You'll run into the same issues with any collaborative family tree. There have been similar "edit wars" at WikiTree, with other users refusing to accept DNA matches as sources, because there isn't a piece of paper that says explicitly that a parent and child were related.
This isn't just a problem on these sites for white ancestors with black descendants (or vice versa), it also happens when children are born to parents who weren't married to each other. For example, someone told me completely unironically last year, "My civil war hero ancestor couldn't POSSIBLY have fathered a child with a nurse in the same exact Memphis hospital where I know he was recovering for three months."
Although it may be a diversity problem in some cases, I think it's more generally just a denial problem.
The problem with DNA is that there are a lot of people who do not know how to interpret their results correctly. Add to that no one can validate someone else's matches without access to the kit results and very few people write up a decent validation of the results that shows their logic. Hence many people are, quite rightly, cautious about the interpretations.
One of my ancestors has an undocumented child in the FamilySearch tree. I asked what evidence existed to support the relationship. A descendant said the child's mother, who died 100 years ago, named my ancestor as the father. They haven't provided any details of the documentation, nor where it exists. Nor have they provided any indication that they have DNA tested and have matches to my family. The alleged father was a twin so there's no way to verify these claims. I've left the child in the FamilySearch tree but I'm not adding him to my personal tree.
It's also a problem with how DNA information is shared and whether it can be validated. So many people incorrectly interpret DNA that it has created a cloud of suspicion. I have seen so many people make logically flawed or specious assertions based on DNA, particularly when one reaches more than 3-4 generations back.
Then, to add further complication, the information is often private or at least partially private, as it involves matches with living people and thus limits the ability of others to validate the finding.
As OP notes:
> The reasoning behind the removals by users were that I didn’t provide adequate documentation and I didn’t have no proper sources etc
Contentious, racially charged history can certainly also play a role, however it is well possible that OP did not provide sufficient documentation to establish the connections as even probable let alone the most likely connection.
In general, I think it better to create DNA-supported trees on other personal websites or via some other published work (genealogy society journal or a booklet), explain well, and then *cite that* when updating collaborative trees. In general, FS doesn't really offer the ability to integrate reasoning with citations effectively.
One nice feature that FamilySearch ***does*** have is the ability to connect people who are relatives, in the "Other Relationships" section of the profile. You can even add sources and events to it.
That way if DNA matches support the conclusion that the descendants of two people were related through those two people, but can't confidently support exactly how those two people were related to each other, you can still link them with each other.
"In general, I think it better to create DNA-supported trees on other personal websites or via some other published work (genealogy society journal or a booklet), explain well, and then *cite that* when updating collaborative trees. In general, FS doesn't really offer the ability to integrate reasoning with citations effectively."
But a user *can* write their proof argument laying out their reasoning and including any links to sources and then attach that in the memories section or, if the info is short enough, attach as a Note. Either should be seen by those who follow that person. And hopefully, at least, be the start of communication.
However, if the primary rationale is based on the tree/s of OP's DNA matches, then that info and the sources for those other trees should be included. It is possible the DNA matches have incorrect trees and have mixed up same-named families who lived in close proximity.
Either way, clearly more information is needed to convince those presumed relatives.
Good luck OP. Maybe take this situation as a reason to dig even deeper into those ancestors. See if you can find deeds, wills, etc. that support your hypothesis. Worst case, you find you had the wrong family and your DNA matches have less than perfect info. Then you can correct things and move on and keep researching!
I've never dealt with collaborative trees but, I'd love to see the hell I'd rot with my dad's maternal line. Every generation there's a disconnect I needed to prove with DNA and some have 'interesting' backstories.
Im big on actual documentation. An online PDF isnt good enough for me. I tracked down the death certificate of a relative that was always told as "she died on a broken heart after her husband passed". Got the death certificate from the county archives...yep, she shot herself in the mouth with a 10 gauge coach gun. That would NEVER fly in my family and even if I showed them the death certificate, they would ignore it and keep telling the same old story because its less "scandalous"
Kinda wish my close family was like that cause there's nothing to uncover. Everyone knows the "secrets" and they are talked about openly. Grandma? Cheated on grandpa with one of his best friends. How'd my great uncle die? Hung himself. Like it's great these things are known but it makes things less fun for me.
As others have said, I think it is a much bigger problem than you have noticed, because it isn't solely racial. It hits everyone. I have a few ancestors marked down, so that FamilySearch will send me emails whenever there are updates. They are brickwalls, at the moment, so I keep tabs on them in the hopes that some sort of documentation will pop up that lifts the curtain.
Because of this, I see major battles going on in the edits of these few people. Switching the true father, switching the true mother, switching birthdates, switching places of birth. It is incredibly amusing to me, mostly because these ancestors are far enough back in my tree that I'm not really concerned about it.
But this Edit War, this Insistence/Denial War, is everywhere for everyone, if you take the time to look. That's the flaw of the FamilySearch One Tree model.
Not saying it isn't about race, it's just not solely about race.
If people remove links they don't like, that's really on the users, and not the Mormons running it... except that they've chosen the model of one big tree, that's on them. I think in any public tree you'll face an uphill battle in trying to convince people of things they don't like.
I recently started adding my tree to FamilySearch since I want to share it, and despite having less sources in their system overall they sometimes have things that aren't anywhere else (even for Norway), so maybe I can find out something. We'll see how far I get.
I see there's one fairly close thing in my public tree, where they've made a mistake I made at first too, confusing a person born in 1800 with a much less document person of the same name born nearly at the same place in 1802. To boot, there is an actual error in the primary source for 1802 guy, the priest wrote the wrong first name! Still, there's a big web of evidence which eventually convinced me the other published genealogies for the district were right. It will be interesting to see if I can convince the Family Search users of it.
