve asked about and I’m off doing more research for hours on end.  I need to learn to reply with what I know and not worry about what I don’t know yet.  Any advice on how to do that?

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So, there you have it – my update on my 2012 genealogy goals.  I have a few more things to work on and a few more months left in the year.  That works out well.

For those of you who set goals with me at the beginning of the year, how are you doing?

For those of you who didn’t, it’s not too late.  What would you like to accomplish – genealogically speaking – in the next four months?

To view the Web Dashboard, go to the Plan workspace. You can click the Options link to select what types of information will appear and how often the data will be refreshed.

And new in 2011, the Dashboard contains Member Connect activity, links to message boards, and notification of new Ancestry messages. Simply click the link to access the record or message on Ancestry.com

Well… I don’t remember the latter happening to me either, but Carolyn S. from Youngstown, Ohio does.

That’s because Carolyn is the Grand Prize winner of the Ultimate Family History Journey™ Sweepstakes that took place earlier this year. As the Grand Prize winner, Carolyn was awarded $20,000 in travel money, an 8 hour consultation with an expert genealogist, help from up to 5 experts in the fields relevant to her family history, an annual World Deluxe Subscription for herself and 5 more World Deluxe Subscriptions for her family.

For those of you that didn’t know about the sweepstakes, we awarded one lucky winner the Grand Prize and twenty entrants a World Deluxe Ancestry.com subscription. We had more than 850,000 entrants, but Carolyn was the fortunate one to win the $20,000 in travel money to put towards her  ultimate family history journey.

We had a chance to talk with Carolyn about her family history story and find out her plans for her own family history journey.

Carolyn started researching her family history full-time in November of 2009. You may think she is new to family history, but this genealogist is no novice. Carolyn spends nearly 10 hours a day working on her family history and has already added more than 800 ancestors to her family tree.

Of all of the stories and history she has discovered, she says the greatest thing she has done so far is to uncover details about her grandparents.

“We were a very close family growing up – my parents and siblings. My grandparents died when I was two years old and we never talked about family outside of ourselves. To me there are a lot of family mysteries,” she said. “In fact, when I started, everyone thought my one grandfather’s name was George and it wasn’t. It was James.”

Through Member Connect on Ancestry.com Carolyn was able to reach out and find new cousins who had more information about her grandparents. It was those cousins that sent her photos, stories and memories of her grandparents. Until that moment, Carolyn only had pictures of her grandparents in their old age.

“They sent pictures to me of my grandparents when they were young,” Carolyn reminisced. “When I saw them as young people, my connection to them became so much stronger.”

Carolyn attributes her love of family history to the desires she always had to know her grandparents better. She hopes to use the genealogy experts to break down some of her family history walls, including information about her father’s brother who the family never knew.

“I also want to find my great-great-grandfather or grandmother on both sides,” Carolyn said. “But it’s hard when everyone in the family has the name James.”

Her great-great-grandparents are from Ireland and Wales and Carolyn hopes to uncover details about this side of her family.

“I always thought Ireland would be a great place to visit, never thinking that something like this would ever happen. If I go to Ireland, I’ll have to go to Wales too,” she said.

Carolyn’s winnings are something that many of us will only be able to dream about in our lifetime. Yet we are so excited that she’ll be able to take this journey and uncover the mysteries in her family.

$20,000 is a lot of cash to use on an ultimate family history journey. What would you want to discover if you had won the grand prize?

Okay, not really, not even close. But I did find out that a semi-distant branch of my family tree helped settle King County, Washington. That’s exciting for me, considering all I ever hoped to discover is that my surname is something more than a misspelling.

What’s even better is how I learned about my Seattle connection – from another member of Ancestry.com who saw a familiar name in my family tree (for the sake of full disclosure, it’s not the misspelled line). To make a long story short, this person gave me the contact info for the family’s historian, who was said to have all the details. On a whim, I contacted her; she quickly told me the details about how the family links to the history of the Pacific Northwest and places beyond.

Now my summer goal is to trace my own family line back to this respectable one. True, I probably could have just asked the family historian, but I want to discover the details for myself before I take her up on her offer of a tour of family history hotspots in and around Seattle. (It’s feeling great to be connected.)

I’m also planning to go back through the Member Connect activity notifications I keep thinking I’m too busy to review (they’re listed on the Collaborate tab). I know there’s at least one notification there that pertains to my misspelled family line. Maybe the person who saved that record also has some insight about the original poor speller in the family as well as why no one ever bothered to fix his or her mistake.

