Have you ever wondered how genealogical researchers who work to repatriate deceased military remains make connections with descendants? Do your messages to DNA matches sometimes go unanswered? Or perhaps you’re hoping to discover who in the family has great-great-grandpa’s Bible. If so, Cheri Hudson Passey’s new book, Genealogy in Reverse: Finding the Living – A Practical Guide for All Genealogists, may be of interest.
This compact volume introduces readers to strategies for locating living relatives. Drawing on her long experience in the field of repatriation research, Passey shares methods for moving beyond records of the dead and into the equally challenging task of connecting with their descendants. While much of genealogy focuses on the past, she reminds us that success often depends on bridging the gap between past and present.
The book also touches on the sensitive issue of privacy and provides advice on how to reach out respectfully to family members who may be reluctant to talk. Passey’s suggestions for phrasing messages and making cold calls will be especially helpful for researchers who find that first step intimidating.
Genealogy often emphasizes discovering those who came before us, but as Passey reminds us, connections with the living can be just as vital. Genealogy in Reverse may not answer every question, yet it provides a starting point for anyone curious about expanding their research beyond the traditional paper trail. For readers who have struggled to make contact with DNA matches or distant cousins, this slim guide may inspire new approaches worth trying. Available from Genealogical.com as an eBook or paperback.
For the past two weeks I’ve been blogging about Ancestry.com’s Pro Tools. You can read about my experience here and here.
Today, I’m going to show you how to clean your Ancestry tree without paying for Pro Tools. It’s super easy and honestly, I wish I’d thought of this years ago.
Start by picking a free or low-cost software program. Family Tree Maker and RootsMagic both sync directly with Ancestry. RootsMagic Essentials is free, but large trees can slow it down (I blogged about that here). If you don’t need access to your photos or documents and just want to focus on fixing errors, you can also download your tree as a GEDCOM and import it into Legacy Family Tree, which is what I did.
I kept things simple. I didn’t need media files for the check up, I just wanted to identify structural problems in my tree.
Here’s how to do it:
On Ancestry, go to your tree.
Click Tree Settings under Trees > Create & Manage Trees.
Scroll down and select Export Tree.
Once complete, download the file to your computer (it usually lands in your Downloads folder or OneDrive).
Open your genealogy software and import the GEDCOM.
Run the problem checker.
If you run into trouble with the software, you can literally ask ChatGPT (aka Geni!) for help. That’s how I found this entire workaround.
Once your tree is loaded, use the software’s built-in tools to flag potential problems. In Legacy, I went to Tools > Potential Problems. I set criteria to mirror the kinds of problems flagged by Ancestry’s Pro Tools, things like parents being too young, children born after a parent’s death, and so on.
One downside: Legacy doesn’t flag individuals with no sources, which was one of the main issues Pro Tools surfaced. But what Legacy did reveal was surprising and far more accurate.
Here’s the report I got from Legacy (the error types flagged by Ancestry are in red):
Let that sink in: 940 total errors, almost all of which are legitimate and actionable. Of that, there was only 55 errors that Ancestry claimed was 301 and they didn't identify these people! I plan on cleaning up all of the errors Legacy found as having two individuals over age 110 years is a problem Ancestry should have discovered. And the individuals with no sex given? That is a continual flaw in Ancestry's system when you are adding new individuals.
Unlike Ancestry’s Tree Checker, which falsely flagged over 10,000+ records in my tree, Legacy gave me a clean, accurate list I could work with. I now have the names and the issues. I’m going through them one by one and making the corrections directly in my Ancestry tree, since that’s still my primary working tree. I’ll continue syncing it with Family Tree Maker.
And if I get another $7 Pro Tools offer in the future? Sure, I might try it again just to check whether they’ve cleaned up the bugs. But I’ll cancel it right after. Because let’s be honest:
If Ancestry really wants our trees to be accurate, they should provide these tools for free.
We are already paying for the data, the DNA, the platform and in many cases, contributing our own hard-earned research. Charging extra for a tree-checking feature (that doesn’t even work right) feels like asking users to fix the foundation of the house they already paid to build.
So, skip the upsell. Use free software. Clean your tree with confidence. And let’s keep our standards higher than their price tags.
Last week, I shared my experience with most of Ancestry.com's Pro Tools—an add-on offered for $10/month (I got in for $7 with a promotional email). You can read about those features here. Today, I’ll dive into the tool that motivated me to subscribe in the first place: Tree Checker.
