To restart or not to restart (your tree), that is the question

RootsMagic
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Sorry for the insult to Shakespeare, but I have a somewhat rhetorical question. For those of you who started your tree and later decided to delete it and start over, what were the things that made you decide to do this? Was it worth it in the end?

I’m on the crux of a decision about my tree. For context, I have about 1000 people and about 2000 media files. Some lines go back to before the US Revolutionary War. I was downloading from both Ancestry and FamilySearch before I realized the consequences of doing so, and now my sources/citations/media files are a mess. I also used the “merge sources” and “merge citations” features in a version that previously merged citations with blank citation names (which has subsequently been fixed). It’s a big mess.

Not wanting to sacrifice my work, I started a cleanup project to get all of this data sorted out and try to get the tree back to a workable and sound version. After having spent 40-50 hours cleaning up media files, deleting hundreds of duplicates, and renaming them to something that makes sense, I’m almost done with that part of the task. However, next I have to start on the citations and they are going to take a long time too.

As I’m doing this, I wonder if the situation justifies me simply making a clean start. While I have a lot of good data and research in there, I also relied too much on other people’s research and not enough original research when I started. Once I get all this sorted out, I probably need to go back through and check every parent/child relationship again and make sure that I can prove the connection and it wasn’t simply copied from another user’s tree.

Side note - Regardless of what I do about my RootsMagic tree, I plan to delete my Ancestry tree and upload a new version from RootsMagic once the file is cleaned up (or restarted). It’s just too much work to resynch all those changes.

Even if you haven’t dumped your tree and started over in the past, I’m interested in your views about what you would do in this situation. Thanks in advance!

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I would keep your existing Ancestry tree but upload a new clean one (maybe different name).

I started cleaning/standardizing my tree and then thought I would also create a smaller tree that had limited info (BMDB) of the people.
This I could send to others (they really didn’t need each Census, Directory List, etc for each person) as they are usually curious about Great Uncle Bob’s wife’s name LOL

Didn’t take long to create.

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A silver lining of doing the hard work … you will get a chance to re-validate all your data, assumptions, connections, etc. Think of it as an intense quality check. And you can correct things as you go. Starting over will involve work re-do anyway. At least by remediating your existing tree, you have something to get started with.

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If I were Mardee, I would keep what I have but try to start a new database and see if a different approach might help with the organizing. One can always add in later, older material bit by bit to the new way way of documenting research, once you have a system that works.

When I started with documenting my ancestors (so my mother could join the DAR), a seasoned researcher handed me a paper pedigree chart and told me to begin with myself and add my parents, grandparents, etc. ONE GENERATION at a time, going from what I knew, back step by step. I did make use of note fields where appropriate to discuss interesting facts and questions that might need to be added later.

With my first computer program (Family Origins) I did just the same thing. I started with an empty pedigree chart on the screen, typed in myself, my parents and grandparents and added each generation one by one. The critical point is step by step, NOT importing gedcom files from Ancestry, FamilySearch, MyHeritage, etc. Where one uses information from shared databases, it should be typed in person by person ONE AT A TIME. At first I did not even add sources, though I kept the papers I had collected and eventually began adding simple sources where I could figure them out. To this day, I still use general sources and do not add photos and media. Doing the research and getting it right is difficult enough.

If later one wants to publish, media can be added at that point to the database. And people can do things like customizing sentences.

Early on, one should focus on consistency in name entry, the best dates you can find, and a standard format for place names. Using alternate names when spellings vary widely can be useful. If you can handle all at the same time, adding very SIMPLE sources could help you later, when you want to go back and be more specific. Just add enough information to help you find the source again when you want to look at it again.

Until one gets the basic steps down, adding gedcoms from other people or sites becomes very confusing. And trying to get the minutia of sources and adding media/pictures confuses the beginner even more. These can come later, as can uploading and downloading from Ancestry.

It is possible to document sources in a very specific manner and use many of the more picky data entry possibilities, but mess up on the basic research procedures of documenting each generation one by one. Let the program be the servant of the database facts. Doing researching is one skill. Mananging a complex computer program is another. Not everyone can master competing skills at the same.

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This is great advice and I think I’ll give it a try. There are probably a lot of “hidden” bad assumptions in there that I will uncover as I go through the process of re-entering. To be honest, it sounds less daunting than cleaning up the database that I have.

You’re right that learning how to research and how to manage a complex software system are two different skills, and research is where I feel like I have the most to learn. I worked in IT as a project manager and a tester for many years, so I learn software quickly. Analyzing evidence is a new skill, and I enjoy it, but I still have a lot to learn.

Thank you everyone for taking time to give such detailed and well-thought-out answers. This community is just great that way.

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Syncing down from Ancestry and familysearch does not work well compared to using their hint and record data for manual entry to RM. FTM integrates much better with Ancestry data structure and you can sync only up from your database keeping the master on your computer. Perhaps a download to a new tree from ancestry only and then clean it up. The merge citations tool seems to be hazardous to your data since it ignore differences in media (and notes?).

