ROOTS & BRANCHES

As this column is published, your “Roots & Branches” columnist will be speaking for the Cecil County Public Library system’s Genealogy Symposium on “What’s Hot and What’s Not in 21st Century Genealogy.”

It’s a bit of a lofty topic, but as faithful readers well know: I’m never short of opinions on such things.

There’s no doubt that the top of everyone’s “what’s hot” list has to be the continued expansion of tools for genetic genealogy.

Ways to sort through matches to other DNA testers and determine more precisely which ancestor is shared—these are in vogue and all the major testing services are enhancing them.

And the use of genetic genealogy by law enforcement is solving an increasing number of cold cases, putting this aspect of DNA research on the “hot” list.

I will admit, though, that I’m not as enthusiastic as some people when I hear of ethical shortcuts by some genetic genealogists in aiding law enforcement. They tend to put on their superhero capes and push back against anyone who urges any sort of oversight on their processes as essentially being on the side of murderers.

Late last year, I was asked to comment when after half a century Philadelphia’s so-called “Boy in the Box” case used DNA to identify a deceased boy and his parents.

It was great to give that child back his name, but the process also resulted in his surviving half siblings to be put under an unwanted microscope and incorrect assumptions made about the family.

Another “hot” item is the use of artificial intelligence to automate various processes in genealogy, although here, too, I’m a little more tepid about what’s going on than some of my compatriots. Because, yes, I’m of the generation that saw the dystopia presented by The Terminator and what happened when AI ran amok in that science-fiction film.

In my specialized area of German research, I’m seeing more and digitized church records put online by the Germany-based Protestant records site Archion.de—including many scans of superior quality vs. those created by FamilySearch.org from their old analog microfilms. That’s smoking hot!

So, how about the “what’s not” list? Well, probably my biggest item here are all the family trees I see put out on the Internet by well-meaning people that I call “carpenter trees”—ones in which each fact or person is a separate “board” hammered into place (but often the wrong place!), featuring similarly named people but not correctly identified.

I’m hopeful and someday soon, more genealogists can be motivated to move beyond those carpenter trees and instead either school themselves in analysis or find a professional genealogist to do that analysis for them (I noted already when I worked at Legacy Tree Genealogists from 2018–2021 that many of the projects were trending in that direction).

The tree you correct may be your own!