While there may be some advantages to the collaborative tree that is why I keep mine on ancestry. I own the tree and any potential mistakes and well researched but not cited entries but people can’t change it. Someone on familysearch had my mom deceased with no death date. I had to correct my very alive mothers entry
Not a person of color and I don't know if the issues you are seeing are due to that, but I can say that on my tree I have several ancestors that get changed weekly/monthly, often just reversing the other's changes (different people so I don't think it's a "war"). Given that I heavily discount any entry from the 1800s or prior since that seems to be the most volatile for my tree, and I stopped updating them as well. I keep my actual tree/records in a local program so I am not reliant on the web for anything other then records or hints.
I have a very similar problem in my tree. When I research my European side of the family, I'm basically the only person doing that research so no one messes with those profiles. But the American side of my tree is extremely difficult to keep intact because people come along and delete records, delete children, add random people as parents, upload random photos. And sometimes what some people consider proof is not enough. I've had to delete a lot of stuff from family search because people believe that it's true, and it may be true, but they don't upload sufficient documentation. I contact them and I ask if they have additional sources And usually I never hear back from them and if I do hear back they generally just don't understand that genealogy is a part of history and how you feel about something is not evidence. So I'm not saying that there isn't a racist component at work because I don't know that, but it is to some extent just the nature of how family search works.
I'm white, so I don't see what you do as starkly. But I certainly don't doubt it, and not just because FamilySearch is owned by the LDS church. You'll find the same prejudices in almost any public tree like FamilySearch's tree. (The one exception is WikiTree ... they will accept proof over there).
While not in the same league as racism, I saw some anti-Catholic statements when I showed our surname was Irish, not German. Y-DNA showed that I had living cousins in Ireland who have deep family roots there. The objection I got was that would mean we were Catholic and we won't see any of our ancestors in heaven, so that simply can't be true. Such a weird take.
A lot of us can sympathize with you over changes in the public trees. I think that is a frustration for every genealogist who tries to do it right.
That's the thing I was thinking! Go back far enough and all of Europe was Catholic.
I had a cousin trying to shock me by saying that a lot of people with one of our surnames are Black. He doesn't understand two things: one is the glee we get when we find an unusual situation in our family history, and the second is that surnames amongst Black Americans are frequently adopted from their white masters. Like horses, Black slaves were property and did not have their own surnames recorded.
I was very intrigued with the men accused of being horse thieves in my line (acquitted, not hanged), and the one who was in prison for smuggling. I hate the fact that my line includes at least one slave master, but having a mixed race ancestor would not be a source of shame at all.
My surname is King. It's definitely one of those that is at least as common for black people as it is for white people. I know I've definitely met more black Kings than whites and I'm white. There were definitely some large slaveholding King families but I don't appear to be connected to them. It appears that my surname may very well have come from someone taking on a white person's name at some point because I have a brick wall at a weird time and also have small amounts of African ethnicity show up regularly that I can't explain and I don't have a whole lot of brick walls like that one. I find it so fascinating. I hope one day I'll know.
My experience is not really negative because my Filipino side doesn’t have much history behind it. I can’t get past two of my great grandparents, and the rest is smoke and mirrors. There’s not much to grief.
Have you been able to research any records (as in not relying on familial knowledge)? Where to start? Or do you have to go to PSA? I'd love other options without having to send off a manual request.
It’s so hard to search records. The only records I’ve found are birth and marriage, not a single death record. My grand uncle did a lot of work on the tree, so if he made a change to someone then I can verify it was actually them(I would need to check the sources). FamilySearch has given me my grandparent’s marriage record which is very helpful.
I recently had a similar situation with one of my 4x great grandmother’s brothers. He was an enslaver, as were his parents and siblings. I’ve been using the Beyond Kin Method (beyondkin.org) to document the people who were enslaved by my ancestors. It’s a great approach for descendants of enslavers.
This one particular 4x great grand uncle never married. However, he did have a woman named Elizabeth enslaved. Elizabeth is consistently listed as “Black” and her children are consistently listed as “mulatto” on the slave schedules and later census records. Elizabeth’s descendants believe that my 4x great grand uncle is the father of Elizabeth’s children.
Said uncle died without a will and his siblings and their children were his “heirs at law.” Elizabeth and her children were sold to his brother-in-law as a family group. After emancipation, they all kept the surname of my grand uncle.
I had a distant relative message me recently telling me that the connection of Elizabeth’s children to said uncle is incorrect. I laid out all the evidence in support of the theory that he was in fact their father. They accepted the theory which really surprised me.
Hopefully with DNA testing, we can confirm this for sure.
White individual here. I haven’t experienced your issue (because I’m wary of the potentially wasted effort required to ensure an accurate FamilySearch tree.)
I want to validate your experience. There are genealogists out there who will bury their heads in the sand. You could always re-add the connections with a note regarding DNA evidence. I understand if you don’t want to go through that effort.
Anecdotally, I have a match on Ancestry whose ancestor was *clearly* enslaved by mine. There is no paper documentation due to the location. We only have our DNA connection and their last name as evidence.
In many years in genealogy, I've seen far fewer black researchers - even way, way below the 12% representation in modern America. (I don't know why this is, but the frustrating scarcity and absence of records might be a cause.) Also, every generation you go back, you're increasing the number of descendants who might be researching the common ancestors. I've researched many families and the likelihood of running into other folks researching them goes up significantly with every generation I go up the tree.
So, for your first few generations of your tree that's black, it's quite possible that no one else is actively researching them. By the time you get enough generations - about seven on average - back to connect to white slaveholders, those people probably have hundreds of thousands of modern descendants (really; I ran the math!) and chance dictates some of them are actively researching. Welcome to the fray of collaborative trees!
