**Genealogy tools and migrating data from FamilySearch to WikiTree**
(link to post)
TL;DR
– Just start with WikiTree as a main tool for building your family tree, but also check other platforms to find your ancestors.
– Moving ancestry data between platforms is possible, but far from from trivial
– A combination of several online tools (presented below) and offline research is needed to progress in genealogy research
– Dealing with long dead has very real impact on living.
Intro
I have a strange urge to research my roots and store the information to some system. I started entering my ancestors 10yrs ago in FamilySearch portal. I choose this one because it looked the least suspicious. Now I’m moving to WikiTree.
FamilySearch
FamilySearch uses the principle ‘collaborate on one big tree’. It’s free to use and it has some nice functions, like search old scanned church archives. In all these years I didn’t found any downsides, except … it’s a closed system. And they’re entering AI train heads-on. I accept the usefulness of ML for handwriting recognition, but chatbots and similar … no, thank you.
One of the most positive sides was I found my wife’s relatives in the US . One day I was checking the log of edits of her ancestors and found someone was editing her part of the tree and adding ancestors back to 1660. I contacted her and established a contact that was missing for almost a 100 years, from their migration to US around 1900. She told me about some other relatives from other parts from Slovenia, that I wasn’t aware of. We meet with them and received a thick genealogy book of forgotten branch of the family.
Interesting, dealing with long dead has a very real impacts on living 🙂
Some stats of my edits:
Ancestry
I also tried out Ancestry briefly, but I quickly dropped the idea because I don’t like the principle of private ancestral trees. Also, it’s a closed system, behind a paywall.
WikiTree
This year, as a part of my broader de-centralisation and de-corporatisation efforts, I choose to move my ancestors from FamilySearch to WikiTree.
WikiTree also uses ‘collaborative one big tree’ approach, but it is open and governed by a community.
For the purpose of data migration, I had to get the data out of FamilySearch first.
I installed Ancestral Quest Basic under Wine under Linux Mint, connected it with my FamilySearch account and exported the data in GED format to a local database. It took a little gymnastics, because if I exported only all my ancestors, it left out the parts of the family tree that are not my direct ancestors. I had to click on all my ancestors and export their descendants. This way I built a local database and hoped it contains all the data I inserted in FamilySearch.
Then imported GED archive to WikiTree. I assumed it will automatically merge the data, but no. It’s GEDCompare tool takes a smarter approach. Firstly it check the WikiTree data and compares with the imported data. Then it offered a table with all the persons I imported and their existing records in WikiTree. I have 2 options: 1. to compare and merge each person or 2. add it if it doesn’t exist.
Currently I’m halfway of my 460 records, but I’m progressing.
During my migration activities I found what I like and dislike about WikiTree:
Like:
- Collaborative type of building a shared family tree.
- The community is welcoming.
- I can invite other people to help me with editing. I can add email address to living persons and they’re invited to the WikiTree.
- I can set privacy for each record in details.
- 20+ various tree visualization tools, for example timelime tree:
Dislike:
- some data is not imported well. For example, some birth/death dates are interpreted wrongly (esp. from … to) and meta data like ‘burial site’ is just dropped to ‘bio’ section
- group photos can be tagged with names, but faces related to names can not be selected (as in FamilySearch)
Geneanet
During the research I recently found out about Geneanet portal. The nice thing about it it has a database of cemeteries, tombstones and their photograps. Some of them are even indexed and searchable. It’s a collaborative community effort: people photograph and index tombstones.
I found some my distant relatives using this tool I didn’t know about them before.
Matricula Online
Matricula Online includes scanned old(1600-1900) church documents (baptism, marriage, death) for some European countries: Slovenia, Germany, Austria, Poland, Serbia, Luxembourg, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Italy. This is the best source for my research. The script gives me headaches, especially Kurrant (Gothic).
Additionally, local archive has a ‘status animarum’ books that are not available online. This books include a list of addresses and all the people that lived at the specific address. Useful to research whole families.
Arcanum maps
Arcanum maps help me to research old place names. It includes scanned Austro-hungary military and catastre maps.
Old place list – Seznam krajev
Seznam krajev is also a good resource to research how names of the places changed through the history.
Conclusion
My overall impression is I will stick with WikiTree as a main database for my family tree with the help of other tools. I hope I will pass the information to my children or other relatives to continue the work. The work of ancestry research is never done.
Interesting blogs
Genealogy research has a lot of traps: https://ancestryroads.blogspot.com/2025/06/the-magic-is-gone.html
https://blog.rozman.info/genealogy-and-migrating-data-from-familysearch-to-wikitree/
#ancestralquest #familysearch #ged #geneanet #wikitree #wine