Saturday, November 2, 2013

Rootsmapper

There is a neat tool that maps your ancestor's locations. I first heard about it from a friend. She probably explains it better on her blog than I do on mine, so check her's out, if you are interested:
http://chocolateonmycranium.blogspot.com/2013/10/where-did-your-ancestors-live.html#.UnUq2yfYCSo

You need to have your info at familysearch.org (anyone can create a free account and download his/her gedcom there) and when you go to rootsmapper.com, you log in with your familysearch account. Then you choose how many generations you want it to map. It takes a little while to run its course, especially if you choose 7 generations.

Once you have your 7 generations mapped, then you can click on a 7th generation ancestor which will then allow you to add their parents. You can continue to do that until you have mapped 20 generations.

Here is what my 7 generations looks like:


If you click on a number, basic info on the person it represents comes up. Notice how everyone is clustered? If you click on a cluster, it will expand and you can see the individual numbers so you can access them. Like this:

Then, when I clicked on the 7 in the lower right, I got this:
See the blue and pink 8s in the lower right hand corner? That's where I click so that Johann's parents will be placed on the map, too.

Fun stuff.

This allowed me to see some mistakes in the database at familysearch as when I first tried it out, one of my ancestor's dots was in Africa instead of Canada, due to a typo in his birth location.

I still have some playing around to do with it. It might continue to prove to be a helpful tool as well as a fun one.