Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 29 June 2016.
Was looking over some hints on Ancestry the other day and thought – wow, wouldn’t it be great if:
- You could designate your guesses in some way – perhaps a color like yellow for caution – meaning that I’m not really sure yet and just checking this out so please don’t put it as fact in your tree. I realize that this is most relevant for people like me who make their trees public so that others won’t just grab the guess as true. Those that have their tree private, though, could also benefit as it would allow them to see what areas needed more analysis.
- Use color to separate lines – make my Duers’ blue and my Leiningers’ green and my Koss’ purple, for example. Then, when I was looking at a descendant I could easily identify their lineage. I know there is supposed to be the actual connection listed but mine comes and goes:
See, it’s missing. It should say relationship unknown but it says nothing. Kate’s line does not link to my known lines as the connection was somewhere across the pond and hasn’t been rediscovered yet. I don’t know why sometimes it displays and sometimes it doesn’t. I would add that to my wish list, too – get it to work consistently!
- A way to copy and paste a line to make a new tree while leaving the line in the original tree. Several years ago I had several trees and it made me crazy! People would contact me about dear so and so and I had to hunt through all the trees to figure out who they were referring to because no one ever said, “I found so and so in your Main tree.” When I asked there where they found it they would say, “online.” So, I entered everything together. Actually, I merged it when the old Family Tree Maker worked. It wasn’t perfect but it was fairly quick. Now I’d like to do the opposite, take my Landfairs, for example, and just work on that line for a bit and then merge it back to the original tree. This would also be nice if a distant relative wanted just their line.
All of this got me thinking of photos. There are some people I would just love to have a picture of and after searching high and low still can’t find one. There needs to be a vehicle to find those wanted photos. I know about DeadFred. That’s nice but I’m thinking more of a posting of a request for the photo and not that I found this picture. In DeadFred, if I enter Harbaugh I get 3 photos of Alburmah Harbaugh which is interesting because I’ve updated all the Harbaughs known to be in the US since Cooprider and Cooprider did it in 1947 and he wasn’t one of them any Harbaugh source has found This validates what I already knew – my tree is incomplete. Since genealogy is always a work in progress that doesn’t phase me. But back to pictures…
I’d like a place where you can post that you want a photo, not just that you found a photo, which is what most of Cyndi’s list links are. It would be even nicer if it had an ap so that lost photos, say from an antique shop, can be plugged in to see if someone is seeking that picture. Granted, most of those photos have no identifying info. My own family was really awful about documenting their photo’s, too. But if there was identifying info, the requester could be emailed or texted of where the photo is and can arrange to make the connection. That’s a win-win for everyone – the store owner makes a sale, the finder feels awesome about doing a good deed and the requester gets the photo he/she wants! Any ideas or suggestions about this please let me know – might be an area I work on once I finally submit that BCG portfolio.