A few weeks ago, I was on my family tree on Ancestry.com and noticed a Geneanet hint for one of my ancestors. I hadn’t used Geneanet much before, but knowing it was one of FamilySearch’s top partner websites, I thought I would look more closely at this hint. I was thrilled to find more ancestors that weren’t on my tree!

Geneanet is a genealogical website that can be accessed for free with a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints membership account. It has a large database of user-submitted family trees and numerous historical and vital records. The site is primarily French-based, but it contains records from around the world.

There are many ways to collaborate with other users on the site, including sharing your tree, submitting DNA data, and adding records with ancestral information. Using the “Collaborative Assistance” feature on the website allows you to request research help from other users who may live near a library or cemetery from where you would like information. You can also contribute photographs of headstones to Geneanet’s cemetery database. There is a war memorial and an old postcard database users can contribute to, as well.

For the last two years, Ancestry.com has been a parent company to Geneanet and has linked information from its user-submitted trees to trees on Ancestry. This was how I discovered more ancestors on my Scottish line. There was a hint on one of my ancestors which connected me to someone else’s tree on Geneanet. On their tree, this ancestor had two other husbands and children I didn’t know about before! After double checking sources for accuracy, I was excited to add these new family members to my tree.

There are several published family trees on the internet that are hosted on genealogical websites you may not be familiar with. Because of Ancestry.com’s acquisition of Geneanet and my free Geneanet subscription through FamilySearch, I discovered this valuable website. In just a few clicks, I found access to a tree with new ancestors that I may not have found otherwise. 

– Christy Pugh, Communications, Granite FamilySearch Center