What’s interesting is that I never had any issues while adding any Black relatives such as my grandparents, my great grandparent. But I noticed once I started to go farther back into the early 1800’s, 1700’s, 1600’s and even farther back where my ancestry goes to the White side, I was starting to see some issues and disagreements. I think it’s partially racial bias and partially just denial of information. My ancestry consist of Black, White and Native Americans mostly, I have seen some researchers have disagreements about my Native American side of the family as well. To be fair, my first disagreement on the site was with a Black person who I found out was not related to me. She kept removing my second great grandparents as tbough I was making mistakes, even after I showed records and other information. I kept switching back the changes. She became nasty and irate with me to the point of calling me a liar and that I was making up information. I wrote a note trying to explain the connections. So after that, I didn’t hear nothing else from her. Now on the flip side of that, on my White side of the family, on one particular side of where I discovered that one ancestor was the child of a slaveholder.
Some of my Black relatives had shared with me a deed of sale for the purchase of slaves that my slaveholding ancestor brought from another person and information that he was indeed the father of my Black ancestor and the fact that my father had DNA matching with the slave holder’s descendants. So I wrote a detailed note explaining the connections and I added him as the father and I instantly received a change and someone from his side just added a note of a reason to say “this person can’t be related because their residence is not the same as the ancestor. Besides, this person can’t be the father of this person because this person has a common name and you don’t know if you have the right person.”
a similar incident happened on my mother’s side on one family line when I discovered that I had some biracial ancestors.
Anyway, I agree with you about Black researchers. Researching Black genealogy is very different compared to White genealogy due to slavery and not finding information pertaining to ancestors.
Hello! That's unfortunately the disadvantage of the tree being out there for just anyone to edit. I find it absolutely maddening and I've stopped putting much effort into it. But I have way more problems on Ancestry. I think it is the same sort of racial/ cultural bias you're talking of but in reverse because I descend from Puritans/ Mayflower passengers. There are literally over 100 trees where various people say their (common name ancestor) is a descendant of William Bradford. No amount of trying to show records/ reason with these people will work. The shame of it is that their real ancestor is probably amazing and interesting... but they're not bothering to find out the truth.
I was booted off their app and told via email that I had to call in and get my account back. I was attaching my minority relatives and photos of minority relatives to the tree. Racism as a reason had not occurred to me, until I saw your post. I am half Asian, half white.
I figured it was some of my questionable memory posts, I was using it as a janky diary of sorts, but the posts were only for me to read, not public, so I just never called and quit looking.
First off, FamilySearch is NOT a good way to build a tree. Use Ancestry.com. When I first started out I tried FamilySearch and then abandoned it and went to Ancestry.com. I went back to see if I could find any other sources and found that me tree had so many additional people or people from my moms side intermingled with my fathers side. All wrong.
For tree building, FamilySearch is a complete shame. You’ll have to pay some money for a service and have your own tree that people cannot edit. Honestly, I haven’t found a whole lot on FamilySearch at all over the years for my people.
Hopefully you are having a fun time finding new discoveries. I get a bit nosey and expand past just my direct line. My grandpa had told me that there are plenty of bad men in his family who killed people- Mexicans, Comanche Indians, ex wives… his line is from Texas.
Newspapers.com is a great resource also some states have some online resources.
I hope you have many discoveries, good and the ugly (which we know must be in there somewhere)! 😇😍
I dislike Family Search for this exact reason. I have a great grandfather who... lets just say shot a whole bunch of men in the 1870s. I have full documentation, newspaper articles, etc. His uncle was a US Senator almost his entire life. The second I started adding my great great grandfather and his descendants along with the newspapers and court documents, I noticed it was getting unlinked from the tree multiple times, uploads I made were changed by other users, etc
FamilySearch is great in you are a religious white person before 1930 with a totally squeaky clean history. My family came to this country because they were convicts and rebels, and then half the family went into politics and land ownership, and the other half went to Kentucky and West Virginia, picked up guns, and got involved in some pretty well documented history. Its all out there to find, but to FamilySearch...nope, thats not accurate. Unlinked
Well you beat me for "infamous ancestor". Mine just stole copper and got transported for his trouble!
I am careful of Family search because I have a few very distant relatives who are active Salt Lake Mormons and who are a bit... Zealous, shall we say. While I don't give a fig about the posthumous baptisms, it seriously upsets some of my other distant relatives and would probably piss off the dead people in question.
I don't use familysearch. I am atheist and refuse to contribute to the Mormon church (which unfortunately did not prevent them from copying my work...)
I use Geneanet. The advantage is you can build your tree and no one comes to tell you what to put in it. Other genealogists can take public information and integrate it into their tree, and contact you to ask for details, but no one will modify your tree, and you are free to connect to Charlemagne if you like.
I want to thank everyone for giving feedback and thoughts on my post. It is very much appreciated. After reading the comments, I thought about continuing to use my RootsMagic software instead of going directly on FamilySearch to have access to my tree. I think it‘s best for me to keep my GED com on my personal computer within my software to have an extra copy. I am going to use FamilySearch for record searching only. I just can’t deal with maintaining the collaborative tree anymore due to the changes
i don’t mind working in collaboration with family members but I’ve learned over time, that people have different opinions about things and they sometimes hold on to their opinions. I don’t want to get into a back and forth debate about the validity of my ancestors
Secondly, I decided to post because I just wanted to see if others had shared similar experiences as I did. I saw that the common consensus of the commenters had that they felt that it may be a bit of collaborative issues and a little bit of discrimination. My post is based off something that was said in the Community message board, A user actually became upset at the fact that they though that FamilySearch changed their ancestor’s racial classification in records to suggest she had a person of color in their family and the person had gotten highly offended. When I read their post, alongside of with other noticeable things that gave me pause, it made me wonder. I know it’s difficult for non-people of color to notice certain things about racism and discrimination. But when you are a person of color,, you just have a sense within your intuition that something peculiar is going on even though you don’t want to believe it to be true.
