Using the FamilySearch Family Tree: A Reference Guide (15 April 2013)

168 Pages·2013·1.98 MB·English

Using the FamilySearch Family Tree:
A Reference Guide (18 October 2013)
© 2013 by Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved.
This document may be copied and downloaded for incidental, noncommercial Church or your own personal
use.
Using the FamilySearch Family
Tree: A Reference Guide (18
October 2013)
Contents
Copyright and Trademarks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ?
Chapter 1: Getting to Family Tree. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Chapter 2: Seeing Ancestors on a Pedigree Chart or Fan Chart. . . . . . . . 11
A Person’s Summary Card. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
A Person’s Details Page. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Navigating the Pedigree View. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Displaying More Generations of Ancestors on the Pedigree View. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Displaying a Person’s Children and Descendants on the Pedigree View. . . . . . . . . . . 17
Closing Generations on the Pedigree View. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Moving the Pedigree View Horizontally and Vertically. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Moving a Person to the Main Position of the Fan Chart or Pedigree View. . . . . . . . . 19
Displaying Correct Spouses and Parents on the Pedigree View. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Resizing the Pedigree View. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Navigating the Fan Chart View. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Returning to a Previously Viewed Person. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Chapter 3: Seeing Details about People. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Viewing an Ancestor’s Photos and Stories in Family Tree. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Viewing a Person’s Family Members on the Details Page. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Viewing a Couple’s Relationship Information, Including Marriage and Divorce
Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Viewing Child-Parent Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Viewing Sources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Seeing Contributor Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Seeing Information about Living Relatives. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
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How Family Tree Displays Living People. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Rules Used to Determine If a Person May Still Be Living. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Chapter 4: Adding and Correcting Information about People and
Relationships. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Why Others Can Change Your Information and How to Prevent Improper Changes. . . . . . 40
Reason Statements for Adding, Editing, and Deleting Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Restricted Records. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Building Your Tree. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Starting with a Blank Family Tree. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Adding a New Person to Your Existing Tree. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Finding a Person Who Is Already in the Tree and Linking Him or Her into Your
Family Line. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Entering Standardized Dates and Places. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Entering Characters from the World’s Languages. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Searching for Records from a Person’s Details Page. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Correcting, Adding to, and Deleting Information about People Who Are Already in
Family Tree. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Correcting Information about a Person. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Changing a Person’s Living or Deceased Status. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Adding More Information about a Person Who Is Already in Family Tree. . . . . . . . . 52
Adding a Custom Event or Fact to a Person. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Types of Information That You Can Add about a Person. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Deleting Information about a Person. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Correcting, Adding to, and Deleting Relationship Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Relationships. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Adding, Editing, and Deleting a Couple’s Marriage Information, Including
Divorce Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Adding, Changing, and Deleting Relationship Types between Parents and
Children. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Removing a Person from a Family (Deleting Relationships). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Replacing a Wrong Parent in a Family with the Correct One. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Adding Reason Statements to People and Relationships. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Deleting a Person from the System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Restoring a Deleted Person. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Seeing the Change History and Undoing Changes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Seeing and Undoing the Changes Made to a Person or Relationship. . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Filtering a Person’s Change History. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Correcting Information Moved from new.FamilySearch.org to Family Tree. . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
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Recommendations for Correcting Names Moved from new.FamilySearch.org. . . . . . 76
Recommendations for Correcting Events and Other Information Moved from
new.FamilySearch.org. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Recommendations for Correcting Relationships Moved from
new.FamilySearch.org. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Uploading GEDCOM Files and Copying the Information to Family Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Part 1. Upload Your GEDCOM File, and Compare It to Family Tree. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Part 2. View the Results. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Part 3. Review People Who Are Potential Matches. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Part 4. Review People Who Can Be Added to Family Tree. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Part 5. Review People Who Are Already in Family Tree. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Transferring Information between Family Tree and a Personal Genealogical Database. . . . . 88
Chapter 5: Adding Photos and Stories to Your Ancestors in Family
