Online Sharing of Family History

Working on one’s family tree is fascinating for the researcher never knows what they may uncover next in their quest. Just like networking in the business world is helpful, so is sharing and exchanging information with fellow researchers.

So much can be learned when you share your own family tree branches. With the Internet and online genealogy applications you can review and be in contact with thousands of fellow researchers. One such program that assists the family historian is ‘SharedTree.com’.

This is a free site where individuals can have collaboration with others and produce their own pedigrees, charts as well as add photos to the collection. The genealogy web site protects all information with encrypt passwords and where information on anyone born after 1930 is kept private. What is freely shared is information on individuals with a known death date or if they are over 100 years old.

There is no special software disk or programs needed to set up a family tree. Unlimited space is offered which is especially good for adding photos, family histories, biographies and stores. Any connecting cousins can also share their information for similar family lines. Charts, trees and other information can easily be transferred with GEDCOM format.

All that is required is a simple registration with an email address and a password to begin. If you prefer, you can just search the files on the site to see if there are any matches. You could search for a certain individual or by surname. Some of the most common surnames with the number of individuals in the line are: Smith with 4226, Miller with 2675, Johnson with 2257, Taylor with 1878 and Wilson with 1457.

Checking the Family Index has all the surnames available with the variations of spellings and the number in the lineage. For example; Everhart has 4, Eberhart has 12, Eberhardt has 23, and Eberhard has 8. Once a surname is clicked on, then all those individuals are shown with birth date, birth place along with family and individual details. If you had a question or comment for the person who contributed the data, a place is provided to do so.

SharedTree is very easy to navigate and best of all, it is free.