Missing Branches on Ancestry (With Fix)

So there I was last night, doom scrolling on Facebook (FB). I noticed several posts from people who claimed branches of their Ancestry tree are going missing, and previously attached ancestors are now showing only as potential hints in their tree. These types of posts aren't new (they're quite frequent), and they get plenty of good suggestions from forum members on how to fix the problem. Yet the original posters (OP') seem determined not to comprehend the problem -  or how easy it is to fix. Over and over, they'll claim Ancestry pruned branches without their permission. I rarely take time to answer any of these posts, because by in large, the posters seem to prefer insisting it's an Ancestry intrusion and not a user mistake. You can't make people understand if they don't want to. But this time it hit me different, and I've decided to make this post. 

I have a shocking announcement for these people, So long as you've not committed some egregious violation of the Terms of Service (TOS), Ancestry does NOT care about your tree. I don't care how many people you have in it, or how long you've been working on it. Ancestry does not randomly jump into trees and start making changes. Yes, if a record collection is removed entirely from the catalog, you could potentially see a few hints or previously saved records/media items disappear....but they are not randomly messing with your tree, deleting people just to screw with you. If you suddenly have a missing branch (or branches) of your tree, YOU did something you may not have noticed (or intended) at the time. And oh, by the way, this is a relatively easy fix (as most people are suggesting in the forums).

I'm going to give these folks the benefit of the doubt, and assume they've not truly worked with Ancestry long enough to realize both the absurdity of the claim, and the simplicity of the fix. Casual users may not pay any attention to how trees actually work. They may just point and click (potentially propagating incorrect information, but it's a different problem, and one for another post). Those who take time to research thoroughly, document, correct errors they may may find, and use tools to ensure accuracy are not likely to be the ones posting this type of concern. They are the ones posting the solutions.

I'm going to illustrate the problem, and the solution. Here's a snip from a small portion of one of my trees.

As you can see, John Livesay has both a father and grandfather shown. Further, his father Peter Livesay is clearly shown in my list of people. (You can access this list by going to your tree view, clicking on Tree Overview and selecting People in the right hand column):

Now, let me show you how to magically make the branch disappear. I've gone to the Edit Relationships option on John Livesay, the first person shown in the tree. I've selected "Edit Relationships" for him. As you can see, Peter Livesay is shown as his biological father.

Now, I'm going to click the X and remove Peter Livesay, and confirm I want to remove him. I'm not the least bit worried in doing this. Changing a relationship DOES NOT delete anyone. It simply removes the relationship. 

Refreshing my tree view, you can see it now appears this branch is missing entiely. Both Peter, and the grandfather are no longer shown.

If I go to my list of people again, you'll see Peter is not actually removed from my tree. He's just now a "floating branch". This means nothing more than a person who is saved in your tree, but not connected to anyone you show as related to you. Keep in mind, once the first person is "disconnected", so are any ancestors and people related to the person. The entire branch is affected.

This type of situation can be intentionally created as well as accidentally. Many researchers use floating branches to catalogue FAN networks or to research people they come across, but aren't yet sure are related. I personally don't care for floating branches, but I acknowledge they can serve a useful purpose.

Now, I go back to John Livesay, and you can see he clearly has no father. But I'm going to click to add, and then select a person already in my tree. When presented with the field to choose who to add, I'll use someone already in my tree and insert Peter Livesay. We know he still exists because we see him in the list of people

As soon as I do this, Peter will immediately show back up on the profile page as his father, and refreshing the tree now puts EVERYONE who was missing in the branch back.

As you can see, I was able to make it appear as if a branch had been pruned. It was not. It was simply a floating branch. So if you encounter a missing branch, identify the missing person and simply reattach them. More than likely, you were doing some editing and accidentally removed a relationship. On Ancestry, it is NOT possible to truly delete an entire branch at one time. You can certainly delete people, one at a time, but it's incredibly time consuming to actually remove an entire branch, since it has to be done person by person. 

Now, if you use offline software to sync, and the program supports removing an entire branch with a few clicks, and you choose to do this and then sync to Ancestry - it is possible you could remove an entire branch. But again, this is a user error, not Ancestry messing with your tree. And if you've permitted others to be editors to your tree, one of them could make changes you don't want. Again, an issue by the permissions granted by the tree owner. But most often, posters in forums are saying they don't allow others to change their tree - and this means only one thing - the poster has accidentally removed a relationship themselves.

So there you have it. Ancestry does not go into your tree and make changes. Users make mistakes. It's wonderful to have a resource, like Facebook forums, to ask for help. But if you ask for assistance, be willing to hear and try the solutions. Many forums prefer users do not post links, but if you see a person with this issue, feel free to point them to my blog.