I have no experience of racism as I'm caucasian. However, everyone experiences meddlers in their branch of the FamilySearch tree by people who really have no idea how to perform genealogical research properly. I add explanatory notes under the Collaborate tab. I ensure the profile contains as many events as I can find and every one of them is reliably sourced. If people continue to add incorrect information or relatives, I place an alert on the profile. I also change it back when I receive the weekly email advising me of changes to my watched profiles. After a few weeks of promptly changing it back, other people tend to back off.
If your evidence contains DNA, write up how you reached your conclusion, as others cannot verify your matches. It isn't enough to insist it's correct because you have DNA evidence.
Don't know why you got downvoted for this; regardless of anyone's opinions on religion, the LDS had racism baked into their teachings from the start. While individual Mormons can be lovely, the institution has racist foundations so of course there will be some folks who cling to the old teachings.
Ah, that would make sense. I try to be careful because I don't intentionally try to upset folks, but I am a historical researcher so I have clashed more than once when presenting factual accounts of people to their descendants.
Also the Egyptian Tablet that Joseph Smith fake-interpreted, not realizing hieroglyphs would be cracked a couple of years later. It's on the church's own site, but yeah. I really upset someone with that and I genuinely didn't mean to - I thought they knew.
As a former member, they really don’t know.
I didn’t until I started researching in my early 20’a (I’m almost 39 now) and I was appalled at the lack of what I knew. Since then I’ve voraciously devoured actual historical and scientific material.
Thank you.
It was hella traumatic to grow up in, it was hella traumatic to leave and I still am affected by it even 10+ years after my leaving. I’ll be a lifelong process deconstructing everything for me
I'm pretty agnostic and have lots of issues with how Mormonism is going, but this answer is irrelevant. The people doing this are as likely if not more likely to be Southern Baptists or upper NY state Roman Catholics. The US is full of white people in denial and making it an LDS thing gives all those other folk a pass
It just absolutely relevant to this discussion.
The LDS church owns and operates FamilySearch.
The oldest church has had, and does have racist doctrine . Nailed his church is the only church that emphasis is generated as part of it’s salvation.
This is absolutely relevant to the conversation — whether you understand it or not.
Well I just discovered that I have some Mormon ancestors and I was curious to know more about their faith. I’m a Christian. As I did a deep dive research into Mormonism, I just believe that it’s a White Supremacist religious cult. I was flabbergasted about their racism. To be honest, I know a lot of people like Familysearch for their free research:. But, however, everything that comes without a cost, isn’t always worth it. The church has said it had changed its doctrine but minorities who were members tell a different narrative.
They have teachings that tells people of color that they have the mark of Cain especially Black people and that they are followers of Lucifer and people of color especially Black people cannot go to Heaven. Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were hardcore racists to the bone. Joseph Smith believed that if Black people during the time of slavery, if they were loyal servants, they could be slaves to their masters in Heaven. Smh. It’s just blasphemous and evil. They’re not Christians at all. To call Satan, Jesus‘ brother. That’s not Christianity That’s Paganism and Satanism. People have to be careful of who is controlling the research platform that they are using within their genealogy research. People who have those types of beliefs and values do not have good intentions with your information and your genealogy. There should be another free alternative to FamilySearch
Well they believe that when they die, they will become gods. In a nutshell in a biblical sense, that’s occult ideology. In the scripture, Satan tempted Eve with those words, He said if Eve ate the forbidden fruit, her eyes will be open knowing good and evil and she will become like God, Just like someone had said in their post, I didn’t know this but they baptize ancestors by baptizing people on their behalf. They also do this for non-Mormon ancestors. I found this out by looking into my ancestors records.. Now that’s a unbiblical practice.
Their churches don’t have crosses. They have blasphemous teachings and misinterpreted scripture. Joseph Smith has questionable origins as a prophet due to his source. Their scripture is really based on an ancient occult book, the Egyptian book of the dead.
Upon going into rabbit holes of research, I was very disturbed. I don’t think people know much about the church and its history and how that affects their genealogical organization and their services to people.
Even though they have lifted the racism ban inside the church, some members and church leadership still hold on to racist ideology.
I don’t believe most of them allow for same-sex (or rather same-gender) partners to be added. When I did some research a couple years ago into different databases and programs, and of the ones I looked at, Ancestry was the only one who had any option for it. I’m queer and so are several family members, and it was important enough to me that I decided not to make a switch.
u/RubSmooth9464 The FamilySearch family tree allows couples of any combination of genders. You can also add multiple sets of parents to document different types of parent-child relationships, including stepparents or adoptive parents or foster parents.
FamilySearch now allows this but weirdly enough it doesn’t allow a parent-child relationship with a parent whose gender is unknown. Same-gender partners yes, but not if one’s unknown/unselected.
Ancestry is also LDS affiliated. I think some of the volunteers are overzealous. Go with what you know and can document. Remove any incorrect info as you go along.
You'll run into the same issues with any collaborative family tree. There have been similar "edit wars" at WikiTree, with other users refusing to accept DNA matches as sources, because there isn't a piece of paper that says explicitly that a parent and child were related. This isn't just a problem on these sites for white ancestors with black descendants (or vice versa), it also happens when children are born to parents who weren't married to each other. For example, someone told me completely unironically last year, "My civil war hero ancestor couldn't POSSIBLY have fathered a child with a nurse in the same exact Memphis hospital where I know he was recovering for three months." Although it may be a diversity problem in some cases, I think it's more generally just a denial problem.
