Finding Cousins Descendancy Research by ron ray eaglequestpro.com/share Descendancy Research is finding your Cousins Excuses Uncle Bob or Aunt Betsy have worked years on our ancestors, so there is not much left for me to find. OR- I have pioneer ancestors and other researchers have found all that can be found. Well, let s take a look a close look at this and see how accurate those thoughts are. Let s start with your parents and go back in time for 9 generations and say we have an average of 5 children per household. (There are 128 couples on outside edge of a 9 generation fan chart.) Gen 1= You 1 Gen 2 = Your parents and their 5 children with spouses= 12 Gen 3 = Their parents and their 5 children with spouses= 12 Gen 4 = Their parents and their 5 children with spouses= 12 Gen 5 = Their parents and their 5 children with spouses= 12 Gen 6 = Their parents and their 5 children with spouses= 12 Gen 7 = Their parents and their 5 children with spouses= 12 Gen 8 = Their parents and their 5 children with spouses= 12 Gen 9 = Their parents and their 5 children with spouses= 12 Total 97 or about 100 individuals X 128 couples = 12,800 people Riverton FamilySearch Library Finding Cousins 4-8-15
Now suppose several of those lines are pioneer lines and lots of people are working on them, so now people have found a huge amount, even double the 12,800 or. 25,600 individuals. Wow! Not much left for us to do, is there?? Well, is there? Your fan chart with 511 possible persons is pretty saturated and the blanks are probably the ones that cannot be found. Looks like you should spend your time doing other things. Right? The Big Picture for Descendancy Research Because of the difficulty and lack of resources, the Church doesn t encourage us to find ancestors further back than those born in the 1600s. That would make it about your 10 th great-grandparents. Let s just use 8 generations. For rough figures let s say they had only five children and each of those had five children, etc. What numbers are we talking about? Here are the numbers for just eight generations and possible descendants. Generations Starting on the outside generation 1. So 12 for that generation (2 parents and 5 children and spouses). 2. Then those 5 children would have 5 children = 25 + spouses = 50 3. Those 25 would have 5 children =125 + spouses = 250 4. Those 125 would have 5 children =625 + spouses = 1,250 5. Those 625 would have 5 children =3,125 + spouses = 6,250 6. Those 3,125 would have 5 children =15,625 + spouses = 31,250 7. Those 15,625 would have 5 children =78,125 + spouses = 156,250 8. Those 78,125 would have 5 children =390,625 + spouses = 781,250 Add all those up for a total of 976,562 or nearly 1 million people from one of the 128 couples (128 million total). There may be overlap between family lines and maybe there were famines and diseases that make 5 children per family too high. Even if you cut that in half to about 3 children per couple the numbers are incredible when compared to those we have researched and have on our thumb drives or home PCs. We are talking from hundreds of thousands to a million that are in your ancestor s direct line... and that is just from one set of parents that were alive in the late 1700s. I sat next to a missionary at the Family History Library that has gone only 5 generations back and so far has found over 95,000 individual descendants for his family lines. I smile when someone says something like 'Oh my line is pretty much done. Really? Is there anything you can do that would be more important to your direct ancestors than to find as many as you can of all their descendants and see that their work is done? 2
25,600/128,000,000 = 2 hundredths of 1% The best family lines are only 2 hundredths of 1% complete. It is relatively easy to find people missing in Family Tree using Descendancy Research, but isn t everything in Family History relative? So how do we get Started??? What is the process? 1. Look for training opportunities. As with almost anything in life whether it is framing a house, learning to play an instrument or whatever, the more you can learn from others, the better you become. There is so much to learn that training really helps to know how and where to search. Take advantage of classes from wards, libraries, family history fairs, RootsTech, etc. Let others help you get started or overcome dead ends, but you have the responsibility to do the research and find the records, stories and photos that help the families come to life. You learn that they are real people. 2. Learn how to use FamilySearch s programs like Family Tree, Memories, Records and more. Family Tree s Descendancy View can help a lot to find family lines with the greatest potential for finding cousins that have been left out of Family Tree, i.e. not pioneer lines, lines that have children living to an age of adults with no spouse or children listed, and those that are in matriarchal lines grandmother s great-grandmother s mother s line. On one of these lines, find a direct ancestor that was alive in the late 1700s to early 1800s whose children may have been alive on the 1850 census. From that time period forward in time the records are easier to find. 3. Use RootsMagic or other affiliate software as a place to keep track of the records you find and begin correcting your family lines while adding new individuals with the sources that prove the changes you make to the family is correct. You never want to put maybe information in a public place like Family Tree. Wait until you get it right or at least almost sure you are right before you put it in Family Tree. Otherwise, people will see the wrong information and waist a lot of time and effort working on your incorrect family members. Let s spend our time on real people, and get real results on putting the right family members together, and back it up with sources, so others will appreciate and respect the changes. If you need to, you can use affiliate software to copy parts of family lines from Family Tree so that you have a starting place. If someone accidently deletes a family or family member it is easy to copy back that person/s to Family Tree if you are using affiliate software to get your families right. 