52 Ancestors Week 27: Free

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 27's theme is "Free." You could focus on an ancestor seeking freedom, a free-for-all, your favorite free resource, or take it "free form" and write about whatever you want to write about! (Of course, that's true any week!)

Just as good as Free Comic Book Day!

  Some of the best things in life are free and who doesn't like free things? You can get free comics the first weekend of May at your local comic shop for example. There are even free genealogy sites that you could check out like FamilySearch. Yes, there are veritable gold mines of free genealogy websites out there. But, did you know that one of my favorite free genealogy sites is about halfway through a massive year-long event?

I still say that looks like a Pepsi logo....

This year, Wikitree has been working on our biggest community event ever. Usually we have various "thons" covering everything from connecting people to trees, sourcing profiles and scanning images. For 2021 we've also been working on our YEAR OF ACCURACY!

    Before I go into details on that, I'll quickly go over the website for those of you who may be unfamiliar with WikiTree. WikiTree was founded in 2008 by Chris Whitten and from humble beginnings the website grew to include over 27 million profiles at the time of this blog. On WikiTree, we try to create a profile for every human who has ever lived and connect them to the world tree. If you really want to explore the ins and outs of the website, I suggest you watch this interview with my friend, Mindy Silva on Genealogy TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD5WjwS8zy4

    I'm not going to lie. WikiTree has a lot to offer and I've been a member of the website since July of 2017. It's hard to cover EVERYTHING about the website in just one little blog entry. Let's focus on the challenge itself! 

Jarrett Ross aka the Geneavlogger.

    For this year's challenge, we take a genealogy guest star, work on their tree and make it more accurate than it is anywhere else. Over on WikiTree, we are very particular about sources and so we want everything to be as precise as possible. At the same time, we attempt to break brick walls and discover what we can for our guest. It's a free service we provide since we're all volunteers. We just offer our time and do not expect payment!

    Each week, we present our guest with what we find over at our YouTube channel. So far our guests have been surprised by what the community has found and we've had a veritable who's who of genealogical giants grace the channel from Youtubers like Jarrett Ross and Devon Noel Lee to even Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr and CeCe Moore! We've even brought a few people to tears! I'm not sure if that's a good thing. If they were happy tears, it's good!

    With a roster like that, it's no wonder the challenge has become pretty darn popular amongst the genealogy community! I'm glad I've been a part of it because I've made some pretty amazing friends and as an Ambassador for the site it gives me a chance to help show the world just what we have to offer. A friend of mine said that WikiTree is a great example of crowdsourcing and she's right. We all talk in the genealogist to genealogist forum. We talk on the Discord channel about what we need be it a translation or another pair of eyes on something.

    Personally, I've had a lot of fun with this project because it's gotten me a little outside of my comfort zone and that's good. You don't want to get too comfortable looking up Italian or Quebec records no matter how tempting they might be. It's a big genealogical world out there full of all kinds of records online and offline. Granted, I'm not the best when it comes to something like Dutch records and that's fine. That's why we have the chats. People are always around to help and that's a very good thing.

    When I was looking up information in South Carolina for one of our past guests, I found it a bit difficult because certain records were not online. So, I talked things over with the chat and we managed to work around some of the problems I had with the area. This is what makes the challenge so great. Not only do we help our genealogy guest star in what is basically a Youtube version of "Finding Your Roots" or "Who Do You Think You Are?". We help each other grow as researchers. I learned that each state handles records very differently than my native Massachusetts and New Hampshire. It's a challenge and like I said people can help if you ask them nicely.

Ahh, YouTube....

       As of this writing, Wikitree.com has broken 500 brick walls for our guests and this hype train isn't about to stop any time soon! I can't spoil who else is going to be a guest star. I will say this. If the latter half of 2021 is just as exciting as the first half, we're going to be in for some serious fireworks. Who will we have? What will we discover? No spoilers, my friends. Go to the YouTube channel, subscribe and wait and see! And if you'd like to participate, please contact Eowyn Walker!

    This year, the site has proven to be able to do what no other free genealogy site has yet to do. We've taken a group of people on the Internet and got them to work on a common goal. Believe me when I say that that is a very rare occurrence. Yes, some groups of people can do really great things. However, this is much more massive than anything I've ever seen on the Internet. 

    Wikitree is a free genealogy site and will remain as such for the foreseeable future. Before the challenge, it was already a great place to store information for your tree, connect with cousins and have accurate information be displayed for all to see. With the challenge, we've hit the big time. Where do we go from here? Only Whitten knows for sure. In the mean time, I'll do what I can to help various genealogy guest stars, make new friends and have fun. We got a good thing going and the sky's the limit!

See ya next time!