Main contributor: James L Tanner
Broken chain
Broken chain

Broken links in your genealogical research create unconnected individuals and families to whom you may not be related. The most common cause of broken links in family trees is adding individuals to the tree without evidence of the relationship from a valid source.

A genealogical pedigree or family tree should be based on an unbroken line of relationships between parents and children supported by genealogically valuable, contemporary, historical documents usually referred to as sources. A historical document is genealogically valuable when it was created at or near the time of an event in an ancestor's or relative's life by someone who witnessed or had a duty to report the event. Common examples of documents that contain information about parent/child relationships are birth certificates and census records.

Research your ancestors on MyHeritage

Detecting a broken link

All the entries in your family tree should be consistent and supported by a valid source. If you carefully examine the documentation or sources for entries in your family tree, you may discover some relationships that lack documentation of a specific parent/child relationship even though there may be other sources attached. For example, there may be documents supporting the parent's marriage date but not documents showing the birth of a child. It is also possible that documents showing a relationship do not exist, but family traditions may support the inclusion of the relationship. Family traditions are valuable tools for beginning research but, if possible, should be verified by further research.

You can also discover broken links by looking at the location of each event in a person's life. It is common for children with the same family name to be included in the wrong family. Look carefully at the location of the events in the lives of each child listed in a family. A major study done by a MyHeritage.com science team entitled, Quantitative analysis of population-scale family trees with millions of relatives, explains that people tend to find a spouse within a relatively restricted area especially before modern methods of transportation, such as railroads, became available. Therefore, if an examination of a family finds family members who were born in different locations, it is likely that these inconsistencies indicate that these individuals are not related. See also: MyHeritage Science Team’s Research Featured in the Prestigious Journal Science. Careful research may confirm the birth locations or show that the children do not belong in the family.

Fixing the broken links

Unsupported broken links in a family tree are invitations to do more research. A good place to start is by learning how to do the necessary research. See How to Search for Historical Records on MyHeritage. The MyHeritage Knowledge Base also has an article entitled, Vital Records: How to Find Birth, Marriage & Death Records. When you find a record supporting the parent/child relationship, make sure to attach the record to all people mentioned in the record. In addition, make any changes to the information in the existing entries. See Editing a Tree in Pedigree View for help in learning how to edit your entries.

Preventing broken links

The way to prevent broken links is to carefully document new information you add to your family tree. You can learn how to add sources in this MyHeritage article: How can I add a source citation to a person in my family tree on my family site?. MyHeritage's Record Matching feature will help you find sources for your family tree entries. You can learn more about how to use Record Matches from this article in the MyHeritage Knowledge base: What is Record Matching?

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