Family Tree Maker People Workspace

I was reading an older edition of Genealogy Do-Over by Thomas MacEntee, check out his website at https://genealogybargains.com/genealogy-do-over-start-here/. Anyway, I was reading about preparing for research and do you have everything on your desk, notebook, pen, pencil, etc…

This got me thinking about my genealogy software package that I use, Family Tree Maker. Do you have their People workspace set up for you? Did you know you can customize the view?

The People workspace has four parts. The left part is the Index of people in your tree. The right part is the Editing Panel for individual person you are working on. The middle part has a top tree viewer and the bottom has a family group view, where your individual person could be one of the parents or one of the children.

Let’s start with the right part, the Editing Panel.

The default setup on new trees is as follows, with a place to input birth, death and marriage facts. I found that I like to enter a little more information without having to go into the Person tab, where additional facts can be viewed, entered and modified.

I found myself wanting more, such as burial facts along with a customize field that I created for entering Find a Grave memorial numbers. I also created a FamilySearch Individual ID, for when I am working using Family Search. Plus, I wanted divorce information below the marriage information. I also have a special DNA field that I did a previous blog about. Check out that blog here: https://simplygenealogy.blogspot.com/2016/04/tracking-my-dna-matches.html

I found that having to go to the Person tab was adding extra keystrokes and since these are fields I commonly use, I wanted them on my main People workspace. You of course can add whatever fields you find are common for you. At the bottom of the right section is a small “Customize View” button that you can click to add or remove fields on your Screen. This needs to be done for each tree you create individually.

The Middle part of the page has the Tree Viewer on top. You can change how many generations you want to view, by sliding the small scroll bar or clicking the + or – to add or remove generations. The lowest setting is two generations and the highest setting is five generations. The size of your screen might dictate how many you want to see. I leave it at max.

The lower view known as the Family Group View can be completely hidden to make the tree view bigger. You can also slide the view up or down to change the number of children your view has. Again, your screen size might dictate how big you want this lower section.  Please note, if you side this up too far, you will automatically reduce the number of generations in your tree view.

Another important feature of the family panel is the Blended families button. I come from a blended family, my mother’s first husband died and I am a product of the second family. I want to see all my siblings, I call them my siblings, not my half-siblings because I am the youngest and they have always been in my home when I was growing up. In the blended view, it will display a little man figure if the child is a descendant of the male and a little female figure if the child is a descendant of the female. Therefore, when I am viewing my parents, my six half-siblings only have a female figure and my two full sisters have both figures.

The left side is the index of individuals in your tree. You can modify this view so many ways. By default you see everyone by surname and then given name. On the top, you can add birthdate to this view, lifespan, hints and more. On bottom, you can filter your database to show only those you meet a certain criteria. Maybe only those living during a certain time frame, have military service, buried in a cemetery, etc.… Keep in mind, your database must have the data you want to filter. For example, I have used the filter to show me everyone who has a death date but no Find a Grave memorial number. Keep in mind that the Find a Grave field is something I created. I could had used a death date but no burial information.

I love experimenting with my view, so don’t be afraid to customize your Family Tree Maker to work for you. Refer to the FTM Companion Guide found through the Help Menu. Other helpful sites are https://ftmuser.blogspot.com/by Russ Worthington and on Facebook the group Family Tree Maker Users found at https://www.facebook.com/groups/FamilyTreeMakerUsers.

ThruLines on Ancestry

I have been working on my 5^th great grandmother Elizabeth Lighthall’s ThruLines connections. Below is an image of my connections and of the 23 connections, 4 of them are me and my siblings. I was wondering why my half-brother wasn’t showing and his son, since they have also tested and have trees. I see them listed under my mother.

I went to my brother results, which my nephew gave me permission to view. I see that my nephew attached him to a private tree as someone else. I am guessing, he is working on a genealogy project and I know things can get revealed when you do this. However, why is he still showing attached to me via my mother, could it be because my nephew is attached to the correct biological tree and he shows him as his father? Upon closer examination of my mother’s ThruLines, this is exactly what is showing. My DNA matches have a little blue and white dna icon.  My brother’s name doesn’t show this same icon. He shows as a DNA match in my matches, but because his tree doesn’t match mine, I don’t have a “Common Ancestors” hint.

I decided to check my Thrulines connections for Elizabeth’s daughter, Elizabeth Sponable and sure enough my Nephew appears. Elizabeth Sponable would be the last generation of ThruLines that my nephew has. So is this the reason why he doesn’t show up on my 5^th generation? If so, this is very disappointing, because as I get older, and younger generations are testing, this means that younger generations are dropping off my ThruLines. Trying to use logic from my programmer days, they must only generate the same number of generations for every ThruLines participate. This means, that you might have DNA matches that have trees, but since you are different generations and your common ancestor is beyond their ThruLines limitations, you won’t see them.

In spite of this limitation, ThruLines can still be a valuable tool. It has let me figure out exactly how some of my matches fit into my tree.  When I work on my ThruLines, I start at our common ancestor and work backwards down to the living, using records. Then I go back to the ThruLines and see if I can follow their path back to them. A lot of times, my lines do go down further than them. Thus, if these younger generation test and show up on my match list, and they have a tree with some of their ancestors, I might find them or their ancestors in my tree. ThruLines and “Common Ancestors” hints are directly related to each other. I haven’t checked all my “Common Ancestors” hints to see if they stopped at the 5^th generation of my ancestors. However, at first glance it appears to be they do.

Now I wonder what would happen, if I linked myself to my grandmother. Would it take my ancestor’s matches back two more generations? I might want to try this with my sister’s DNA which I manage and see what happens. I know matches and things don’t always update very fast, so I would lose using her matches while I try that logic out.

On a final note, testing my siblings has been beneficial. They match people beyond the second cousin stage that I don’t therefore their Thrulines bring up matches I might not have.