As one begins to do research for ancestors, it becomes evident pretty quickly that this is a project that will take time and effort to do correctly regardless of the reasons.
A few phone calls to parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and great grandparents if possible allows an individual to quickly fill in a pedigree chart for the first few generations, however, beyond that, it becomes necessary to seek other methods to locate the correct information.
The actual process of researching one's ancestors hasn't changed much, but the availability and access to records since the 1990s has greatly improved the ability for individuals to earnestly locate their ancestors and accurately document their findings.
This is actually an amazing accomplishment when one considers how research has been conducted in the past with books, articles, microfilms, microfiche, etc. While trips to various repositories and cemeteries is still very important and often necessary, there is much that can be accomplished online with many different websites, software packages and helps along the way.
Along with FamilySearch.org, Ancestry.com, FindMyPast.co.uk and many other locations for finding original and transcribed records there are online videos and step by step directions to being successful in this fun and fulfilling endeavor. Various websites allow you to build a family tree right on their website with the choice of making it private or public as well as there are stand alone software packages that can be installed on a PC or a MAC computer. Interestingly there are even apps for mobile devices that can help with the increasing trend to identify ones' ancestors.
Recently, the Google Chrome Browser added an extension to help with Ancestral research by connecting through Ancestry.com which links an individual to the FamilySearch Historical collections of records. The original announcement was posted on Out of my Tree on the 18 March 2012, this is an online blog done by Barbara J. Starmans from Ontario, Canada. As I read the article I thought that I should give it try.
Opening the Chrome browser and going to their web store, the first screen that comes up when you go and add the extension is as follows:
This puts an icon in the upper right hand corner of your URL box like this:
As I have never shared my genealogical files with Ancestry I added myself and just my dad to see how it works and made my tiny tree private. The following screen shot is what happened when I just went to my dad:
Note how the upper right hand corner shows the tree icon and the words "Search for this person on FamilySearch.org". When I clicked it, it brought me right into the historical record collection like this:
Interestingly the place it brought me too did have some information on my grandfather who had the same name as his son, my father. I didn't see a way to add that information to my tree in Ancestry, nor did I see a way to add the new information to anything, however, I do believe it is a step in the right direction as far as trying to locate more information about an individual.
It will be interesting to see if there are modifications and improvements as time goes on seeing this is the first venture into this type of linking for Ancestry and FamilySearch.org!
As always, comments are appreciated as well as anyone who may have had an opportunity to try this out even more than this first glance at a new application.
Comments and Suggestions are always welcomed!
Building Bridges
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Claire (*)
Timeless Genealogies
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claire@timelessgen.com
Prior to your adding the tree, I assume you were signed in to Ancestry. But when you clicked on the familysearch, did you have to sign in on fs or did it just pop up the info?
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