starryskye.org/GENEALOGY

I’ll be honest – I’d never heard of WikiTree until the folks over at one of my favorite Genealogy websites – The In Depth Genealogist – posted about it. So, being the geek I am I of course went and signed up! AND volunteered to help out. I’ve been plugging away at my own family history for over 18 years now. I love this hobby and I love helping other people discover their roots!

WikiTree is designed to connect us all under one canopy, in one family forest. Rather than a collection of unconnected trees, WikiTree is a single tree where every ancestor has one profile that all the descendants and researchers share. One world trees have been tried before on various websites and there have been issues with the concept. Many people’s trees include unreliable information. When these trees are put together on a shared website, the mistakes get perpetuated. The incorrect information gets redistributed and the mistakes never get corrected.

I’ve personally been a member of a few and it’s a pain to update information and no one else seems to be able to either.

So far – I am the ONLY member of the WETZOLD family up on this website! I’d love to encourage my other family members to GO JOIN and share some information!

Click here to visit my profile on WikiTree!

If you are on Active Duty Military, Retired Military or a Dependent, and are a member of DEERS, go to Navy Knowledge Online and you can access – for FREE – ancestry.com library edition, footnote.com and heritage quest.  Once you are online, click on Reference which is upper right, then select Navy e-library.  On the next page on the left select E-Library-Genealogy and you will be brought to the page!

On March 5th on NBC a new family-history centered television show will premier. The show features seven celebrities on a journey back in time as they discover more about the ancestors who came before them. The celebrities include Sarah Jessica Parker, Lisa Kudrow and Susan Sarandon, Brooke Shields, Matthew Broderick, Emmet Smith and Spike Lee.

I’m into researching my family tree (genealogy) so this show sounds really neat! I love to hear stories about my ancestors – I know they came to this country a LONG time ago (on my Mom’s side in the late 1600’s) and at least one was a joker who was apparently a horse thief!

I read a few reviews on YouTube and noticed that there were some people complaining that “normal people cannot afford a professional genealogist” – well, they are probably correct – but a “normal” person has all the access to do it themselves! I’ve been working on my own genealogy since I was 12 years old and began on (and still use) Ancestry.com! Now since I need more detailed information I access the website (for free) at my local public library. Local Mormon churches also have free access to a lot of genealogy information and are very happy to help visitors out.

So do you research your family tree? Will you be watching “Who Do You Think You Are?” this Friday?