The Next Few Years Will Be Good for Ancestral Research

Back when I started researching my family tree in the early 2000s, there were a lot of personal family tree websites online (with varying degrees of accuracy) and often the creators of those sites lacked a sense of privacy and identity theft concerns. Fortunately, people seem to be more aware of those issues these days. Family history books which contain private information about living people and were written before the internet existed no longer seem to appear in Google searches, which is a good thing!

Below are five reasons why I think the next couple of years will be a good time to start researching your own family tree, if you haven't already done so.

The 1950 U.S. Census data will be available in less than a year

Every ten years, the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration releases 72 year old census data. Next April, family tree researchers in the United States will have access to the 1950 census data.

"Why is this a bigger deal than the 1940 census data?" you may wonder.

The answer is, this is the first census in which early members of the Baby Boomer generation will appear. You may be thinking, "I already know who my parents/grandparents are, why does that matter?" Do you know the names of your parents' or grandparents' second cousins, though? Tracking down and making contact with relatively close family members who may have information about your family is an important aspect of family tree building, especially once you start running into unknown surnames. Using census data to track down living relatives who can help you build and expand your family tree shouldn't be neglected as a tool, and many of the people who appear in census data for the first time in 1950 won't be around to ask about family history too much longer. You can often take advantage of having this census data at a later time when it's no longer fresh, but striking while the iron is hot maximizes your opportunities to connect with an older generation of relatives before more of them have passed away.

Geni's world family tree

A decade ago, Geni's world family tree connected just under 50 million profiles. Today, it connects over three times that number. Non paying members of geni can build and connect their family trees to the world family tree by searching for their relatives' names using google and limiting their search to site:geni.com Of course, being a pro member of geni makes connecting with the world family tree easier, but becoming a subscribing member of geni isn't necessary in order to take advantage of this crowdsourced world family tree. A few years ago, geni's downloadable data (which doesn't include people and their ancestors who are labelled private) was used to discover a 13 million member family tree. This is a resource which shouldn't be neglected when one is attempting to find out the ancestors of one's more distant ancestors. The world family tree is an ongoing project, with millions of new profiles added each year.

The beneficial side effect of the COVID-19 pandemic

A few years ago, familysearch.org's Digital Library didn't exist. I'm reasonably confident that the COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increase in the rate of digitizing genealogy (as well as other) books, both by familysearch.org and by the internet archive. This digitization of genealogy books makes it possible to break through genealogical brick walls; just the other day I discovered several new ancestors using these resources. I found my ancestors by cross checking information in one digital book and finding a different book listed as a source for conflicting information. By searching for the title of the second book in these digital genealogy libraries, I was able to break through a brick wall which had bothered me for over a decade.

Youtube

Back at the end of 2005, youtube's website said, "Instantly find and watch 1000's of fast streaming videos." These days, you can find out how to do anything on youtube, including genealogical research and my fifth tip - you can find out all about genetic genealogy using DNA testing.

DNA Analysis for genealogical purposes

There have been numerous advances in DNA testing for genealogical purposes in the past decade. New DNA testing companies have been founded. New apps, tools and methods for analyzing and understanding one's results have been created. Unless one has a particularly rare or interesting genealogical profile, generally having one's DNA tested will cost money. However, sometimes DNA testing is the only way to find out more about one's family tree, particularly for people who were adopted or have ancestors who were.

All five of the above topics are likely to continue to improve (new census data will come out in a decade), but the next couple of years look to be a particularly good time begin research into one's family tree.