If you’ve noticed the new Tree Checker score on your Ancestry tree, you might be curious. Mine showed a 9.1—“Excellent.” That aligns with my belief that my tree is about 90–95% accurate. But let’s be honest: no one has a 100% accurate tree. Without DNA confirmation for every line, there will always be an element of uncertainty. Still, I’m committed to removing the detritus that’s accumulated over years of brick wall chipping, FAN Club research, and lineage society applications.
Back in 1990, I started my tree with 50 people, using a TI-89 cartridge program. By 1995, I was entering data into FamilySearch’s .paf format. When Ancestry came along, I uploaded my work to what’s now the ubiquitous .gedcom. My skills, and my tree, have grown significantly since then. I’ve cleaned up my Swedish, Croatian, French, German, Swiss, and Dutch branches. What remains is my largest line: Great Britain. Before writing my next book, I knew it was time to clean that section.
I regularly back up my Ancestry tree to other programs (Family Tree Maker, Legacy, RootsMagic), all of which offer tree-checking tools. But because Ancestry is my primary research platform, I’ve been hesitant to clean externally and re-sync. So I was hopeful that Tree Checker would finally give me an effective cleanup solution within Ancestry.
Here’s what happened.
Tree Checker: Expectations vs. Reality
When I launched Tree Checker from the dashboard, I was greeted with a gut-punch: 14,000+ possible errors.
The majority were labeled “People with no sources.” I immediately knew what was going on. In Ancestry’s early days, there wasn’t a “web link” option. I got around that by uploading source PDFs to the Gallery or by placing citations in the timeline. Unfortunately, Tree Checker ignores those, unless it’s housed as an official Ancestry “source,” it’s invisible to the system.
But that still left other problem categories:
Possible Duplicates
People with Only Tree Sources
Other Possible Errors
I’ll add here that one of the most helpful “error types” isn’t even under Tree Checker, it’s found under Pro Filters > Family Lines > People Without Relationships. These are individuals floating without connections, often leftovers from attempts to delete a line. I had about 2,000 of these and quickly removed them.
People with Only Tree Sources was next. These were added from others' trees, unsourced. That’s an easy fix, either delete them or attach a hint. Done.
Possible Duplicates looked daunting at nearly 2,000, but the number was misleading. Triplicates and higher were counted separately, and after filtering, I had fewer than 1,000 to review. Some were legitimate merges (e.g., marriage records auto-adding a new spouse). Others were not duplicates at all: families who reused names after a child died, or multiple “Johann” Harbaughs with different middle names. I worked through them in two days.
The Glitches Begin
After carefully resolving every duplicate, I noticed something troubling: they didn’t disappear from the error list. No matter what I tried, refreshing, logging out, rebooting, clearing cache, Tree Checker continued to show errors I had already corrected. I even tried deleting and re-adding a person. No dice.
Still hoping for results, I moved on to “Other Possible Errors” and found myself stunned.
Ancestry itself was causing many of the flagged issues. For instance, if a child was born in 1937 and enumerated in the 1940 census, Tree Checker would flag it as “Resident listed before birth date.” The kicker? That census record was automatically added by Ancestry in the timeline for 1935. To clear the error, I had to delete 1935's entry FOR EVERY ONE born between 1936-1940.
Swedish church records were another problem. Ancestry indexes these by range (e.g., 1723–1728). If a child was born in 1724, Tree Checker flagged the 1723 record as occurring before birth. Completely illogical and a huge waste of my time to clean up!
Some new error flags also made no sense:
“Birth/Death dates span more than 10 years” with only one sourced date. What?
"Significant age difference between spouses" um, 2 years!
“Marriage occurred after spouse’s death” when no death date was even given. See the above screenshot proving the error was false.
And here’s the real kicker: even when I corrected the problems, they remained in the count. Over the next three days, my “error total” would inexplicably rise despite spending hours cleaning.
Note that it says there are 2 possible duplicates but none show.
People with only tree sources shows 1 but none are provided.
Under all possible errors the counter states 201 but there is only 1 error showing and it is not an error when you go to that page.
This reminded me of a long ago problem Ancestry had with what was called "Ghost Hints." You can read my how-to-fix blog about it here. I tried that again but it appears that Ancestry has tightened up security and my fix it no longer worked.
As a genealogist, I dug into the data. I exported the report, analyzed the stats, and discovered something stunning:
75% of the Tree Checker results were false positives. That’s not a helpful tool -that’s noise! Seeing it graphically made me realize I had been sold a product that doesn't work:
To top it off, this also distorts your overall Tree Checker “score.” I now wonder what my real rating would be if the tool actually worked. With the changes that took, my score reached a 9.4.