A girl can dream, can’t she?

The RSS feed is available from the Recent Member Connect Activity page. You can subscribe to the RSS feed in 3 easy steps:

1. Click on the “See more activity” link in the Recent Member Connect Activity on your homepage or click on “Recent Member Connect Activity” in the sub menu under the Collaborate main navigation (these links take you to the same page).
   
   
   
2. At the bottom of the right column on the Recent Member Connect Activity page, you’ll find a link to subscribe to the RSS feed.
   
   
   
3. When you click on the link, you will navigate to the RSS feed (XML) page. There are two ways to subscribe to the RSS feed. If your browser supports this, you can click on the “subscribe” link/button at the top of the page to add the RSS feed to your RSS reader. Otherwise, you can manually subscribe to the RSS feed by copying and pasting the URL from your web browser address bar into your RSS reader.

Whether you’re scouring the research library or getting together to share family stories with relatives, you’ll never miss a chance to add to your Ancestry.com family tree with this handy app. Log in to your Ancestry.com account from anywhere to access your tree, edit information, upload photos — even add a long-lost family member you find on your way. You never know where or when you’ll discover something to help you grow your Ancestry.com family tree.

With this helpful mobile tree tool, you can see all the family trees you’ve already created on Ancestry.com. Just download the app to your iPhone or iPod^® Touch, log in to your Ancestry.com account and choose a family tree.

• You can browse names in your tree
• Search for a specific person in your tree
• Click on a relative to view, then edit or add vital information, immediate family members, life events, notes or new ancestors.
• Take photos of your relatives, historical documents, keepsakes,  buildings and more and upload them directly to your tree.

Just discovered a treasure trove of family heirlooms at your second cousin’s house? Take pictures and upload them to your tree with stories about each one. Found a forgotten family member’s headstone as you traverse an 18^th century cemetery? Add this new person and upload an image of their gravesite. Now when you’re on the go, your family tree — and all your history — goes with you.

For more details about the new Ancestry.com Tree To Go iPhone app visit www.ancestry.com/iphone, or download the Ancestry.com Trees To Go directly from the iTunes App Store.

And there is the story of Cary Christopher, who thought his great-grandfather was a German soldier during WWI but found out he was actually an American naval hero.

Well, recently we had a follow-up to Cary’s story that made it even more interesting. After we put the clip of Cary telling his story on Ancestry.com, we were contacted by one of Cary’s old friends and shipmates from Cary’s own time serving in the Navy.

Owen, Cary’s former shipmate, was also a member of Ancestry.com and his wife saw Cary’s video while doing some research on Ancestry.com.

According to Owen, he was reading the paper in one room when he heard his wife yell from the other, “It’s him. Honey, it’s him!”

“Who?” Owen yelled back.

“Christopher.”

“Chris who?”

“You know—him!”

When Owen finally figured out who she was talking about, he was ecstatic. He contacted us to see if we could put him in touch with Cary.

We took down Owen’s information and passed it on to Cary, in case he wanted to contact Owen. He did, and the two had a fun time connecting after so many years apart. They spent several hours on the phone catching up.

I love these kinds of connections because they just go to show you how doing your family history has a domino effect–one connection leads to another, which leads to another, and so on. Who knew when Cary made the discovery on Ancestry.com about his great-grandfather that it would help him reconnect with a former friend and crew member from his own life?

You can read the rest of the story about Cary and Owen’s reunion in the Learning Center. Plus, you can get some tips on how to make your own connections with family–past and present.

Note: This article was originally published in the November Ancestry Monthly Update.

Yesterday we made a number of additions to make it easier to get to the information you are most interested in on the Recent Member Connect Activity list.  If there has been activity from other members on Ancestry.com that is directly related to your own research activity, you’ll find this activity list on your homepage when you are logged in, as well as on the main page under the Collaborate tab.  Here’s what we’ve added to that list:

1. Recent Activity filter options

We’ve made a number of changes around how you can filter out activity from your Recent Activity list.

First, if you have multiple family trees on Ancestry.com you can choose to filter out the activity for any of your trees.  For example, you might be invited as an editor to a tree, but not be interested in all of the activity related to that tree.  If that’s the case, you can simply un-check the box for that tree and we won’t show you that activity anymore.

