{"id":340,"date":"2017-04-21T17:41:21","date_gmt":"2017-04-21T17:41:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/?p=340"},"modified":"2025-06-06T14:58:22","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T14:58:22","slug":"better-family-history-rootsfinder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/better-family-history-rootsfinder\/","title":{"rendered":"How I’m doing better family history with RootsFinder"},"content":{"rendered":"

My quest for better family history has been going for\u00a025 years. I started as a teenager in the 90\u2019s. Computers were just becoming \u201ca thing\u201d (it was a big deal to have an email address) and genealogy was just beginning to make a presence on the emerging Internet. I got A TON of booklets and charts from FamilySearch and spent hours and hours filling them out by hand. Then I put them in PAF because that was the thing to do. I got SO EXCITED when, thanks to the Internet, I found out I connected to the\u00a0Plantagenets and for my dad\u2019s birthday I gave him a pedigree chart back to Adam. I\u2019m mortified now (because I still need to prove it and it’s probably not true)\u00a0but at the time I was so proud. In 1998 my dad asked me to look into getting a website for our family genealogy. I made one, but I’ve struggled to maintain it while my research continued.<\/p>\n

Just this morning my DNA test results came back from 23andMe and they were slightly different from the Ancestry.com results I got in 2013. Now I\u2019m dying<\/em>\u00a0to figure out where the blip of North African DNA comes in. And I am reminded that part of the reason I\u2019m so excited about working with Dallan at RootsFinder is because I\u2019m getting what I\u2019ve wanted since 1998: a way for me to jump on this new information, analyze and research the heck out of it, and do better family history by breaking down the evidence, citing the sources, scouring the earth for proof and yet still sharing with my family while doing what I need to do.<\/p>\n

Here’s how\u00a0RootsFinder is helping me do\u00a0better family history:<\/h2>\n

1. I\u2019m breaking down the sources for better analysis<\/h3>\n

Even before RootsFinder, I have always had great desktop software. I have no beef with my desktop\u00a0program other than the fact that my family won\u2019t touch it\u2026which I\u2019ll talk about in a minute.\u00a0 But when I imported my GEDCOM into RootsFinder and started using the web clipper in my research I discovered that not only is the clipper faster, but also when I put the source first (instead of the person) my view of the evidence is fundamentally changed.<\/p>\n

With my prior software, I added an event and then cited my sources. You\u2019d think it was the same thing as extracting information from a source, right? It\u2019s not. By doing it that way I lost important context. It also makes it really hard to compare sources to see exactly which information is contained in my different sources, which is surprisingly important.<\/p>\n

RootsFinder\u2019s source-centric model keeps the evidence more intact than the way I used to do it. With RootsFinder, I can gather more information in less time and that\u2019s important because I\u2019m busy. I don\u2019t have all day to do data entry. And even if I did, I don\u2019t like spending all day on data entry.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

2. I\u2019m keeping things linked (calendars, reports, documents, and data)<\/h3>\n

Since RootsFinder is cloud-based, I can access my stuff anywhere\u2026on my tablet, my laptop, or even my phone. When I\u2019m up at our family ranch and my dad asks me something about our genealogy, I have not only the data to answer him, but also the documents and photos to show him because everything is linked and I have my phone, so therefore I have all my stuff. And it’s all linked together. And it’s free.<\/p>\n

I have my research calendars and half-finished reports all tagged and linked for me because life happens and I get interrupted and then suddenly it\u2019s been months (or years) since I worked on something and in the meantime I forgot what I named that document or what I was thinking at the time.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s backed up. Although I have backups on CD\u2019s, external hard drives, OneDrive, and an FTP file storage site (I\u2019m slightly paranoid. I actually even still have old zip drives.) it\u2019s not linked. I have a pretty good organization system, but it\u2019s just easier when everything is already linked.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

3.\u00a0I\u2019m doing better family history research\u2026and breaking brick walls because of it<\/h3>\n

Because I\u2019m using a source-centric paradigm, I can now follow the sources better, which automatically means better family history. When I run an evidence analysis report now I can see how the information changed over time. Elizabeth Shown Mills teaches about the FAN Club (Friends, Associates, and Neighbors)<\/a> and now I have a place to put those Friends, Associates, and Neighbors and keep the context. Now\u00a0as I evaluate a person\u2019s life I can see who else was involved, where they came from and how they impacted my ancestor\u2019s life. It\u2019s clean; I\u2019m not forced to try to fit non-relatives into a family model. They\u2019re in my database linked by the evidence and\/or research calendars until such time as I see if\/how they fit into a family structure. This is important to me, especially when breaking brick walls for my southern branches.<\/p>\n

\"Better
Leaving myself research notes like this helps me analyze the evidence. I can link them to people and documents so that as my research unfolds I remember what I was thinking and it’s all linked together. This really helps me do better family history because I can analyze and document things as I go.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

4.\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019m sharing with my family…for free<\/h3>\n

As I mentioned before, I like genealogy software. But my family doesn\u2019t. They\u2019ve seen the charts; they\u2019re bored. They have access to FamilySearch, but they don\u2019t know \u201chow to work it\u201d and they feel overwhelmed and\/or forced to do genealogy and\/or guilty for not wanting to do genealogy. Really they just want the stories. Who were the pioneers? What interesting things happened to people? How did we become who we, collectively and singularly, are today? When I just put that on Facebook and\/or text it, or send them a link to something they can browse around at their leisure without feeling pressured to do anything, they\u2019re MUCH more likely to enjoy that moment. And that makes me love it even more.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

5.\u00a0I\u2019m keeping control of my tree, but I can collaborate<\/h3>\n

I feel like a bad person when I admit that I hated using FamilySearch. But my head just explodes when someone changes my tree to wrong information. I’m trying to do better family history! For some reason I just get this irrational, overly dramatic, disproportionately emotional wave of \u201cDON\u2019T TOUCH MY TREE.\u201d And I can\u2019t stay on top of all the changes so I just don\u2019t use it. But now with RootsFinder I can still benefit from good contributions to FamilySearch (like photos! YES! GIVE ME ALL THE PHOTOS!) but I don\u2019t lose my mind when someone \u201chijacks\u201d my great-great-grandfather. I just switch it back and remind myself that we all make mistakes.<\/p>\n

These are some of the ways RootsFinder is making me a better, more efficient, researcher. Over the past 25 years I\u2019ve learned a lot, and I\u2019m really excited to be working with Dallan to help make family history easier to research and easier to share. I expect to live another 50 years. We, 50 years ago, could not have predicted the amazing advances in technology genealogists enjoy today. So I can\u2019t imagine what advances the next 50 years will bring, but I expect RootsFinder to help me figure it out. I\u2019m so grateful for the opportunity to be a part of RootsFinder and to push my own genealogy forward while helping others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My quest for better family history has been going for\u00a025 years. I started as a teenager in the 90\u2019s. Computers were just becoming \u201ca thing\u201d (it was a big deal to have an email address) and genealogy was just beginning to make a presence on the emerging Internet. I got A TON of booklets and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":342,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[21,22],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/looking-at-photo-album-with-dad.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":343,"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions\/343"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}