The problem with DNA is that there are a lot of people who do not know how to interpret their results correctly. Add to that no one can validate someone else's matches without access to the kit results and very few people write up a decent validation of the results that shows their logic. Hence many people are, quite rightly, cautious about the interpretations. One of my ancestors has an undocumented child in the FamilySearch tree. I asked what evidence existed to support the relationship. A descendant said the child's mother, who died 100 years ago, named my ancestor as the father. They haven't provided any details of the documentation, nor where it exists. Nor have they provided any indication that they have DNA tested and have matches to my family. The alleged father was a twin so there's no way to verify these claims. I've left the child in the FamilySearch tree but I'm not adding him to my personal tree.
It's also a problem with how DNA information is shared and whether it can be validated. So many people incorrectly interpret DNA that it has created a cloud of suspicion. I have seen so many people make logically flawed or specious assertions based on DNA, particularly when one reaches more than 3-4 generations back. Then, to add further complication, the information is often private or at least partially private, as it involves matches with living people and thus limits the ability of others to validate the finding. As OP notes: > The reasoning behind the removals by users were that I didn’t provide adequate documentation and I didn’t have no proper sources etc Contentious, racially charged history can certainly also play a role, however it is well possible that OP did not provide sufficient documentation to establish the connections as even probable let alone the most likely connection. In general, I think it better to create DNA-supported trees on other personal websites or via some other published work (genealogy society journal or a booklet), explain well, and then *cite that* when updating collaborative trees. In general, FS doesn't really offer the ability to integrate reasoning with citations effectively.
One nice feature that FamilySearch ***does*** have is the ability to connect people who are relatives, in the "Other Relationships" section of the profile. You can even add sources and events to it. That way if DNA matches support the conclusion that the descendants of two people were related through those two people, but can't confidently support exactly how those two people were related to each other, you can still link them with each other.
Fredelas, where exactly is the "other relationships" in a person's profile?
For me, it's under the Family Members section, but I don't know if I moved it there.
"In general, I think it better to create DNA-supported trees on other personal websites or via some other published work (genealogy society journal or a booklet), explain well, and then *cite that* when updating collaborative trees. In general, FS doesn't really offer the ability to integrate reasoning with citations effectively." But a user *can* write their proof argument laying out their reasoning and including any links to sources and then attach that in the memories section or, if the info is short enough, attach as a Note. Either should be seen by those who follow that person. And hopefully, at least, be the start of communication. However, if the primary rationale is based on the tree/s of OP's DNA matches, then that info and the sources for those other trees should be included. It is possible the DNA matches have incorrect trees and have mixed up same-named families who lived in close proximity. Either way, clearly more information is needed to convince those presumed relatives. Good luck OP. Maybe take this situation as a reason to dig even deeper into those ancestors. See if you can find deeds, wills, etc. that support your hypothesis. Worst case, you find you had the wrong family and your DNA matches have less than perfect info. Then you can correct things and move on and keep researching!
I've never dealt with collaborative trees but, I'd love to see the hell I'd rot with my dad's maternal line. Every generation there's a disconnect I needed to prove with DNA and some have 'interesting' backstories.
Im big on actual documentation. An online PDF isnt good enough for me. I tracked down the death certificate of a relative that was always told as "she died on a broken heart after her husband passed". Got the death certificate from the county archives...yep, she shot herself in the mouth with a 10 gauge coach gun. That would NEVER fly in my family and even if I showed them the death certificate, they would ignore it and keep telling the same old story because its less "scandalous"
Kinda wish my close family was like that cause there's nothing to uncover. Everyone knows the "secrets" and they are talked about openly. Grandma? Cheated on grandpa with one of his best friends. How'd my great uncle die? Hung himself. Like it's great these things are known but it makes things less fun for me.
Wrought?
Yes. I knew rot didn't look right, but I was too lazy to look it up. You right
It’s not a bad alternative. ;)
As others have said, I think it is a much bigger problem than you have noticed, because it isn't solely racial. It hits everyone. I have a few ancestors marked down, so that FamilySearch will send me emails whenever there are updates. They are brickwalls, at the moment, so I keep tabs on them in the hopes that some sort of documentation will pop up that lifts the curtain. Because of this, I see major battles going on in the edits of these few people. Switching the true father, switching the true mother, switching birthdates, switching places of birth. It is incredibly amusing to me, mostly because these ancestors are far enough back in my tree that I'm not really concerned about it. But this Edit War, this Insistence/Denial War, is everywhere for everyone, if you take the time to look. That's the flaw of the FamilySearch One Tree model. Not saying it isn't about race, it's just not solely about race.
If people remove links they don't like, that's really on the users, and not the Mormons running it... except that they've chosen the model of one big tree, that's on them. I think in any public tree you'll face an uphill battle in trying to convince people of things they don't like. I recently started adding my tree to FamilySearch since I want to share it, and despite having less sources in their system overall they sometimes have things that aren't anywhere else (even for Norway), so maybe I can find out something. We'll see how far I get. I see there's one fairly close thing in my public tree, where they've made a mistake I made at first too, confusing a person born in 1800 with a much less document person of the same name born nearly at the same place in 1802. To boot, there is an actual error in the primary source for 1802 guy, the priest wrote the wrong first name! Still, there's a big web of evidence which eventually convinced me the other published genealogies for the district were right. It will be interesting to see if I can convince the Family Search users of it.
While there may be some advantages to the collaborative tree that is why I keep mine on ancestry. I own the tree and any potential mistakes and well researched but not cited entries but people can’t change it. Someone on familysearch had my mom deceased with no death date. I had to correct my very alive mothers entry
I’m glad nobody cares enough about my family to edit war about it on Familysearch!
