In 2022, I decided to put together our family tree. I've always wondered about
when our families came to America?
What drove them here?
Where they are today
Finding the tree
After looking across a number of websites, I settled on FamilySearch. The site is free, can share trees, and will be preserved for future generations.
A limitation with FamilySearch is other users can only view deceased family members. Living members will appear once passed, or 150 years of age is reached. So, information added to living members will be available to future generations, but require reaching out to the creator of them in order to view or update.
The Tree to date
As of 22 May 2022, Our family tree appears as below.
Are there other views?
Yes! I've displayed several variations below
Landscape View
Fan Charts
The fan chart is one of the most useful views. You can explore out up to seven generations. It has multiple color coating options:
Family Lines
Birth place (2nd image is my ancestors, 3rd image is my great grandmother Mary Conrey's family seven generations back)
View Research helps (Blue means there are likely records that match the person, purple usually means something is missing, red means there is an issue e.g. dates do not make sense.
Descendancy View
Last is the Descendancy View. This allows you to explore 4 generations down a line
Where can I start if I cannot see Living people?
Easy - add your own profile, add parents to connect to a passed relation. Some immediate family I've added are
Papa - Joseph E Conrey (G6YM-FQD)
Grandpa - George Paul Laufer (G6TY-KLB)
Grandma - Anne Heron (LF54-HHZ)
I'll do a follow up post with how to contribute to the family tree.
Other ways to view the family
A really cool feature is the Activities page. https://www.familysearch.org/discovery/
I've added some example screenshots below to illustrate some of the views it has.