Blaze A New Path (Ancestry)
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| WTA volunteers building trail. Used with permission. |
While researching, all of us find people in records, known and unknown, and would like to easily add them to our tree where we can find and add more records, properly place them in their family, and judge whether or not the family is properly placed. This post will illustrate some ways to do that, using examples from my Ancestry.com online tree. Similar techniques can be used on other platforms.
Sometimes when you find a new person, it's quite easy to add each of the family members from a census record, even before the 1880, where relationships are not noted. When you experience that ease, thank whoever blazed that path for you.
In this post, I'll demonstrate how to mark the path yourself so that future family researchers can more accurately add all the family members in a record.
What Ancestry labels "Record" is actually a linked household index. An example is below.
First, add your mystery person to your tree. Then from Record, choose "add this record to someone in my tree", "add to a new person", begin typing, then choose the one whom you just added." Finally, ensure that all the details from the record are noted. For instance, for wives, I enter FirstName _____ (5 underlines, space) HusbandSurname. If residence, etc. didn't save, just go back to "Record," click the name and save it again, editing any necessary fields. The five underlines serve as a reminder that the wife's family and birth surname need research. Details such as wealth, land ownership, occupation and number of children born/living can be noted as well, so they show up in the timeline of facts.
If a couple are living with a set of parents, choose the son or daughter and re-save in order to get that relationship into your tree for both families. You may also note other relatives, lodgers, servants in the household before saving, or add later by editing or adding a fact or adding those people to your tree, then linking them to that record.
Use"Record" to add each person, one by one, to the family. I usually start by copy/pasting the family names and their ages into a text file so I can easily paste names as I add each into the family in the online tree. This process baffled me for years until I realized that "view record" was the magic bit that would allow Ancestry to link each person to their own place in that record. I've found that calculating the year of birth helps to link to the correct person, especially common names.
Before starting this work, if you've been researching and adding to your online tree for years, it will save time to search your tree for each person, and check your old work rather than duplicating it. While Ancestry makes merging profiles possible, it is not painless. Here is what it looks like if they are already linked, once their name is clicked in Record:
This is where your text file or whatever you use for notes is valuable; in the example above, I've found that all were already linked. The path is already marked either by me or one of my fellow researchers.
If one or more people have NOT been linked, click their name and feel blessed as you save them. 😊
Special case: marriage records
If you are lucky enough to find a marriage record which names both sets of parents, congratulations! Make the most of your luck by linking all the people to the record, which will take a few extra clicks. First save to whichever person you found in a search or hint; usually that also links the spouse, whether a set of parents or the newlyweds. Next, in Record choose a parent or their child. Then choose the other spouse (even though you just added them) in order to link them to their parents too. This has to be done in three steps in order to get Ancestry's database to use the information properly, and begin to generate good-quality hints for each family group. It's confusing until you get used to the workflow.
Obituaries and newspaper articles are a rich source to fill out a family. Often a spouse's parents, siblings and "niblings"(nieces and nephews) are listed, even sometimes mentioning their place of residence. Again, the process begins by adding each person to the tree.
Many people "clip" an obituary; I prefer to screenshot it, gather the information possible from the newspaper source for the citation, do a bit of research and sometimes some graphic work, before uploading it to the Gallery.
Once the image has been uploaded to the gallery, click it to categorize, describe ( the citation) then add the transcription. At that point I save. It is useful to add any new people to the tree, noting the names and dates, which will help you choose between same-named people.
Then add the name of each person mentioned in the obit as they are named in the tree. If you later edit the name, it will still properly link and show up in that person's gallery. There is no need to add an obit to each named person; simply add the name in the gallery image form. If the person is important, add a Fact: residence, mentioning the obituary it came from and the phrase mentioning them. I leave a comment below if some folks named in the obit have not yet been located. Comments can be edited or deleted later, and linked names can be corrected later as well.
Once they have been linked to the obituary, that fact (usually residence, but sometimes death) can be linked to the obit where it will show up in the timeline. This makes it easy to click over to the obit for each of those folks to illuminate that context to the lives of each family member.
Why is this important work? In my opinion working with my cousins to dig up the full story is what gets me up in the morning. Those who have gone before are the people who created the world I live in with it's challenges and blessings. With their help I can help those who come next find more blessings and overcome challenges I've not yet seen.
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| Valorie Zimmerman |
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