Connecting Floating Trees on Ancestry

How do you connect a Floating tree to your main tree on Ancestry.com? (A viewer asked). In this episode, I’ll demonstrate how to use floating trees, branches, or floating ancestors which can be a huge advantage when researching your family history.  This genealogy tutorial answers the questions… What is a floating tree, how to find a floating tree, how to connect floating trees, and some strategies and tips to help you with your genealogy research.

This can be done on any genealogy website that allows you to control your own family tree (like Ancestry, MyHeritage, or various family history software). This does not work as well on platforms like FamilySearch or WikiTree. FamilySearch and WikiTree are one giant collaborative tree, so using this Floating Tree strategy is not very easy to use or maintain on these platforms with regard to Floating Trees.  I find Ancestry is the best for this Floating Tree strategy.

The advantage to using Floating Trees is that you can use the search algorithms to help find connections, use it for DNA matches you want to explore, and once you figure out the connection, you can easily connect that Floater or Floating Branch to the main tree. 

Additionally, I’ll show you how to create an alternate father and label him as a step-father. This same step can be used for various relationships such as adopted parents.

We’ll talk about hyperlinks, MyTreeTags(R) and a lot more.