Ancestry is the home of much of the family history tree building that many of us undertake. If you’re feeling that your tree could do with a quick check to ensure you’re making the most of some of the key Ancestry site tools, read on. Helen Tovey shares ideas to spruce up your tree.
CURATING YOUR FAMILY TREE
In this Family Tree guide, we’re going to explore some of the nuts and bolts of building and maintaining our family trees on Ancestry. Online trees sometimes get some bad rap for inaccuracies, lack of source citations, and a sense of a ‘copy and paste’ or ‘smash and grab’ approach to tree-building.
The online tree-building sites are tools that generations of genealogists before us could have only dreamed of, however. To ensure that our trees are beyond reproach, let’s take a look at how we can go about making the most of the Ancestry site tools and so create family trees that accurately reflect the determination and dedication that we put into the tracing of our ancestors’ lives.
Step 1: your log in
Setting up your two-step verification on Ancestry. With the goal of increased security, in the Autumnn 2023 Ancestry introduced two-step verification. You will be invited to enable this when you next log in to Ancestry if you have not already done so.
On enabling two-step verification, be sure to make a careful note of your one-time use recovery code. (If you need to order a new recovery code, find the intructions to do so here: https://support.ancestry.co.uk/s/article/Two-step-Verification) To check that you have two-step verification enabled, click your profile in the top right-hand corner of the window, when logged in to Ancestry, then go to Account Settings / Account Information.
Note: that you can opt to disable two-step verification. We would not advise you to do so, because the two-step verification is there to help you better protect any details that you may have included about living people on your tree, and your DNA related data (your kit and matches for instance).
Step 2: your profile
It’s up to you how much or little you wish to share about yourself, but if you’ve ever found the profile information of a fellow Ancestry user useful, then perhaps you would like to ‘pay it forward’ and add a few details to your own profile.
To edit your profile click in top right-hand corner of the window, when logged in to Ancestry, and select ‘Your Profile’.
To edit your profile select ‘personal profile’ – from ther
