Is FamilySearch.org reliable?

Question

I found a bunch of people related to me that dates back to the mid-1700s but I don't know if I should take their word for it.

Answer 1

Like most other genealogy sites, the information is user-generated and has been compiled over the last couple of decades. As with all user-generated content, there will be mistakes. Take it as a starting point but try to verify as much of the information as you can along the way.

Good luck,
Dave
--
http://www.familypulse.org

Answer 2

The Mormons will tell you the AF is 75% accurate, the IGI 85% and the census transcriptions 95%.

Verify, verify, verify.

The IGI citations from "Patron Forms" are not as reliable as the transcribed [County / Parish] records

Here is an example of the "Other 25%' on the AF. It is in the form of an exercise, from a class I give..

Enter Jacob Blankenbaker, born in 1725. Use "Exact Year" for this one.
Click on the first hit, "Ancestral File". How many errors can you see?
Find the wife Mary Barbara THOMAS (AFN:FX0M-RX)
Click on "Family" (to the right) for Mary Barbara. Look at the birth dates of
Elizabeth BLANKENBAKER (AFN:FX0M-S4) and
Samuel BLANKENBAKER (AFN:FX0M-T9)
Go back to the original page for Jacob. Scroll down to the bottom, Find "Submitters". Click on "Details" (On the right.) The Mormons merge data. What could have caused the problems?
===================================

If you don't want to do the keystrokes,
Jacob married twice - once 30 years after he died.
He sired 6 kids from the grave.
Two of his kids were born within 6 months apart.

My guess is that a father and son, or Uncle and nephew or two cousins were combined as one individual.

Answer 3

I used to volunteer at one the LDS library branches... the Church itself does not (and never has) attempted to say that they have verified or "guarantee" any research that is submitted by their members. What you find in the files has to be determined if it is a submission from a member, some of which can date back to the early 1900's. The goal is that decendents of a person make the effort to find their ancestry, and is obviously hoped to be correct. Like any other research, some of the work is careless, and when compared to original research.. not correct. And yes, the LDS church knows that there are errors in some of the work.
On the other hand.. church members have spent decades transcribing ORIGINAL records like church registers, microfilming documents etc from around the world. That's different from submitted genealogies.
We all set our standards for "good" research. Having gotten bit in the posterior one or two times by accepting someone elses' conclusions, I became quite picky. I LOVE when someone "challenges" what I have, since that serves as a check and balance for me and them... and pushes me to evaluate every single fact I have.
No matter where you get your info... don't settle for one source. Get 2 or 5, and see if they line up. Take discrepancies as opportunity to compare how reliable it may be. Verify anything you can.

Answer 4

The best thing to do is to verify anything you see in family trees on any website, free or paid. Use the information as clues as to where to look, like what courthouses to visit or where to write to get the information. Most of the information in trees on websites are not documented or poorly documented. I have found errors and others have. You can look at Rootsweb or Ancestry.Com and you might see one person with different dates of birth etc., then sometimes you will see a complete page on the same person by different submitters with identical information but still no documentation.

All too frequently, people are copying and that is no way to trace your family. Now, I am talking specifically of family trees not the various indexes where they have collected information from records on people.

I wouldn't take anyone's undocumented information as fact. Check it out.

Answer 5

familysearch.org is very reliable. When you look at a record the site gives you the document that it came from. If you had a subscription to ancestry.com (a non-lds family search site) they use family search and vice-versa.

Answer 6

It's only as good as the researcher. I can't tell you strongly enough DOCUMENT YOUR WORK.

Contact the person that submitted the work and see if they documented the work. If they didn't then don't believe a word until you document it. I have found many errors in researchers work that submit it as gospel. Gotten burned many times. Till I started documenting the work.

Answer 7

It's an excellent site and I have found the information to be really accurate, it's completely free as well.

Answer 8

It's run by the mormons, they have THE BEST genealogy inforamtion. Is it more reliable than WHAT? I don't understand your question?