"Hopscotching" might not even be a proper verb. For those of you who have forgotten what hopscotch is: all it takes is a stick or piece of chalk to draw a pattern in the dirt or sidewalk. Then you hop through the pattern. Google says: "The goal of hopscotch is to be the first player to successfully hop and jump across the hopscotch board (1-10 squares"—and then a bunch of rules.  "Hope & Megan" CC BY-NC 2.0 The picture above is closer to what I recall. I remember my kids playing it on the driveway. Recently I've been doing something similar in my Ancestry.com® online trees, using "Pro Tools" which costs me $10 per month. Besides the excellent capacity to see the DNA matches of my matches, Pro Tools can also sort their matches, which often gives me wonderful clues about where they fit into my tree.  Sometimes I just want work that requires less brain power and also improves the quality of my tree. For various reasons, I recently had to rec...

AI: Bing Image Creator Generated Changing realities force many of us to consider the future of our genealogical collections. Whether a change in health, a new location or even just downsizing, it can be useful to evaluate what we have now, with an eye to the future. What we can pass along? Plan Ahead First: if you have online trees, create a plan to grant access to interested fellow researchers, even distant cousins. Depending on the website, you may need to add a codicil to your will, or just tell the site whom your successor will be.  Ancestry.com: there are two considerations: your DNA test and your tree(s). It is wise to share your DNA results with a cousin or other relative; no need to wait. Or you can  Assign a Manager .  For overall accounts and trees, there is  Ancestry® Family Plan Memberships .  FamilySearch help file:  How to Connect to a Family Member’s Tree .  B ecause it is a shared tree, a person cannot pass along their FamilySearch acc...