Where should my Family Tree live? 

Initially I figured with all the online cloud-based sites to store your genealogy why bother having a copy on your laptop or use some desktop application to collect your family history data. A friend told me that he would strongly recommend keeping your own copy on your own computer and a recent article I read confirmed this. So what are the reasons?

1. FamilySearch - Family Tree. 

A very comprehensive family tree is available here and it provides great hints when sources are digitised that match the names of your ancestors. As the church is very busy indexing and digitising the huge amount of data previously stored on films and microfiche, eventually many of the old records will be readily available online and can even be found using the hints provided.

However, FamilyTree is one giant global tree which is attempting to link together the entire known world. The data on there is public and can be modified by anyone who is a church member, the FamilySearch software and FamilySearch moderators. Not to fear, all changes are usually documented and at least the name of the person making the change is shown. So if you disagree with any change made you can contact the person and communicate until you are both happy that the correct information is stored. But ... the fact that the data can be changed means that it would be very useful for you to have your own copy that can only be changed by you.

Then there is another reason. As stated, the family tree is NOT your personal family tree. It may look like your tree in your browser but what you are seeing is a small section of the global tree, a window showing your data as it links to your directly. If you have thousands of records and want to quickly find one of your ancestors who may be an offspring of a direct ancestor or a distant cousin, search in FamilyTree may not make this all that easy for you. The result you get may need a lot of filtering until you find the person you are looking for. And if you are a bit vague as to what to filter then you might not find them at all. On your own personal tree in applications such as RootsMagic, Ancestral Quest, Legacy or others, there is usually a name list which allows you to quickly identify your person and then showing where on your own tree they live.

2. Ancestry.com

Sites such as Ancestry have free and paid subscriptions. When you have a paid subscription then you are able to attach sources and photos and all kinds of information to individuals in your tree or in your personal shoe box. The trees in Ancestry can be public or private but in any case only you can modify individuals. Hence you are more in control. However should your paid subscription lapse and you are not sure if you will renew, unfortunately all your stored data will disappear. You can still see your tree minus the attachments. Below is a more detailed article which explains it. Unfortunately gedcom files do not contain any attachments.

Stop Saving Records to your Ancestry Tree until you have read this

3. Other sites

I am sure similar conditions apply to other sites but best you check with the site you belong with and find out what happens should you decide to stop paying for the service.