Christmas Ideas

With Christmas just around the corner, it is time to think of some fun genealogy gifts that are treasured for years to come. Even though fifteen weeks may seem like plenty of time to prepare for Christmas, some presents take time to create. The two ideas in today's article will take some time to make but are well worth the enjoyment that they bring.

A great gift is to create a book about your ancestors that your children and grandchildren will want to read. Ancestors at a Glance is a book where you create just one page for the ancestor you wish to highlight. The book I made included all my pioneer ancestors. I added only one favorite story to highlight and kept the story on one page. I also included a photo and birth and death statistics on each ancestor. I put the husband on one side of the page and the wife on the back side and the second page would have a family group record for the family. By doing it this way, it kept the book simple, and your children and grandchildren are more likely to read one page rather than a large book. It may also create an interest in their ancestors where they are more likely to pick up a larger book and read about them.

If you lack stories, a good place to look is FamilySearch. Many are putting their ancestors’ stories, and photos on FamilySearch and these are just perfect for a book like Ancestors at a Glance. Google is another good resource to use to find stories and photos to use.

A twist to a book like this is to group your ancestors’ stories into a book of virtues. “Responsibility. Courage. Compassion. Honesty. Friendship. Persistence. Faith. In order for our children to develop such traits, we have to offer them examples of good and bad, right and wrong.” This is a description of William J. Bennett’s Book of Virtues from Amazon.com and a great example on how you can put together your own virtues book. You can add other virtues such as prayerful. A book like this makes an excellent resource for children to use for talks in Primary, church, and on other occasions. We can learn compassion from Grandpa’s story on how he used compassion to help in a difficult situation.

Books like these make the best Christmas presents!

Changes in FamilySearch’s Family Tree Person Page

If you look at FamilySearch’s Family Tree, you will notice a new look. FamilySearch has given their Person Page a big update. At first glance, it seems the same, but as you study the page, you will notice a lot of changes. FamilySearch states that these changes “will make learning about your ancestors easier than ever before.”

The menu tab across the top of the page now includes buttons that take you to Details, Time Line, Sources, Collaborate, Memories, and Ordinances. These tabs include the number of documents in Sources, Collaborate, and Memories.

The Time Line section is new and is a great tool that gives you a glimpse of your ancestor’s life in context. This timeline helps you to identify missing events. It even adds the record hints that may lead you to sources to help fill in the missing events. There is a map function inside the timeline section too, and this shows where events and the record hints included in the timeline took place.

The Collaborate tab now contains the previous notes and discussions. This is great that they kept these. There can be valuable research information included in these notes and discussions.

There are edit buttons visible next to the information on your ancestor. This makes it easier to edit the information. It also lists the number of sources used to verify the vital information. If there are no sources on the date of birth, this is a good heads-up on where you need to research next. The Data Problems alert not only lets you know if your data is not formatted correctly but will alert you to possible duplicates and includes a number to show you the number of issues with this alert.

Another nice feature is the number included with the Record Hints tab. If you have ever tried to add record hints and the hints seem to go on forever, you can now see the actual number of hints you need to check out.

These changes are a great asset to FamilySearch. They help you to see where research is lacking and what information has no sources. Now at first glance, we can see what information is reliable and what is not. By adding a timeline and map section, we can see our gaps in information on our ancestors in a more visual way.