Tree. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Guidelines for Using Photos and Stories. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Using Photos. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Adding a Photo Using Family Tree. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Changing a Preferred Portrait . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Attaching an Uploaded Photo to a Person in Family Tree. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Tagging a Photo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Resizing and Repositioning Tags. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Removing Tags. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Deleting a Photo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Identifying the Contributor of a Photo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Adding Stories. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Adding a Story. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Attaching a Previously Written Story to a Person in Family Tree. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Tagging a Story. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Editing a Story and Its Photo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Removing a Story. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Deleting a Story. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Adding Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Using Social Media or Email to Share A Specific Photo or Story. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Reporting Questionable Material. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Chapter 6: Finding Deceased People in Family Tree. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
How the Exact Check Boxes Affect Search Results. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
How the Exact Check Box Affects Finding Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
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How the Exact Check Box Affects Finding Dates. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
How the Exact Check Box Affects Finding Places. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Chapter 7: Printing Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Using Certified Third-Party Computer Programs to Print Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Chapter 8: Attaching Sources to People and Relationships. . . . . . . . . . . 113
Adding Sources to Your Source Box. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Your Source Box. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Typing a New Source into Your Source Box. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
What to Enter in Source Fields. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Copying a Source. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Adding a Record from FamilySearch.org to Your Source Box. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
Adding a Source That Is Already Created into Your Source Box. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Adding, Changing, and Removing Tags from Sources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Correcting and Improving Sources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Editing Sources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Detaching Sources from People and Relationships. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
Seeing and Undoing the Changes Made to a Source. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Managing Your Source Box. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Using Folders to Organize Your Source Box. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Renaming Folders in Your Source Box. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Deleting Unneeded Folders from Your Source Box. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Removing Sources from Your Source Box. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
Deleting Sources from Family Tree. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Seeing a List of the People a Source Is Attached To. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Reporting Abuse in Sources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
Why Sources Are Valuable. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Sources in Family Tree. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Source Icons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Chapter 9: Merging Duplicate Records. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Resolving Common Merge Situations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
Records That Cannot Be Merged. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Undoing a Merge. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Restoring a Record That Was Deleted after a Merge. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Indicating Two Records Are Not a Match. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Removing a Record from the Not a Match List. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Fixing Incorrectly Combined Records from new.FamilySearch.org. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
vi FamilySearch Family Tree (18 October 2013)
Chapter 10: Working with Other Users. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Appropriate Use of Contact Information and Discussions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Seeing Contributor Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Participating in Discussions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Editing Your Discussions and Comments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Deleting Your Discussions and Comments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
What Causes Discussions to Disappear. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Reporting Inappropriate Discussions and Comments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Watching and “Unwatching” Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Watching and “Unwatching” Records about People in Family Tree. . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Watching and “Unwatching” Sources in Family Tree. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
Using Your Watch List. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Glossary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
FamilySearch Family Tree (18 October 2013) vii

Chapter 1
Getting to Family Tree
Family Tree is an updated approach to organizing and preserving your genealogy online.
Family Tree is free, available to everyone, and provides an easy way to share information,
compare research, and go further faster by working together.
In Family Tree you can:
• See what the system already contains about your ancestors.
• Work with others to fill in missing information and correct errors.
• Add sources and explanations to show that information is accurate.
• Find and merge records that are about the same person.
• Add photos and stories of your ancestors.
1. Go to familysearch.org.
2. Click Family Tree.
3. If you are not signed in, sign in.
Tip: If you click Stay signed in for 2 weeks, each time you go to FamilySearch.org
and click Family Tree, the system automatically signs you in. At the end of two weeks,
you can select the option again. Do not use the Stay signed in for 2 weeks option
if you are on a shared computer.
FamilySearch Family Tree (18 October 2013) 9