The Family Tree and Branches

What the Tree Is and Is Not

The family tree we offer on Westover Family History is the work of literally thousands of people. But it is NOT an official source and should not be used as anything other than a reference.

The official tree is online at FamilySearch.org.

What it IS

  • This tree does not require log-in or registration
  • It shows LIVING family members as well as the dead. (But only from those who provide us with their information). The only thing shown of a living individual is their name and a photo. We don’t even NEED their other information. Our purpose here is to show connections only.
  • The tree may contain outdated or inaccurate information. It comes from many sources, some outdated. We know it contains errors. Any database this size will.
  • We provide this tree as a reference for helping far-flung branches of the family to connect and share
  • We welcome contributions to update the tree and to correct errors

    • What it IS NOT

  • This is NOT a source. Please do not list it or link it as a source.
  • This is NOT frequently updated. The most accurate information is dated within the past 200 years. Anything beyond that is rarely updated
  • This tree is NOT authoritative. Sourced data is at FamilySearch.org, not here. We do our best but we know there are issues.
  • It is NOT comprehensive to all Westovers everywhere. In a straight patriarchal line, it goes back nearly 1000 years. But the “married” branches of the family are NOT all inclusive. We want to work on that over time so that we include all married branches. That means this is not a Westover family tree alone and never will be.

    • It is impossible and time consuming in the extreme to provide a tree that works for all people in all instances.

    We welcome your input and contributions to help improve this tree but your mileage will definitely vary if you use this tree for research.

    We strongly encourage that you employ your own stand-alone computer program for archiving your own genealogical data. Good choices are RootsMagic or Legacy Family Tree. You will want a program that will interface with Family Search.

    Compatible programs can be found at this link on Family Search.

    What is Family Search?

    Family SearchFamily Search is home to the whole-world-family-tree.

    Unlike Ancestry.com, a site that contains millions of trees compiled by individuals, FamilySearch.org is one single tree – the family tree of all humanity – compiled by millions of individuals.

    Anyone can add to or take away information that makes up the tree.

    Ancestry.com is a for-profit venture that offers both free and paid features. FamilySearch.org is completely free.

    We often get asked why we so aggressively link to Family Search yet hardly ever link to Ancestry. There are several reasons for this.

    ~ We cannot control public versus private links at Ancestry. One day a resource is there, another day it is inaccessible.

    ~ Family Search contains more records – billions more than Ancestry or any other genealogical resource out there

    ~ Family Search is provided by and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Their mission is the gathering of Israel and Family Search is a part of that effort.

    ~ We are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. So were many of our ancestors.

    Part of the goal of this website is to train our family members and site users to use and contribute to Family Search.

    Some of us work as Family History consultants with training and expertise specific to Family Search. We can help you learn it. Linking to individual family resources on Family Search is part of that effort.

    This website makes liberal use of materials provided via Family Search. We also have images, documents, links and other resources that are NOT on Family Search.

    We operate this website because our family history is our responsibility. We have learned the wisdom of building our own repository of family history information.

    We make use of Family Search, Ancestry and other online resources to build our own library. We are fine with linking to them. But at the end of the day the preservation of our history is our responsibility. We keep backups of all we gather and share here. You should too.

    We lean on family members all over the world to continue to build our record. We welcome your contributions to the preservation of our family history by sharing what you have.

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