Second, based on member feedback we’ve updated the types of activity your can filter out of your list.  We hope that the new categories make it easier to get to the activity you are most interested in, especially if you have a lot of activity on your list.

Third, we will now remember your filter settings for you.  So if you filter one of your trees out of the list, or a specific activity type you’re not interested in, we’ll keep that activity off of your list until you choose to re-check the boxes to add it back in.

Finally, we’ve made these filter options available from the Member Connect sections on the homepage and under the Collaborate tab, as well as on the full Recent Activity page.

2. Top daily activity items

Some members who have done a lot of research on Ancestry.com, or who have large family trees on the site, may have a lot of activity included on their Recent Activity list each day.  If this is the case for you, we’ve made an update that we hope will help.  If there are more than 10 activity items related to your family history research on a given day, we will initially just list the top ten items from that day on your list.  Hopefully this gets the most interesting items at the top for you.  Then if you would like to see more activity from that day you can simply expand the list for the day to see the rest of the activity items.

3. Expanded activity display

Sometimes if a few similar things happen on the site, we may only list one item on your Recent Activity list.  For example, if another member researching your great-grandfather added three photos of him to their public family tree, you might get one activity item mentioning that three photos were added, but without giving details on each of them.  For activity items like this there will now be a new “show” link that will let you expand the activity item to see all of the details related to that item.

We’ve also made a number of other enhancements to Member Connect in the last couple months.  I just wanted to highlight a few of them for you here:

1. Links to your family tree from trees you have connected with

You can connect with another member who has common ancestors of yours in their family tree, either by saving information from their tree through an Ancestry.com Hint or through the Member Connect section of the profile page for the matching person in your tree.  If you’ve done this and later go to the matching person in the other member’s tree, we will confirm that you’ve already connected with them and will include a link for you back to the matching person in your tree.  This helps you keep track of who you’ve connected with, and also makes it easier to get back to your tree when you are checking family trees of members you’ve connected with.

2. Explanations about information in your Recent Activity list

Some information included on your Recent Activity list may be related to research you did a while back rather than more recent research that is fresh in your mind.  If that is the case, you may not be sure why a specific item is on your list.  To learn more just put your cursor over the activity item and you will see a “?” icon on the right.  Simply click this to learn why the item was included in your list.  We’ll also often be able to provide a link for you to the related person in your family tree.

3. Information you’ve ignored from members you have connected with

Within your family tree, Member Connect lets you compare what information other members have about one of your family members with what you have.  If you’ve connected to the other member, after checking into their information and validating it you can also update your tree with the new information.  If the information doesn’t seem accurate or interesting, though, you can also select to ignore it.  Previously we didn’t label which items you have ignored from another member’s tree.  Now these items will have a simple “ignored” button, which will still let you update your tree with this information if you change your mind later.

These are just a few highlights of improvements we’ve made based, in large part on feedback from our members.  We’d love to continue to get your feedback about Member Connect so that we know how we can continue to improve it for you.  Please just email us at MemberConnectFeedback@ancestry.com with your thoughts.

The goal of Member Connect in family trees is to help you discover who else is researching your relatives so that you can collaborate in your family history research.  You may make new discoveries, may help someone else make new discoveries or correct incorrect information in their tree, and may even connect with a cousin you didn’t know you had.

There are three main steps for Member Connect within your family tree:

1. Evaluating and connecting with suggested connections
2. Learning from and collaborating with connections you make
3. Staying up to date on new discoveries your connections make

Evaluating and connecting with suggested connections

On the profile page for an ancestor in your tree you’ll find a new tab called Member Connect.  This tab has three different areas: Recent Activity, Connections, and Suggested Connections.

“Suggested Connections” is the page where we list potential matches for your ancestor or relative in other public member trees.  Here you can evaluate the information they have about your relative, including a list of the records from Ancestry.com that they’ve listed as sources.  You can also link to the other member’s tree to learn more.  If it looks like a good match for your relative and you’d like to be informed when new information is added to this person, just click on “Connect”.  If you’re not interested, just click “Ignore”.

Tip: On the Suggested Connections page we’ll mark which information from the other member is different than your information (labeled as Conflicting) and which information you don’t have at all in your tree (labeled as New).  You’ll want to look at this information closely as you evaluate a possible connection.

