Many genealogists have family trees on sites such as Ancestry and MyHeritage, and also in family history software on their computer. While multiple family trees have powerful research advantages, they can quickly become a liability if poorly managed.
Inconsistent information between trees wastes research time and prevents you achieving your research objectives. Outdated data leads you down wrong paths. Missing documentation undermines your credibility. The solution isn’t fewer trees. It’s better family tree management.
This guide shows you how to maintain multiple genealogy trees effectively, keeping them accurate, consistent, and useful for your research.
Note: This post only deals with multiple trees about the same family. It does not cover situations where you may have different unrelated trees for clients or friends.
Why Genealogists Use Multiple Family Trees
Different platforms serve different research purposes:
Commercial genealogy websites like Ancestry and MyHeritage offer vast record collections. Having a family tree on these platforms helps you find new information and sources.
DNA testing company websites provide tools for analysing genetic matches. Your family tree is key to understanding how you connect with DNA matches.
Desktop genealogy software gives you comprehensive research tools, detailed reporting options, and control over your data format and privacy.
Collaborative family trees like FamilySearch and WikiTree connect you with other researchers working on the same families and can help you solve research problems.
Each platform has strengths. The challenge lies in managing family tree data across all of them to keep obtaining the benefits.
The benefits and alternatives are discussed in my blog post, Where’s the Best Place to Put Your Family Tree.
The Costs of Poor Family Tree Management
Inconsistencies between your family trees can create serious research problems.
You can waste hours or months investigating leads based on incorrect information. You may miss out on research leads because your online tree lacks recent updates. And the stories or presentations that you base on your family tree will be vague or incorrect.
Inaccurate family trees can also mislead other researchers, as they copy your mistakes and spread inaccurate genealogy information.
Core Principles of Managing Multiple Family Trees
Effective family tree management rests on four foundations:
- Accuracy: Names, dates, places and relationships must be correct.
- Documentation: Include quality source citations and supporting evidence in research notes.
- Consistency: Information must match between your trees.
- Security: Regular backups to protect your research from loss.
These principles guide decisions about maintaining your family trees.
Refer to my blog post Create an Accurate Family Tree by Fixing Errors for more on accuracy.
Step 1: Designate Your Master Family Tree
Choose one family tree as your master family tree. This becomes the most complete, most accurate version of your research.
I recommend using family history software for your master tree. Programs like Legacy Family Tree, Family Tree Maker or RootsMagic offer extensive organisation tools, great source management and complete data control.
Your master tree should contain:
- Every person you’ve researched
- Full source citations for all information
- Digital copies of important documents and photographs
- Research notes and conclusions.
All other trees become working trees. These are extracts or subsets of your master tree designed for specific research purposes.
Step 2: Establish a Master Tree Maintenance Routine
Your master tree requires regular attention, even when you are not actively researching.
Immediate updates: When you discover new information on any platform, update your master tree straight away. This prevents the accumulation of inconsistencies.
For example, if you find someone in a census record on Ancestry:
- add it to your Ancestry tree
- copy the information to your master family tree on your computer
- download a copy of the census to your computer
- attach that file to the person in your master family tree.
Research focused updates: When you sit down to work on a specific family or research problem, it’s a good idea to check and correct anything related to that family or research problem in your master tree and the relevant working tree before you do more research.
Weekly maintenance: Spend about 30 minutes each week reviewing and improving your master family tree. Check for obvious errors, add missing source citations, enhance documentation for one family line, remove or merge duplicate profiles.
Monthly deep cleaning: Choose one surname or family group for thorough review. Verify all dates and places. Ensure every piece of information has proper documentation. Look for gaps in your research.
This systematic approach maintains data quality and prevents overwhelming cleanup tasks.
Step 3: Synchronise Your Working Trees
Create Update Schedules
Establish regular intervals for synchronising your working trees with your master tree. The frequency depends on your research activity:
- Daily researchers: Weekly updates
- Weekend genealogists: Monthly updates
- Casual researchers: Quarterly updates
Document your last update date for each tree to maintain accountability.