The Final Straw
I then turned to the “No Sources” filter and began manually fixing issues from A–Be, X, Y, and Z. That’s when I hit the wall. Even attaching suggested Ancestry hints they no longer removed individuals from the list. Not user error, this was a flat-out malfunction.
That’s when I noticed the word Beta scattered throughout Pro Tools. Beta testing, by definition, is the final phase before a product goes public. Users test real-world functionality and provide feedback. But here’s the problem:
Ancestry released an untested tool to the public and then charged for it.
If you charge admission before the dress rehearsal is done, that’s not Beta testing. That’s profiteering.
But that's not all! Ancestry then sent me an email with their data about the changes I made to my tree:
What does 300% more duplicates found even mean?! We know I had no duplicates and most of those that they believed were duplicates were not. 84% fewer issues discovered? Does that mean my tree still has 16% undiscovered issues? If so, how would I ever find them when Pro Tools can't identify them and the counter doesn't work?
Where Do We Go From Here?
I’m not just disappointed, I’m concerned. It’s clear Ancestry recognizes the problem of flawed user trees. But their solution shouldn’t be charging extra for a broken product.
In a recent webinar, the presenter said she came up with the idea of genealogy coaching. That’s interesting, since I’ve offered coaching on my website for over a decade at a fraction of the price. I believe everyone should have access to their heritage, not just those who can afford a luxury tier. I was also appalled to hear that professional genealogists charge tens of thousands of dollars a year. No, just no!
I use Ancestry daily and plan to continue. But I’ve cancelled my Pro Tools subscription.
Next week, I’ll share how I cleaned up my tree without shelling out extra cash.
As a long-time Ancestry.com user, I decided to give their new Pro Tools a spin during the July 4th weekend. With a family member recovering from surgery, I wasn’t traveling, and I had trimmed my client and presentation load to be more available at home. So, for the introductory $7.00 fee, I figured—why not?
Today's blog, and the two that follow, details what happened next: a real-world walkthrough of what Pro Tools offers and whether it’s worth the extra cost above your regular Ancestry subscription.
After payment—seamless, of course, since Ancestry has mastered the art of parting you from your money—I waited around two hours for the tools to appear. No email alert, just a dashboard update with Pro Tools shortcuts quietly waiting for me.
I expected a guide or orientation video. Nope. Clicking “More Pro Tools” brought up the feature list shown below. So let’s walk through each one:
Networks This is basically a built-in FAN Club tracker. You can add people to your tree who aren’t related but interacted with your ancestors—neighbors, witnesses, etc. I wish this existed back when I was wrestling with my Duer brick wall. Back then, I added these people manually and unlinked them to avoid false connections. Networks would have saved a lot of time.
Enhanced Shared Matches The “enhancement” is only one thing: DNA clusters. And only if you've tested through Ancestry. Here's the kicker: MyHeritage offers this for free—even if you didn't test with them but uploaded your DNA there. Ancestry’s version? Sparse and underwhelming. I have no maternal clusters and only 27 paternal ones.
MyHeritage has far more, thanks to their broader global dataset. Winner: MyHeritage.
Smart Filters Sort your tree by name, birth, or death dates. Sounds great—until you realize it only displays the first 10,000 people. My tree has 70,000+ individuals from years of research and surname studies. So... not helpful. Pass.
Charts and Reports You get four types: Descendancy, Ahnentafel, Register, and Family Group, with cutesy “tree” headers (Pine, Birch, Oak, Maple). But each slaps the Ancestry logo on top. Legacy and RootsMagic do it better—and they’re free. Another strike.
Tree Mapper A world map with green highlights where your ancestors lived. Sounds promising, until it confidently tells me my ancestor in Zwol, Overijssel (Netherlands) lived in South Africa. Another resided in Queensland, Jamaica, New York and not in Queensland, Australia where it was flagged. Error after error makes this useless for real research.
Tree Insights This tool tells you surname meanings, top five surnames, oldest people in your tree, and “notable” outliers—like couples who married at 1 year old. (Spoiler: they didn’t.) It clearly can’t interpret “Abt.” dates, and many errors it finds weren’t flagged by the Tree Checker. Insightful? Yes. Reliable? Meh.
This is getting long, so I’ll save the main course—Tree Checker—for the next post. Spoiler: It’s the only reason I tried Pro Tools at all. And it’s a tale worth telling.
