Ancestry Magazine

This new offering at Ancestry.com promises to revolutionize the way we work with online family trees.

Since its release in April 2004, speculation has run rampant. What exactly is the new OneWorldTree (OWT) service offered at Ancestry.com? Some researchers claim that OWT includes all the people in the world who ever lived. Others say that it’s valuable because it contains inf ormation about the trees in the Ancestry World Tree collection. Still others say that it’s worthless because it contains information about the trees in the Ancestry World Tree collection.

The simple truth is that OneWorldTree is a search engine. Like other Internet search engines, it looks for relevant information based on search terms and then indexes its findings so a user can easily sort through the information he or she is seeking.

But unlike other Internet search engines, it searches for information about people and relationships, much like a “pedigree search engine” would. Currently, OWT searches from the thousands of user-contributed trees in the Ancestry World Tree and the RootsWeb World Connect collections, but in time it will expand to search many of the other databases at Ancestry.com and related sites Genealogy.com and RootsWeb.com. This includes stitching trees such as World Family Tree. An OWT search result contains not only information about the person whose name you searched, but the names of the parents and spouse(s) of that person as well. People are found in context of relationships to other people.

Further, the service contains “stitched” pedigrees. If a person in two different trees appears similar enough to exceed a certain threshold, OWT combines them into one result (”stitching” them together) that is linked to both sources.

One thing that some people find confusing is that they are looking for the answers, and OWT only shows them the questions. For example, if you want to know Babe Ruth’s birth date, you will have to look it up elsewhere. OWT will show you all of the birth dates found in the sources that were stitched together for Babe Ruth, but it won’t tell you which of them is the correct answer. The names, dates, and places vary according to the trees submitted by researchers, and OWT preserves that variation. Researchers are responsibl e for determining the best and most accurate information based on their own research and the sources listed in the trees.

An Example: Babe Ruth
Let’s look at an example. Under the Family Trees tab at Ancestry.com, click on OneWorldTree. A search for George Ruth results in many matches, but only 1 George Herman Ruth–aka Babe Ruth (figure 1). The yellow triangles indicate that there are alternate names, birth dates, parents, or spouses to view.

Figure 1: Search results page for George Herman “Babe” Ruth

The third entry–George Herman Ruth–is our guy. Click on his name to view the Person Page (figure 2), which is a summary page of all the stitched data for that individual.

Figure 2: Person Page for Babe Ruth

This page has four parts. On the top left is the name, birth information, and death information of the person you are seeking. Below that are details about his or her marriage(s). Early versions of OWT contain some “under-stitching” of the spouse and children—where the same person appears more than once.

On the top right, you will see a three-generation pedigree for the person. Clicking on any name in either of those two sections displays the Person Page for that individual. You can also see family lines continue, by the arrowheads on the right edge. In the case of Babe Ruth, at least one line will extend five generations (see Generation Count in figure 1).

The bottom right is a box with more information about the individual you are seeking. Notice that the Person Page for the Babe has been stitched together from 6 user-submitted trees. If you click on the line, you will see a list of those trees with active links to view each tree.

Remember that the trees are not in OWT. They are located wherever they were found by the search engine—in this case, Ancestry World Tree. You will also notice the yellow triangle that indicates that alternate choices are available. If you click on the triangle next to the name, you will see the View Alternate Information” page (figure 3), which is one of the most helpful features of OWT.

Figure 3: View Alternate Information page for Babe Ruth

In the View Alternate Information page you can see the variations found in the 6 trees, and the number of trees that contains each variation (figure 3).

Notice that missing information is indicated by showing the data item name in brackets, such as [county] or [month]. In the case of Babe’s birth place, I prefer the entry with the state and country (figure 3).

When you click the Select button on the best choice among the alternatives, the software “pins” your choice. In the current version, only you can see what you pin.

Other customers can pin their own choices and it won’t affect your view of your tree. The yellow triangle is replaced by a circle that resembles the head of a straight pin, indicating that you have pinned one of the choices available.

Because OWT keeps track of each subscriber’s pins, institutions that have subscriptions for many patrons, such as local libraries and family history centers, won’t be able to pin since OWT can’t differentiate among those customers.

OWT also has the ability to pin alternate parents. In the case of Il Bambino’s mother, the choices are Kate and Katherine Schamberger (figure 4). Again, you will find that you can make your own selections based on a comparison of the information and the information on your own tree.

Figure 4: Alternate choices for Il Bambino’s mother

It is important to note that OWT doesn’t evaluate the accuracy of the information it reports. It is up to you to determine accuracy based on your own genealogical research.

The Future of OWT
This first version of OneWorldTree is a useful tool for searching for clues about your family, and it’s only going to improve and grow. Ancestry.com has plans to add information from its census collection and other tree databases on an ongoing basis.

When the 1930 U.S. Census is added, researchers will be able to cross the line between evidence (records) and conclusions (trees) more quickly and easily using this tool than with any other online research aid. Combining a “data mining” activity with the interpretive powers of humans allows each to balance the other.

Plans for subsequent versions include adding the capability to create and edit your own trees, link them to OWT, link records from Ancestry.com’s databases to the people in your trees, and contact other people who have made similar links in their trees. Someday users will also be able to upload pictures, stories, and other documents.

With this new tool, Ancestry.com will help you find, evaluate, organize, and share information about your family in ways that have not been available before, and on a scale that is unprecedented. The vision is a great one, and the first version of OneWorldTree is a big step in the right direction.

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OWT Glossary
Assertion: A genealogical statement such as “Abraham is William’s father,” or “Jonathan was born in 1765.” The GENTECH Genealogical Data Model (GDM) defines assertions as linking a persona to another persona (relationship), a group (membership), an event (such as birth, marriage, or death), or a characteristic (such as hair color).Overstitching: Grouping assertions into a single persona when they should not be. For instance, there were five contemporary Jesse Littrells in Lauderdale County, Alabama, in the 1830s. If we grouped all five (or even two) of the Jesse Littrells together, that would be overstitching.

Persona: A person referred to in a historical record, or a collection of personas. We say persona when we know that it’s a person, but we don’t know which one. Consider the five contemporary Jesse Littrells in Lauderdale County, Alabama. If you found a record, you wouldn’t know which Jesse it was. In OWT, each record is considered to reference a different persona that was one of those five people—and then we try to stitch them together.

Pinning: Choosing a single assertion from a group of possibilities. This is similar to choosing which of a person’s possible names or birth dates you prefer to display on a pedigree chart.

Stitching: The grouping of multiple reference s to a person (multiple personas) into a single persona—like saying that John and Johnny are the same person, or that the Jesse Littrell in a particular marriage record is the same as the Jesse in the census record.

Understitching: Not grouping assertions into a single persona when they most likely should be.

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Beau Sharbrough is a popular genealogy lecturer.