Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:
It’s Saturday Night again –
Time for some more Genealogy Fun!!
Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.
1) Have you used helps such as Tree Checker on Ancestry, Consistency Check on MyHeritage, or the Family Tree Analyzer program to check for errors in your family tree?
While I’ve known about these tools, I hadn’t dedicated much time to using them to clean up my tree—until now. Curiosity got the better of me, so I decided to test each tool and see what insights they could offer.
My Heritage
My tree on MyHeritage is fairly ‘static’; it’s linked to my DNA test but I don’t regularly update it with new findings. So, I wasn’t shocked when the Consistency Checker flagged over 500 errors.
Although many of these were likely genuine errors, some were flagged as “fact occurring after death.” I had 36 of these in my tree.
Interestingly, in these cases, the facts and dates are actually correct—the events did happen after death.
One unique feature of the MyHeritage tool is that it flags children born too close together. While it might signal an error based on the dates, it’s possible that the sources for those birthdates are incorrect, which could be worth investigating further.
Ancestry
Ancestry is where the bulk of my research resides. The Tree Check tool from ProTools revealed a significant number of issues in my tree.
Since I use RootsMagic’s TreeShare for updates, I tend to ignore documentation errors. However, the “Possible Duplicates” feature was useful—it identifies people with similar names and birth/death dates. By clicking the exclamation mark on the right, you can review and possibly merge the individuals.
However, without numerical IDs attached to people in the tree, it can be tricky to find potential duplicates outside of the error checker. Knowing I have some similarly named individuals, I reviewed one such case.
While many researchers believe these two men are the same person, I’ve spent considerable time documenting them separately, so I’m reluctant to merge them without deeper investigation.
Many of the 577 other errors were due to birth dates not making sense relative to their parents.
Family Tree Analyzer
Unlike the online tools, Family Tree Analyzer works with a GEDCOM file. I used a file containing seven generations of ancestors to test it. The Error/Fixes screen identified many of the same issues that Ancestry and MyHeritage flagged.
Additionally, Family Tree Analyzer identifies custom facts and evaluates location data for geocoding.
However, since my GEDCOM file from RootsMagic didn’t include geocoding, every location was flagged as an issue.
RootsMagic
In RootsMagic, I used the Command Palette to access the PROBLEM LIST.
Thankfully, this tool allows me to work on one problem type at a time. For example, burials occurring over 100 days after death generated quite a long list of ‘errors’ in my data.
By highlighting a name and clicking ‘Edit Person,’ I could immediately view the source of the error. In one case, Matthew Martin Bland had two conflicting death dates: 27 July 1878 and 27 July 1879, both sourced. I had set the earlier date as primary, and the burial date was after the later one, causing the error. I removed the burial date but kept it as a ‘sort’ date, which resolved the issue.
Will I Fix All These Errors?
Realistically, probably not. However, I might use the GROUP feature to narrow down the potential errors and make the process more manageable.
Thanks Randy, for the challenge—it was enlightening to explore these tools!