Community Trees: what they are and how they can be helpful in your search

What is a community tree?

A community tree is a lineage-based family tree based on reliable record sources. They are usually from a specific time period, or geographic locality. In community trees you will find carefully researched records for individuals and relationships. Consider the community trees specialized sources after consulting mainstream genealogical resources such as censuses, parish records, and civil registrations.

Depending on the size of the project, a community tree may contain information from a small village, to a whole region or country.

Why create a community tree?

1. To preserve the genealogy and heritage of a community
2. to share that knowledge with others

Who creates the community trees?

A Community Tree project can be created by anyone or any group . Many community trees are joint ventures between grass-roots endeavors, FamilySearch patrons, partner organizations, and participants with special expertise with specific types of records.

Defining the Scope

Taken from the Community Trees Project:

Community Trees have a defined scope of the project by locality, time period and sources used.

Locality and Time Period

1. Locality – a local genealogical and historical society may focus on the whole county, a small village may focus when the first inhabitants arrived and come forward to the modern time period. Often the genealogies of the village extend to surrounding villages, so the scope may extend to include all of the villages in a parish.
2. Time Period –most projects cover a wide time period – usually as far back as the records go back.

Source Types

1. Sources – citing the sources used for identifying individuals, forming families and extending the pedigree.
   • Living Memory, Primary and Secondary Sources – as with any personal genealogy the first step is Living Memory – starting with one’s self.
   • Living Memory is simple; because you start with yourself, add spouses, children, siblings and parents, then go back to the next generation. Keep in mind, memory sometimes will provide some false information or lack details. That’s where original research of primary and secondary information comes in.
   • Primary Sources such as vital, church, census and probates
   • Secondary Information – may be from a family Bible or letters or from the back of an old family picture. A good source of secondary information can be from extracting the genealogies from local histories.

Some community trees will have more or less information depending upon the sources. Some are complete, and some will be ongoing projects for many years.

why Community trees are helpful

Because community trees include source citations, they are generally high-quality collections that have less duplication and fewer errors than other projects.

From Family Search:

Darris Williams, project manager for the Community Trees projects, explains, “Community trees are kept separate from other genealogies.

Unlike user-submitted trees, nobody can change or update them. That’s all done by FamilySearch.” He also adds, “They are a very good resource for genealogical research.”

They are accessible, protected trees based on good source material. If FamilySearch needs to make changes to update them or add more names, they can do so. No individual can come in behind FamilySearch experts and make spurious changes….”

How do I get to a Community Tree?

From Family Search :” FamilySearch Community Trees has hundreds of projects containing millions of people from places around the world. Customary searches in historical records don’t tap into them, and computer algorithms won’t display record hints for them in the FamilySearch Family Tree. “

 “From the main menu on FamilySearch.org, select Search and then Genealogies. When the interface opens, scroll to the bottom of the Search tool, and pick Collections from “Other Options.” From the drop-down list of collection types, select Community Trees to look only in community trees projects.“

How many records are on the Community Trees section?

If you go to community trees projects on Family Search, you will find over 17 million records (as of july 2021).

HERE IS A LIST OF ALL CURRENT COMMUNITY TREES PROJECTS

If you have exhausted all other resources and feel you are at a dead end, try the Community trees, you may just hit a goldmine!