Lost in the forest

RootsMagic
1

Can someone help me I’ve got off track.

I had a little beginner tree in RM.
I watched some videos about linking RM to Ancestry Tree and tried that out, worked fine.
Then I started adding a bunch of suggestions for relatives in Ancestry (hadn’t really spent any time on it before either)
Now I have a bunch of unmatched people in the Ancestry Link screen that I think I need to add manually to RM?

I’m pretty sure I have a back up of my RM Tree before I linked it to Ancestry, so maybe I need to back up… and redo with all the Ancestry additions already added?.
Or better yet, maybe I need to verify all the Ancestry suggestions for Sources before I add them to my Ancestry Tree, before I download it to RM??

Or is there a better approach?
How much of the Sourcing comes across? Is it adequate sourcing, and what is adequate?
Maybe you download everything and then color code as you verify Sourcing?

Hoping to get some guide posts… there are some family lines on Ancestry that go back into the mists of time… ! I have to admit it is a bit dauting, I didn’t think I was going to get my wish to find roots into the early 1500’s! (didn’t find anyone in born in the 1400’s :wink:

Janice

2

All I can say is I would verify the info BEFORE ADDING ANYTHING TO MY DATABASE-- a lot of info on Ancestry Trees and Family Search Files are WRONG…

For example–

  1. My dad was NOT born in Wisconsin-- don’t think he’s was ever in Wisconsin…
  2. Grandpa didn’t die 1958 in South Dakota but 1948 in Mo.
  3. Mom didn’t have 2 sisters–just one and her name was NOT Shirley–and Mom’s parents NEVER lived in IL,
  4. G-gramps Clem-- his father was John BUT his parents didn’t come to America from Germany before 1850 and stay as Clem had a sister born in Germany in 1858-- took less than 10 minutes to prove that John was NOT his father…

These are just a very few examples of wrong info on the 2 in different companies— I have many many more examples…

3

Yes, I get that, I have heard that from others as well as see that in my own.
The import function in RM allows you to compare two existing records for differences, though…

So how are people using this function?

4

See the Wiki documentation here for TreeShare and scroll down to “Matching People Between RootsMagic and Ancestry.” If you have entered the person in Ancestry, but not your database, click on the “add” button in the righthand column. If you have manually entered in RM, and on the left you see a best match that fits, check the box and choose link.
RW Wiki, Ancestry TreeShare

5

I would raise a red flag for anything from the early 1500’s. There are just too few primary sources of info from that time frame. Certainly before 1538.

And, ALWAYS verify anything online before adding it to your tree. I would suggest always adding to your tree manually. This gives you a pause to evaluate the information before assuming it is accurate. There are too many name collectors out there that just want to have a huge, mostly fictional family tree.

1 Like
7

Unlink the RM tree.

Create a new tree project in RM and download the whole of your Ancestry tree.

Once downloaded use the Backup+Media option

Then run all the error checking tools.

Backup+Media again

Then run all the database tools.

Backup+Media again

Go into Ancestry, make no more than six changes.

In RM use Tree Share working through each person in the list.

Then use the error checking tools, then run all the database tools.

It is a long winded process and despite the bugs RM is worth it alone for its error checking features.

You then learn not to make to many changes within Ancestry without running RM or else you are hours at running Tree Share.