Focus Updates by Platform
Rather than trying to update everything simultaneously, rotate focus between platforms:
- Month 1: Update your Ancestry tree with new master tree information
- Month 2: Review and update DNA testing company trees
- Month 3: Update your WikiTree profiles
This approach makes updates manageable while ensuring nothing gets neglected long-term.
Software-Specific Syncing
Some genealogy programs offer automated syncing features:
Family Tree Maker allows you to synchronise family trees in your desktop software and on Ancestry, and can save significant time.
Legacy Family Tree offers FamilySearch synchronisation, but it works differently as it is a collaborative tree. Synchronising is best done one profile at a time with selective amendments to ensure accuracy.
Step 4: Implement Cross Referencing Between Family Trees
Cross-referencing helps you navigate between trees quickly and maintain consistency between individual profiles.
In Your Master Tree
Add custom facts or notes containing platform identifiers:
- FamilySearch person IDs
- WikiTree person IDs
- Stable URLs to person profiles in an Ancestry or MyHeritage family tree.
More information: How to Use FamilySearch Person IDs and WikiTree ID
In Your Working Trees
Add private notes containing your master tree person numbers. This creates bidirectional linking between all your trees.
Example: Legacy Family Tree software assigns a unique RIN to each person (Record Identification Numbers). Learn how to find them in this article from Legacy.
Create a Management Plan
Managing multiple family trees requires you to remember which platforms you have a tree and when they were last updated. Consider a spreadsheet or Notion project plan to list your trees and track your maintenance.
Step 5: Implement a Back Up Plan
Your master tree deserves the most protection:
- Configure automatic backups within your genealogy software
- Create weekly manual backups to external storage
- Store monthly backups in cloud storage or off-site locations.
Working Tree Backups
Working tree backups should be unnecessary, if you keep your master plan backed up. However, you can download GEDCOM files from online trees for added security. While GEDCOMs don’t include media files, they preserve your basic family structure and can be used to recreate trees if needed.
Note: Collaborative trees like FamilySearch and WikiTree don’t offer GEDCOM downloads.
Step 6: Using GEDCOM Files Strategically
A GEDCOM file is a great way to create a new research tree, but it is not a good tool for updating existing ones.
Be careful to privatise information on living people or sensitive information before uploading a GEDCOM file to create an online family tree.
Common Family Tree Management Mistakes to Avoid
Neglecting the master tree: Working trees receive attention while the master tree stagnates, undermining the entire system.
Inconsistent update schedules: Sporadic updates lead to confusion about which information is current.
Skipping backups: Hardware failures and platform changes can destroy years of work.
Creating Your Family Tree Management Action Plan
Start implementing better tree management:
This week: Choose your master tree and document your current working trees
This month: Establish your update schedule and start adding cross-references between trees
Ongoing: Follow your maintenance routines and backup procedures.
Consistency matters more than perfection. A simple system has greater chance of being implemented.
Multiple family trees boost your research power when managed properly. Start with your master tree designation and improve your system gradually.
About the Author
Danielle Lautrec is a genealogy educator, researcher, and author of The Good Genealogist. With qualifications in history, family history, and historical archaeology, she teaches for the Society of Australian Genealogists.
I have family trees on multiple sites and keeping them all up to date felt overwhelming. Thank you for giving me a strategy to manage them.
I too have multiple trees, and I too benefitted from this post. Thanks.
But I have another “problem”. I am 80 years old with no grandchildren, so I’m wondering if I need to ensure my research continues to be available once I’m gone. I have my tree on Family Tree Maker at home, but that won’t be accessible after I’m gone. So it seems I could leave it on Ancestry, My Heritage, Wikitree or Family Search, or even on my WordPress site, but I don’t fancy trying to get all of them up to date.
Do you have any thoughts?
Yes, preserving your family history is a challenge. One way is to generate some reports and charts from FTM and donate them to a family history society. The other way would be to put what you can on Wikitree, as it is a collaborative tree other people will add to what you contribute.
Thanks. I’ve used Wikitree a little, but I’ll look at it a little more carefully.