Proven or Copied? How to Tell Which Parts of Your Family Tree You Actually Researched

Why it matters

A date copied from another tree looks exactly like a date you proved. It sits in the same field, in the same font, and after a while you stop remembering where it came from.

The risk is simple. If the tree you copied from was wrong, you are wrong too, and so is everyone who later copies from you. A member tree is often built from other member trees, so one bad guess can travel a long way before anyone checks the record behind it.

None of this means copied facts are false. Many are right. It means you don’t yet know which ones.

Three signs a fact was copied, not proven

1. The only source is another tree. The citation names a member tree, a public tree, or a shared tree: for example “Ancestry Member Trees,” “Public Member Tree,” “FamilySearch Family Tree,” or “WikiTree.” That is a lead, not evidence.
2. There is no source at all. A birth year with nothing attached was often typed in from memory, estimated, or copied. Without a citation you can’t tell which.
3. The detail is more exact than any record you have. A full birth date when your only record is a census that gives an age. Somebody got that date from somewhere. Find out where.

How to check your own tree

1. Start with one line, not the whole tree. Pick the ancestor you care most about.
2. For each person between you and that ancestor, look at birth, marriage, and death.
3. For each of those facts, write down the source behind it, then sort it into one of three piles:
   • Record: a census page, a certificate, a church register, a will.
   • Tree only: another person’s tree, and nothing else.
   • Nothing: no source attached.
4. The “tree only” and “nothing” piles are your work list. For each one, the other tree can still help: look at what it cites, and go find that record yourself.
5. Where you find the record, attach it to the fact. Where the record disagrees with the copied fact, keep both and note the conflict until you can settle it.

What this check can’t tell you

Sorting by source tells you what each fact rests on. It doesn’t tell you whether a record is right. Records make mistakes too, so a census age can be off by years. And a fact you did prove but never cited will land in the “nothing” pile until you attach the source.

Doing this automatically

Doing this by hand across a large tree is slow. KinSift reads your exported GEDCOM file and gives you a head start. It recognizes sources that are other people’s trees, warns you when a large share of your key events rest only on those trees or have no source at all, shows examples to start with, and limits your score when most of your evidence is copied rather than original. You still do the sorting, but you know where to look first. It’s free, with no signup.

KinSift doesn’t change your tree. Every fix is still yours to make in the software you already use.