Discovering Contacts through Member Connect on Ancestry.com

If you have a paid subscription to Ancestry.com, it gives you an additional feature of the online family tree that is worth mentioning — Member Connect. The Member Connect feature actively looks for other people who are posting information about your ancestor on their online family trees. After finding a potential match, Member Connect lists the member's name on the tab.

To find members who are researching one of your ancestors, follow these steps:

1. Go to Ancestry.com and log in.
2. Near the top of the landing page, you will see a box titled Recent Member Connect Activity (see the following figure). If Ancestry.com found any recent activity on your family lines, the results will appear in this box.
3. Click the appropriate link for the action you wish to take.

The links in the results will vary. If someone posted an article or document related to a person you're researching or matching a surname in your list, you can click the link to see the item. If a person posted a general interest or listed a surname that matches one of yours, the link will lead to that person's profile. There may be other links present next to a person-based entry too, such as View Family Tree or Send a Message. These links help eliminate a few steps in the process if you're only interested in his family tree or messaging him.

Ancestry.com subscribers see links to the family trees containing the related information about the ancestor. Nonsubscribers see only the number of records, sources, and photos available on that family tree.