Learning from and collaborating with connections you make

After you have connected with another member researching a common ancestor, the connection will be listed under the “Connections” section of the Member Connect tab.  If you have already accepted Ancestry Hints or saved information from another member tree, you will already have connections from these trees listed in your Connections list.  If you find that you don’t want to be connected, you can just click “Remove” on the connection.

Tip: It is important to note the difference between connecting with another member and saving or merging information from their tree, as you might from Ancestry Hints.  Connecting with another member does not change any information in your tree.  It simply allows you to evaluate their research in case there is something you can learn from each other, as well as stay up to date on future discoveries they might make.

Why connect with another member?

There are several benefits of connecting with another member researching a common ancestor.

• You can quickly check what they have in their public member tree without leaving your tree by going to the Connections section of the Member Connect tab on your ancestor’s profile page.
• We’ll identify differences between your trees so that you can update your tree if you learn something new.  You can also contact the other member directly if you have information that would help them update something in their tree.
• You can also stay up to date on their new research discoveries through the Recent Activity page.

There are a few important links available for a connection for someone in your tree.

1. At the top of the connection listing there will be a direct link to view the individual in the other member’s tree
2. You will also see the username of the other member.  This is a link that lets you see a preview of their public member profile.  You can then choose to view their full profile or contact them directly through our online Messages feature.
3. When comparing your trees any details, records, or photos that you don’t have in your tree will be marked as “New”.  Clicking this button will allow you to save this information to your tree, view it in the other member’s tree, or ignore it.
4. If the other member has information that is different that what you have in your tree it will be marked as “Conflicting”.  Clicking this button will give you the same options as for New information.

If you choose to save information, you can customize what you save to your tree as you do today when you accept an Ancestry Hint.  This includes editing the information as well as choosing whether or not you also want to include records from Ancestry that the other member has used as a source.

When you find conflicting information in another member’s this is an opportunity to dig in and do a little research to verify the information you have in your tree.  You may find that your information was correct and you can contact the member you’ve connected with to share what you know.  You may also find that the other member was correct and decide to update your family tree.

When saving conflicting information you have two different options.  First, you can simply update the information you already have in your tree.  Please note that we will not change the information in your tree without you choosing exactly what you want to update.

Second, you can add the information from the other member as alternate or new information in your tree without changing what you already have.  Just click the box to add it as an alternate or new fact or event.

Staying up to date on new discoveries your connections make

After you connect with another member you can stay up to date on the new discoveries they make about your common relative in the Recent Activity section of Member Connect in your family tree.  This page will list all of the public research being done on Ancestry.com that relates to your relative.  This might be a new historical record that is found, a new photo that is uploaded, or a corrected birth date based on a new source the other member discovered.

If you have publicly shared photos or other information, on the Recent Activity page we’ll also let you know if other members are finding it useful and saving it.  And if you have invited others to your tree as editors, we’ll list any changes they make in your tree as well.

If you aren’t interested in all of the Activity Types, just un-check the appropriate boxes in the upper right of the page.

In addition to the Recent Activity list for a specific relative in your family tree, there is a Recent Member Connect Activity list available from your homepage, the main Collaborate tab on the site, and the “Recent Member Connect Activity” link in the drop down when pointing your mouse at the Collaborate tab.

This page will show all activity on the site related to any of your research on Ancestry.com.  This includes all of your connections in each of your trees, as well as all historical records you have saved, corrected, or commented on.  Just like the Recent Activity list in your tree, this page lets you filter out specific types of activities that you’re not interested in seeing.  Since there is a lot more activity on this page, we’re also working on additional filtering options.

For members with large trees and a lot of activity on the site this may be a pretty full list.  If this is the case for you, you’ll probably have the easiest time looking at the Recent Activity list for a specific relative in your tree that you’re interested in.  That lets you filter the list down to just what applies to that ancestor rather than seeing the whole full list of activity.

I hope these extra details about Member Connect in your family tree are helpful.  If you are interested in learning even more we’ll be conducting a one-hour online presentation about Member Connect on August 17th. We’ll show you where to find the new features and how to use them to discover even more about your family story. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session.  Click here to learn more and register.

We also want to make sure that we continue to improve the Member Connect feature.  As you begin using Member Connect, please send us your feedback by emailing us at memberconnectfeedback@ancestry.com.  Your feedback will help us continue to improve this new feature and make it even more useful for you.

We are very excited about Member Connect and hope that it will help you make new valuable connections and discoveries in your family history research.