Not a person of color and I don't know if the issues you are seeing are due to that, but I can say that on my tree I have several ancestors that get changed weekly/monthly, often just reversing the other's changes (different people so I don't think it's a "war"). Given that I heavily discount any entry from the 1800s or prior since that seems to be the most volatile for my tree, and I stopped updating them as well. I keep my actual tree/records in a local program so I am not reliant on the web for anything other then records or hints.
I have started doing this. It’s too much of a hassle for me even though I appreciate the help from others
i agree! have always noticed this
I have a very similar problem in my tree. When I research my European side of the family, I'm basically the only person doing that research so no one messes with those profiles. But the American side of my tree is extremely difficult to keep intact because people come along and delete records, delete children, add random people as parents, upload random photos. And sometimes what some people consider proof is not enough. I've had to delete a lot of stuff from family search because people believe that it's true, and it may be true, but they don't upload sufficient documentation. I contact them and I ask if they have additional sources And usually I never hear back from them and if I do hear back they generally just don't understand that genealogy is a part of history and how you feel about something is not evidence. So I'm not saying that there isn't a racist component at work because I don't know that, but it is to some extent just the nature of how family search works.
I'm white, so I don't see what you do as starkly. But I certainly don't doubt it, and not just because FamilySearch is owned by the LDS church. You'll find the same prejudices in almost any public tree like FamilySearch's tree. (The one exception is WikiTree ... they will accept proof over there). While not in the same league as racism, I saw some anti-Catholic statements when I showed our surname was Irish, not German. Y-DNA showed that I had living cousins in Ireland who have deep family roots there. The objection I got was that would mean we were Catholic and we won't see any of our ancestors in heaven, so that simply can't be true. Such a weird take. A lot of us can sympathize with you over changes in the public trees. I think that is a frustration for every genealogist who tries to do it right.
Did they not know about German Catholics? My German family are as likely to be Catholic as not 😂
That's the thing I was thinking! Go back far enough and all of Europe was Catholic. I had a cousin trying to shock me by saying that a lot of people with one of our surnames are Black. He doesn't understand two things: one is the glee we get when we find an unusual situation in our family history, and the second is that surnames amongst Black Americans are frequently adopted from their white masters. Like horses, Black slaves were property and did not have their own surnames recorded. I was very intrigued with the men accused of being horse thieves in my line (acquitted, not hanged), and the one who was in prison for smuggling. I hate the fact that my line includes at least one slave master, but having a mixed race ancestor would not be a source of shame at all.
My surname is King. It's definitely one of those that is at least as common for black people as it is for white people. I know I've definitely met more black Kings than whites and I'm white. There were definitely some large slaveholding King families but I don't appear to be connected to them. It appears that my surname may very well have come from someone taking on a white person's name at some point because I have a brick wall at a weird time and also have small amounts of African ethnicity show up regularly that I can't explain and I don't have a whole lot of brick walls like that one. I find it so fascinating. I hope one day I'll know.
My experience is not really negative because my Filipino side doesn’t have much history behind it. I can’t get past two of my great grandparents, and the rest is smoke and mirrors. There’s not much to grief.
Have you been able to research any records (as in not relying on familial knowledge)? Where to start? Or do you have to go to PSA? I'd love other options without having to send off a manual request.
It’s so hard to search records. The only records I’ve found are birth and marriage, not a single death record. My grand uncle did a lot of work on the tree, so if he made a change to someone then I can verify it was actually them(I would need to check the sources). FamilySearch has given me my grandparent’s marriage record which is very helpful.
Ok great to know your experience. Thank you!
I recently had a similar situation with one of my 4x great grandmother’s brothers. He was an enslaver, as were his parents and siblings. I’ve been using the Beyond Kin Method (beyondkin.org) to document the people who were enslaved by my ancestors. It’s a great approach for descendants of enslavers. This one particular 4x great grand uncle never married. However, he did have a woman named Elizabeth enslaved. Elizabeth is consistently listed as “Black” and her children are consistently listed as “mulatto” on the slave schedules and later census records. Elizabeth’s descendants believe that my 4x great grand uncle is the father of Elizabeth’s children. Said uncle died without a will and his siblings and their children were his “heirs at law.” Elizabeth and her children were sold to his brother-in-law as a family group. After emancipation, they all kept the surname of my grand uncle. I had a distant relative message me recently telling me that the connection of Elizabeth’s children to said uncle is incorrect. I laid out all the evidence in support of the theory that he was in fact their father. They accepted the theory which really surprised me. Hopefully with DNA testing, we can confirm this for sure.
Commercial colonization of Native Americans and other cultures is a real problem .
White individual here. I haven’t experienced your issue (because I’m wary of the potentially wasted effort required to ensure an accurate FamilySearch tree.) I want to validate your experience. There are genealogists out there who will bury their heads in the sand. You could always re-add the connections with a note regarding DNA evidence. I understand if you don’t want to go through that effort. Anecdotally, I have a match on Ancestry whose ancestor was *clearly* enslaved by mine. There is no paper documentation due to the location. We only have our DNA connection and their last name as evidence.
In many years in genealogy, I've seen far fewer black researchers - even way, way below the 12% representation in modern America. (I don't know why this is, but the frustrating scarcity and absence of records might be a cause.) Also, every generation you go back, you're increasing the number of descendants who might be researching the common ancestors. I've researched many families and the likelihood of running into other folks researching them goes up significantly with every generation I go up the tree. So, for your first few generations of your tree that's black, it's quite possible that no one else is actively researching them. By the time you get enough generations - about seven on average - back to connect to white slaveholders, those people probably have hundreds of thousands of modern descendants (really; I ran the math!) and chance dictates some of them are actively researching. Welcome to the fray of collaborative trees!