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@Rooty , you’re absolutely right about the merge citations tool being dangerous. It sounds as though they fixed an issue in 10.0.5 where it was ignoring blank citation names, so that is better, but my merges must have happened before that because I have some citations with like 90 media files attached, and the only way that could have happened is if the system merged citations that it shouldn’t have. You may have been the person that told me about the fix, so my apologies if I’m telling you something that you already know.

Because I placed a bit too much faith in the upload/download processes working smoothly, my Ancestry tree is also a mess, so I’m not sure if a fresh download from Ancestry would be any better.

I spent some time yesterday re-entering just my immediate family and parents to see what it would be like to just start over from scratch. I decided that while it would make for a very tidy tree, it’s too much data entry with not quite enough value for me. My current plan (which could change) is to clean up RootsMagic, then delete my Ancestry tree and upload a completely new one.

As for FTM, you’re absolutely right about the sync with Ancestry. I was an FTM user for a couple of years, but ended up moving away from it because I kept losing data. I’m still not sure how that was happening - I would save my work, confirm the data was there, close the application using the proper procedure, and when I next went back in, the data was gone. So, I eventually gave up on that and switched to RM.

Thanks again for taking time to weigh in and give me your opinion. It’s very much appreciated.

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I had a tree with about 800 people in, most of whom I “inherited” from someone else, so it needed tidying up as you describe. I created a fresh database with the intention of copying everyone across individually. However I still needed to update the original tree at the same time, otherwise I would have got into a complete tangle. But the immense effort involved meant eventually I abandoned the task and went back to the original instead, verifying each person in situ. So my advice is, ideally yes if you can afford the time and effort, but you may find it, like me, prohibitively impractical.

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Thanks for taking time to reply. You’re absolutely right. I played around with it for a couple of hours and ended up deciding that it was just taking too much time. Also, the fun part of genealogy is finding new things about people, not re-entering data. So now, I’m doing as you describe - working through one line at a time, cleaning up the sources, citations and media files as I go. I’m also letting myself do a little new research on those lines because it simply makes it more interesting.

I’m finding a lot of assumptions that were made, or data that was brought over from other people’s trees (before I understood why that was a bad idea). I have not had to actually delete a branch of my tree yet, but I still have some folks with questionable parentage, since the tree they were copied from seems to have had no sources to substantiate the parents listed. I’m fairly sure that at some point, I will have to lop off a branch because of bad research.

For anyone who is looking at this post in the future to try to determine their options, I thought it might be helpful to document what I ended up deciding on.

Initial Cleanup: One thing I did “by scratch” (sort of) was go through all the Media files and rename them with a standard nomenclature, and folder them by surname because searching is just so much easier. That took probably 30 hours or more, but I’m finding that the cleanup process is going much quicker now. I have a better idea of what files I have, so I can add them back in where needed. Women are always filed by maiden name That just helps me figure out where to find them. If the record shows them with a different name, I include that in parentheses so it’s easy to find them in the record.

Sources. I ended up being a source “lumper.” I’m not 100% satisfied with that because of how it limits my searching capabilities, but it’s working so far. For census records, I ended up flattening them down to one source per census - for example, 1870 US Census - regardless of whether it was from Ancestry or FamilySearch (etc.) I use webtags on the citation to link to the actual online source. This definitely speeds up the searching, since I only have one census source to dig through.

Citations. Citations are named by person’s name, then a descriptor (if needed) then the source name. For example, John Smith, Birth, New England Vital Records.

Media Files. Media files are named exactly the same as citations. This allows me to quickly tell if I have the wrong media file attached to a citation or vice versa.

Quality of Citations. Finally, I made a personal rule that if a citation doesn’t have either a media file or a webtag, it’s not a useful citation because it would take too much effort to re-find the actual document. I’m either going to find those items or deleting the citation.

Thanks again for taking time to post your reply and I apologize in advance for the long reply.

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You’re very welcome.

Not surprisingly, I have embarked on a similar journey, with the tidying up of sources being the task that’s easily taking the most time - in my naivety 25 years ago, just putting “IGI” or “National Burial Index” doesn’t really help me now. The use of citations in RM is extremely helpful, but there is no easy way of turning a “source” into a “citation”, which is a pain. Like you, I have one census per source (e.g. 1851 Census, Scotland), with individual citations containing links to the actual record and/or my own media copies.

Another tip is that if you find you have to disconnect a branch, don’t delete it altogether but colour code it (mine is grey). It means that there is more than one tree in the database, but if you keep backups then you can safely delete it at a later date, safe in the knowledge that if you make a mistake, you can get it from the backup (after a year, I keep one backup per quarter).

Good luck!

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The color coding is a great idea. Thanks for sharing!

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I just made this decision this past weekend. It wasn’t easy. I struggled hard with the thought of starting fresh. But…it turned out to be a good one. I echo what others have said about seeing your data (or lack thereof) in a new light. For me, not only did I start over, I started over with RootsMagic. So far, I’m happy with the results.

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