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Are you ready for a shock? It's entirely possible your branch of the FamilySearch family tree lacks accuracy and has mistakes hiding in plain sight. Additionally, you may be missing opportunities for new genealogy research discoveries.
Enter Goldie May, a revolutionary tool designed to help you visualize and clean up your FamilySearch tree. This Google Chrome Extension and web app combo transforms how you interact with your family history data, making it easier than ever to spot errors and uncover gaps in your research.
In this post, I'll walk you through Goldie May's Subway Map pro feature and show you how to clean up your family tree. By the end, you'll know exactly how to identify and fix mistakes and even find new research opportunities.
Messy FamilySearch Family Trees Lead to Missed Opportunities
A family tree filled with errors or incomplete information creates confusion and makes it harder to accurately trace your ancestors' stories. Details like missing locations, incomplete dates, and outdated place names can wreak havoc on your research. And when it comes to family history, accuracy is everything.
But cleaning up your tree can feel overwhelming. How do you even know where to start?
Hidden Errors Decreases FamilySearch's Accuracy
Here's a scenario: You've added a few ancestors to FamilySearch and feel pretty good about it. Then, you dive into Goldie May's Subway Map, and—surprise!—there are zigzags, gaps, and misaligned timelines all over your ancestor's life story.
A child "born" in two locations on the same date.
A family migrating back and forth across the Atlantic—impossibly fast for the 1700s.
Place names that change depending on the century or political boundary shifts.
These errors don't just make your tree harder to understand—they're lost opportunities to connect with your ancestors' real lives.
How Goldie May's Subway Map Fixes Your Tree
Goldie May's Subway Map is a powerful feature that overlays your ancestors' life events on a timeline and map. This combination allows you to easily spot mistakes and take actionable steps to resolve them.
Step 1: Install Goldie May
Click the puzzle piece in the Google Chrome browser toolbar to access the Chrome Extensions.
In the pop-up window, click on "Manage Extensions."
Then, in the left menu of the Extensions page, click "Chrome Web Store.
In the search bar, type "Goldie May."
Click Add to Chrome, and follow the setup prompts.
Step 2: Open Your FamilySearch Tree
For Goldie May to work properly, you must be logged into a FamilySearch account. To do this, follow the steps below.
In a Chrome window, log in to your FamilySearch account.
Navigate to an ancestor's profile that you want to start reviewing.
Click the puzzle piece icon to open the extension pop-up window.
Select the Goldie May extension.
Follow any additional prompts until the Goldie May window offers you a menu of options.
Select Subway Map from the menu.
Step 3: Explore the Subway Map
After you access the Subway Map tool, you'll view your ancestor's life events as a series of dots on a timeline. It looks very much like a subway route (hence the name). Each dot represents a fact, such as birth, marriage, or death. Notice the corresponding locations along the left side of the dots so you can view time and place on one screen. Pretty cool, right?
Understand the Subway Map
How does the subway map point out possible mistakes in a profile? The following line structures offer clues you'll want to pay close attention to.
Straight lines: Ideally, these lines indicate accurate, well-documented data.
Zigzags: These lines suggest potential errors, such as conflicting locations or timeframes.
Gaps: Breaks in the line suggest a FamilySearch profile is missing information; perhaps a location or event was not recorded, or documented incompletely.
↪️ Want more genealogy research tips and tools? Check out our FREE Research Guides.
Common FamilySearch Cleanup Tips
If you find errors after reviewing the subway lines for your ancestors, it's time to take action. Set a goal to create an accurate family tree you can genuinely be proud of. Here are common tasks that Goldie May's Subway tool users will tackle.
1. Add Missing Facts
Goldie May can only plot events if they include both a date and a location. Are there missing details? In the past 12 years of FamilySearch's one-world tree, researchers haven't added facts beyond birth, marriage, and death, even though they've attached numerous sources.
Leverage the "Other Information" section to add those additional events. Goldie May needs a date and a place for dots to appear on the timeline, so while adding any new events to the "Other Information" section, ensure all events have a date and a place (even if it's "Abt. 1861" and "Finland.")
2. Fix Place Names
I've mentioned how place names are a mess in many family trees, and the zigzags in the subway map support my claim. While zigzags may suggest that someone found the wrong event for an ancestor, and you'll need to remove it, it's actually more common that place names need to be improved. So, standardize all the historical place names in the FamilySearch profile.
If you still see zigzags, determine if your ancestor's location had a boundary change. For instance, when Essex, New Jersey, was no longer a British Colony but an official part of the United States, a subway line would zigzag if you used "British Colonial America" and then "United States" for the same place. I know Poland and other global locations changed national borders numerous times, so verify that is the reason for the zigzag. If yes, then you can move on. If no, then clean up the place names.
3. Avoid Unnecessary Entries
In FamilySearch, some users have added details that happen after the ancestor is deceased. An obituary or posthumous honor is an acceptable fact to include in the events of an ancestor's life. Perhaps a probate battle that spans 20 years after the ancestor passed would be acceptable.
However, when you see entries for facts that really pertain to a descendant rather than the deceased, move those 'events' to the Notes section on FamilySearch so these events don't clutter up the subway map and profile for the ancestor on FamilySearch. One example is the approval of a descendant's application into a lineage society. That detail should go on the note's tab, not the Ancestor's Profile.
Goldie May Subways Is Also A Research Assistant
You might discover more details to clean up on the FamilySearch Profile, but don't stop there with this incredible tool. The Goldie May Subway features does more than clean up your tree:
Research Prompts: If you hover over a location, you will access guides, catalogs, and wikis to extend your research.
Family Migration Patterns: You can compare timelines across multiple relatives to trace migration trends to see overlaps or tangent migrations that might suggest a problem (or an interesting story).
Source Integration: Goldie May also has a feature where you can overlay data from Ancestry and FamilySearch to fill in gaps. These gaps could be a tree syncing error that you can work to resolve.
Why Goldie May Is a Must-Have
The Subway tool on Goldie May demonstrates that this Google Chrome Extension isn't just a cleanup tool but rather powerful genealogy research. Whether you're trying to add depth to your knowledge of one ancestor or you're trying to crack a brick wall, the Subway Map feature assists you in making your part of the FamilySearch one-world tree accurate and meaningful.
Would you like to better visualize the subway tool in action? Watch "Clean Up FamilySearch With Goldie May Subway Map" to dive even deeper into how this tool can transform your genealogy research.