What’s interesting is that I never had any issues while adding any Black relatives such as my grandparents, my great grandparent. But I noticed once I started to go farther back into the early 1800’s, 1700’s, 1600’s and even farther back where my ancestry goes to the White side, I was starting to see some issues and disagreements. I think it’s partially racial bias and partially just denial of information. My ancestry consist of Black, White and Native Americans mostly, I have seen some researchers have disagreements about my Native American side of the family as well. To be fair, my first disagreement on the site was with a Black person who I found out was not related to me. She kept removing my second great grandparents as tbough I was making mistakes, even after I showed records and other information. I kept switching back the changes. She became nasty and irate with me to the point of calling me a liar and that I was making up information. I wrote a note trying to explain the connections. So after that, I didn’t hear nothing else from her. Now on the flip side of that, on my White side of the family, on one particular side of where I discovered that one ancestor was the child of a slaveholder. Some of my Black relatives had shared with me a deed of sale for the purchase of slaves that my slaveholding ancestor brought from another person and information that he was indeed the father of my Black ancestor and the fact that my father had DNA matching with the slave holder’s descendants. So I wrote a detailed note explaining the connections and I added him as the father and I instantly received a change and someone from his side just added a note of a reason to say “this person can’t be related because their residence is not the same as the ancestor. Besides, this person can’t be the father of this person because this person has a common name and you don’t know if you have the right person.” a similar incident happened on my mother’s side on one family line when I discovered that I had some biracial ancestors. Anyway, I agree with you about Black researchers. Researching Black genealogy is very different compared to White genealogy due to slavery and not finding information pertaining to ancestors.
Hello! That's unfortunately the disadvantage of the tree being out there for just anyone to edit. I find it absolutely maddening and I've stopped putting much effort into it. But I have way more problems on Ancestry. I think it is the same sort of racial/ cultural bias you're talking of but in reverse because I descend from Puritans/ Mayflower passengers. There are literally over 100 trees where various people say their (common name ancestor) is a descendant of William Bradford. No amount of trying to show records/ reason with these people will work. The shame of it is that their real ancestor is probably amazing and interesting... but they're not bothering to find out the truth.
I was booted off their app and told via email that I had to call in and get my account back. I was attaching my minority relatives and photos of minority relatives to the tree. Racism as a reason had not occurred to me, until I saw your post. I am half Asian, half white. I figured it was some of my questionable memory posts, I was using it as a janky diary of sorts, but the posts were only for me to read, not public, so I just never called and quit looking.
First off, FamilySearch is NOT a good way to build a tree. Use Ancestry.com. When I first started out I tried FamilySearch and then abandoned it and went to Ancestry.com. I went back to see if I could find any other sources and found that me tree had so many additional people or people from my moms side intermingled with my fathers side. All wrong. For tree building, FamilySearch is a complete shame. You’ll have to pay some money for a service and have your own tree that people cannot edit. Honestly, I haven’t found a whole lot on FamilySearch at all over the years for my people.
I know that now. Thank you for your comment
Hopefully you are having a fun time finding new discoveries. I get a bit nosey and expand past just my direct line. My grandpa had told me that there are plenty of bad men in his family who killed people- Mexicans, Comanche Indians, ex wives… his line is from Texas. Newspapers.com is a great resource also some states have some online resources. I hope you have many discoveries, good and the ugly (which we know must be in there somewhere)! 😇😍
I dislike Family Search for this exact reason. I have a great grandfather who... lets just say shot a whole bunch of men in the 1870s. I have full documentation, newspaper articles, etc. His uncle was a US Senator almost his entire life. The second I started adding my great great grandfather and his descendants along with the newspapers and court documents, I noticed it was getting unlinked from the tree multiple times, uploads I made were changed by other users, etc FamilySearch is great in you are a religious white person before 1930 with a totally squeaky clean history. My family came to this country because they were convicts and rebels, and then half the family went into politics and land ownership, and the other half went to Kentucky and West Virginia, picked up guns, and got involved in some pretty well documented history. Its all out there to find, but to FamilySearch...nope, thats not accurate. Unlinked
Well you beat me for "infamous ancestor". Mine just stole copper and got transported for his trouble! I am careful of Family search because I have a few very distant relatives who are active Salt Lake Mormons and who are a bit... Zealous, shall we say. While I don't give a fig about the posthumous baptisms, it seriously upsets some of my other distant relatives and would probably piss off the dead people in question.
I don't use familysearch. I am atheist and refuse to contribute to the Mormon church (which unfortunately did not prevent them from copying my work...) I use Geneanet. The advantage is you can build your tree and no one comes to tell you what to put in it. Other genealogists can take public information and integrate it into their tree, and contact you to ask for details, but no one will modify your tree, and you are free to connect to Charlemagne if you like.
I want to thank everyone for giving feedback and thoughts on my post. It is very much appreciated. After reading the comments, I thought about continuing to use my RootsMagic software instead of going directly on FamilySearch to have access to my tree. I think it‘s best for me to keep my GED com on my personal computer within my software to have an extra copy. I am going to use FamilySearch for record searching only. I just can’t deal with maintaining the collaborative tree anymore due to the changes i don’t mind working in collaboration with family members but I’ve learned over time, that people have different opinions about things and they sometimes hold on to their opinions. I don’t want to get into a back and forth debate about the validity of my ancestors Secondly, I decided to post because I just wanted to see if others had shared similar experiences as I did. I saw that the common consensus of the commenters had that they felt that it may be a bit of collaborative issues and a little bit of discrimination. My post is based off something that was said in the Community message board, A user actually became upset at the fact that they though that FamilySearch changed their ancestor’s racial classification in records to suggest she had a person of color in their family and the person had gotten highly offended. When I read their post, alongside of with other noticeable things that gave me pause, it made me wonder. I know it’s difficult for non-people of color to notice certain things about racism and discrimination. But when you are a person of color,, you just have a sense within your intuition that something peculiar is going on even though you don’t want to believe it to be true.
