Cleaning Up Your Family Tree

If you are like me, you like your tree to be clean and, above all, accurate. I have seen many trees on Ancestry with BMD, census or other facts entered more than once, some with different dates. And don't get me started on children born after the mother has died! I have been unwittingly guilty of some of these errors.

I have been working on a certain tree for the past month and now it is time to clean it up, and make sure I have all the necessary information. Once would be good. 

First I made a pedigree chart - I use Family Tree Maker, but any program that generates a chart will do. This way I can look down the columns and easily see who I am missing.

I find I am missing information for this family and their ancestors. So I went back to my tree and added that in. I can do the same with every generation.

Now that we are not missing anyone's vitals or ancestors, time to see if what I have on the tree is accurate. For this I used Family Tree Analyzer, a free program you can download here and one every genealogist should have in their arsenal. I had seen this program mentioned a few times and DiAnn Iamarino has written about her experiences with it, so with finally a bit of free time on my hands I decided to give it a whirl.  

So glad I did!  

Using the Errors/Fixes tab shows me all the little things I may have incorrect. Like a baptism date before a birth date, children born after parent is deceased, duplicate facts, and "Male wife and Female husbands"?  Oops! It happens.

Clicking on the Surname tab I see some same names with different spelling which alerted me to the fact that I may have someone entered twice... which I did. 
Under the World War tab you can enter a surname and find if any of the ancestors were of an age to be in either World War. 
The Main Lists tab has subtabs of individuals, families, sources and occupations. 
Different reports can be exported to an Excel spreadsheet. 

The Census tab has the main census from 1800 up, none of the earlier ones of Canada when it was New France. But it will tell you if family members are missing from a census. 

On This Day....

With the On This Day tab you can see not only world events that occurred on this day, but also anniversaries of your ancestors. I chose a single day, but you can update it to a month or a year or more.

I am still exploring its features, but I suggest everyone should get this FREE program to fix errors on their tree. Next I want to play with the map feature. 

After reading the Guides, if you have questions or suggestions you can send a message to the author through his facebook page.

My tree is now all cleaned up.  What about yours?



Relevant Links

Family Tree Analyzer Website

Family Tree Analyser FaceBook page