SCVGS has one account at Ancestry.com. By agreement with Ancestry, this one account may be used at four computers in the club rooms.

Once upon a time, Ancestry.com was primarily databases. In the past few years it has added a feature called Family Trees. This feature allows you to record your family tree, much as you would using Family Tree Maker, PAF, Legacy, or Reunion.

Please do not use this feature while you are using the club account at the club computers. There are a number of reasons why using this feature is a bad idea:

• You do not log in to Ancestry; you are using the club’s login. So Ancestry does not know who owns the tree. As far as Ancestry is concerned, the tree is the club’s tree.
• The club has no mechanism for supporting this feature for use by club members. Your tree is apt to be deleted at any time.
• If you decide to get your own subscription to Ancestry, there is no easy way to transfer the tree from the club account to your account.
• Ancestry sends email messages related to family trees to the account the tree belongs to. These messages go to the club’s email account. You do not receive them.

There are currently eight (8) family trees on the club account. These will be deleted in about a month. If you have created a Family Tree using this feature and would like to save the data, it’s possible to save most or all of it by downloading a GEDCOM file. Please talk to your favorite SCVGS guru, or to Mike Carroll (818-0556), if you need help with this.