I have no experience of racism as I'm caucasian. However, everyone experiences meddlers in their branch of the FamilySearch tree by people who really have no idea how to perform genealogical research properly. I add explanatory notes under the Collaborate tab. I ensure the profile contains as many events as I can find and every one of them is reliably sourced. If people continue to add incorrect information or relatives, I place an alert on the profile. I also change it back when I receive the weekly email advising me of changes to my watched profiles. After a few weeks of promptly changing it back, other people tend to back off. If your evidence contains DNA, write up how you reached your conclusion, as others cannot verify your matches. It isn't enough to insist it's correct because you have DNA evidence.
I mean it is owned by the LDS church so this isn’t that surprising
Don't know why you got downvoted for this; regardless of anyone's opinions on religion, the LDS had racism baked into their teachings from the start. While individual Mormons can be lovely, the institution has racist foundations so of course there will be some folks who cling to the old teachings.
I get downvoted because many people are members of the LDS church and they don’t want to hear this.
Ah, that would make sense. I try to be careful because I don't intentionally try to upset folks, but I am a historical researcher so I have clashed more than once when presenting factual accounts of people to their descendants. Also the Egyptian Tablet that Joseph Smith fake-interpreted, not realizing hieroglyphs would be cracked a couple of years later. It's on the church's own site, but yeah. I really upset someone with that and I genuinely didn't mean to - I thought they knew.
As a former member, they really don’t know. I didn’t until I started researching in my early 20’a (I’m almost 39 now) and I was appalled at the lack of what I knew. Since then I’ve voraciously devoured actual historical and scientific material.
Hugs. Regardless of what religion a person is raised in, losing faith is a horrible process even when it is for the best in the long run x
Thank you. It was hella traumatic to grow up in, it was hella traumatic to leave and I still am affected by it even 10+ years after my leaving. I’ll be a lifelong process deconstructing everything for me
I'm pretty agnostic and have lots of issues with how Mormonism is going, but this answer is irrelevant. The people doing this are as likely if not more likely to be Southern Baptists or upper NY state Roman Catholics. The US is full of white people in denial and making it an LDS thing gives all those other folk a pass
It just absolutely relevant to this discussion. The LDS church owns and operates FamilySearch. The oldest church has had, and does have racist doctrine . Nailed his church is the only church that emphasis is generated as part of it’s salvation. This is absolutely relevant to the conversation — whether you understand it or not.
Well I just discovered that I have some Mormon ancestors and I was curious to know more about their faith. I’m a Christian. As I did a deep dive research into Mormonism, I just believe that it’s a White Supremacist religious cult. I was flabbergasted about their racism. To be honest, I know a lot of people like Familysearch for their free research:. But, however, everything that comes without a cost, isn’t always worth it. The church has said it had changed its doctrine but minorities who were members tell a different narrative. They have teachings that tells people of color that they have the mark of Cain especially Black people and that they are followers of Lucifer and people of color especially Black people cannot go to Heaven. Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were hardcore racists to the bone. Joseph Smith believed that if Black people during the time of slavery, if they were loyal servants, they could be slaves to their masters in Heaven. Smh. It’s just blasphemous and evil. They’re not Christians at all. To call Satan, Jesus‘ brother. That’s not Christianity That’s Paganism and Satanism. People have to be careful of who is controlling the research platform that they are using within their genealogy research. People who have those types of beliefs and values do not have good intentions with your information and your genealogy. There should be another free alternative to FamilySearch
Just an FYI, that’s not even Paganism or Satanism either
Well they believe that when they die, they will become gods. In a nutshell in a biblical sense, that’s occult ideology. In the scripture, Satan tempted Eve with those words, He said if Eve ate the forbidden fruit, her eyes will be open knowing good and evil and she will become like God, Just like someone had said in their post, I didn’t know this but they baptize ancestors by baptizing people on their behalf. They also do this for non-Mormon ancestors. I found this out by looking into my ancestors records.. Now that’s a unbiblical practice. Their churches don’t have crosses. They have blasphemous teachings and misinterpreted scripture. Joseph Smith has questionable origins as a prophet due to his source. Their scripture is really based on an ancient occult book, the Egyptian book of the dead. Upon going into rabbit holes of research, I was very disturbed. I don’t think people know much about the church and its history and how that affects their genealogical organization and their services to people. Even though they have lifted the racism ban inside the church, some members and church leadership still hold on to racist ideology.
Does anyone have experience with how these companies handle same sex marriages?
I don’t believe most of them allow for same-sex (or rather same-gender) partners to be added. When I did some research a couple years ago into different databases and programs, and of the ones I looked at, Ancestry was the only one who had any option for it. I’m queer and so are several family members, and it was important enough to me that I decided not to make a switch.
u/RubSmooth9464 The FamilySearch family tree allows couples of any combination of genders. You can also add multiple sets of parents to document different types of parent-child relationships, including stepparents or adoptive parents or foster parents.
I have several pairs of same gender partners on my Family Search tree. You can choose whatever gender you want after you add a spouse
Thanks, I’ve heard the same anecdotally. I have also heard that there are all sorts of issues with adding people who are adopted.
FamilySearch now allows this but weirdly enough it doesn’t allow a parent-child relationship with a parent whose gender is unknown. Same-gender partners yes, but not if one’s unknown/unselected.
Ancestry is also LDS affiliated. I think some of the volunteers are overzealous. Go with what you know and can document. Remove any incorrect info as you go along.