by Lisa Cooke | Oct 1, 2014 | 01 What's New, Technology, Trees, YouTube
Recently I heard from David with this question:
“Because of your consistent message of starting a family blog [and] anecdotal success from listeners, I started a family history website. A blog just seemed too small…. The ultimate goal is to display the family information for my known relatives as well as create a site that will pop up on Google search results and hopefully put me in contact with new relatives.
My question is about displaying the family tree on the website. I want to have a page that shows my family tree. I did not know how to accomplish that, so I decided to include links to my ancestry and myheritage family trees. The problem with this method is that ancestry requires you to have an account to view the tree, and MyHeritage only shows you some of the family tree and requires an account to view the rest. This is not a great method to share the family tree with relatives because not everyone has, or wants, an account with these sites. Is there a website where I can upload my family tree’s GEDCOM file and then link to it on my website where it will display all the members of my tree?”
It’s always great to hear that Genealogy Gems is helping out. Congrats on the website David! I 
recommend blogs to my readers because they are quicker and easier to set up, but in reality I would rather recommend they create a family history website like you are doing. It’s better suited for the long haul of getting your word out and connecting with others.
You pose a great question, and so I did what I just coached everyone in my latest episode #171 to do: just Google it! What you are describing is a ‘website plugin’ so I Googled: family tree website plugin and…Ta-da! There are some out there.
I found one for Word Press (which is where I build my site) so I may have to give that one a try. However, since you are using Weebly I went back and added “weebly” to the search and there are definitely some hits there, though I’m not sure if they specifically include a visual tree plug in. Try the searches and see if you find something you like.
My friend Caroline Pointer has a YouTube video called “Build a Family History Website & Blog on Weebly.” Around the 5:50 mark she shows how she embedded family tree charts into Weebly. Looks like she used Scribd.
Keep up the great work on your family history site!
by Diahan Southard | Nov 7, 2014 | 01 What's New, Beginner, Listeners & Readers, Research Skills, Trees
Recently, I heard from Shirley in Austin, Texas (U.S.) with a question about how her relatives are related to each other:
“My GGM (Caroline ‘s) great grandfather (Franz Joseph) is the same as my GGF (Eduard ‘s) grandfather (Franz Joseph). How would they be related to each other? Half 2nd cousin twice removed?
The relative in common (Franz Joseph) and his same wife, had two sons: Franz Carl who is Eduard’s Father, and Johan Anton, who would be Caroline’s Grandfather.”
My answer:
I like this Cousin Calculator tool (also called a relationship calculator) at Searchforancestors.com. If Caroline is the Great Grand daughter of Franz Joseph and and Eduard is the Grandchild of Franz Joseph, then according to the Cousin Calculator they are first cousins one time removed. Hope that helps!
What kind of complicated or double family relationships have YOU discovered on your family tree? Enter them into the cousin calculator. Then tell us how they’re related on the Genealogy Gems Facebook page!
by Lisa Cooke | Mar 6, 2015 | Australian, British, Findmypast, images, Irish, Newspaper, Records & databases
Beginning today, try FindMyPast for FREE –all weekend long!
Over 2 billion historical records will be available to search beginning Friday, March 6 and ending Monday, March 9 (start and finish at midday London time (GMT)). Local subscribers will have World access during this time and World subscribers get an extra three days tacked onto their subscriptions.
What kinds of records are we talking about? According to FindMyPast:
- “Over 900 million census records from across the UK, USA and Ireland;
- Passenger lists for ships sailing to and from Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and the USA;
- Birth, marriage and death records dating back to the 18th century, and the largest online collection of UK parish records;
- The most comprehensive collection of UK military records anywhere online;
- The largest collection of Irish family history records available online;
- Historical newspapers from across the world, including more than 10 million British newspaper pages from as long ago as 1710;
- An easy to use online family tree builder which allows you to import and export your tree if you’ve built it elsewhere;
- Our automatic Hints feature, which automatically searches our records for you and suggests potential matches to the people you add to your family tree.”
You may also find these resources helpful:
Webinar on Finding Female Ancestors. To celebrate International Women’s Day, at 7am EST on Sunday 8th March, Findmypast will host a webinar on searching for women in historical records. Women are usually tougher to find than men in old records because a) they were mentioned much less frequently and b) their names changed with their marital status.
Getting Started Video. Findmypast has created a new Getting Started video which will be available to view beginning this weekend.
Find out more at Findmypast’s dedicated Free Weekend page.