4. Find enough sources to prove each direct line ancestor from you back to the chosen ancestor in step 2 (born about 1800) are real and correct. Attach those sources that you have found to Family Tree to keep your line correct. You want to be sure you are related to the 3
person listed and she/he is not a mistake or a wrong spouse copied from previous databases. 5. Now focus on the chosen ancestor. Find all the records you can about each person in this person s family, spouse/s and children. Use a word processor like MS Word (or a free word processor like Kingsoft WPS) to copy and organize the records you find into a family docx file to keep for your records. Include these records: census, birth, marriage, death, cemetery, news articles, town records, court, military, etc. 6. Once you feel certain or almost certain that you have the right spouses and children and you can back it up with sources, now it is time to correct/update FamilySearch s Family Tree. Add sources to that family and correct it, so others will know it is right and not make incorrect changes. Sources keep it right. Note- One of many ways to make a source: Copy and paste pictures of the census, military, etc. records you find in a Word docx file. Add your comments and tell where you found each source. Cut and paste the sources chronologically so it makes a nice readable family source file. Now you can click File Save As PDF file. The PDF file can be uploaded into the Documents part of Family Tree. Then, in Family Tree, go to any person in that family your sources mention and create a source. One of the items you can add while creating that source is a PDF file from your documents you just added. Complete the source and attach it to each person your family PDF file mentions. People will love it and respect your changes. Now they can verify the changes you made are correct. The PDF file reads like a family story of events in their life with your comments and where the sources came from. 7. Now do the same for each child in that family as a child and as an adult with a spouse/s and children. Each person has at least one family source file showing them as a child and one with them as an adult. This makes it much easier for those trying to figure out how each record relates to that family. It makes it much easier for you because you only have two family files to attach to each person instead of twenty different individual files to each person. (One file when the person was a child and one file when that person was an adult). 8. Do this for each person and their children down through time until you get to people born after 1904 when the 110 year rule comes into play. That way you don t have to worry about getting special permission to do work for your cousins. You will find thousands to millions not currently in Family Tree. 9. Doing it this way makes it easy to correct and change as needed. When you need to make a change, just change your family MS Word file put the new PDF file in Family Tree Documents Edit the source of any one of the persons you had previously attached it to. Since all person pages (you attached the source file previously) point to that source, by updating that source, all persons that the source mentions in that family are automatically changed. 4
10. Have fun. Make it a challenging, detective game. You cannot do anything more important and your ancestors will love that you are helping their grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc. PS: Once you have a corrected file on one of your lines, you can print out a list of all those needing Temple Ordinances for real people: In RootsMagic click Reports tab Lists LDS Ordinances List OR use the Descendancy View in Family Tree to find them. OR- Use FindaRecord.com to find and make the list for you. There are lots of helps for the View Descendancy screen in Family Tree, such as possible ordinances to be done, suggestions for research, possible records for the person, and problems to fix. It is a good visual representation to pick lines that haven t been worked on much, with lots of chances to find children and spouses. With descendancy research you only have to find one child that is not in Family Tree and any spouses and their children and all their descendants will likely be new to Family Tree. This gives the possibility of finding thousands of your cousins to work on. Before any ordinances are reserved, be sure to check for duplicates of that person (a similar person in Family Tree, but submitted by someone else) and merge them if needed. Also, take the time to verify with sources that the person is real and not a mistake copied from somewhere else. From FamilySearch Video showing using new Tools to do Descendancy Research Cousin Research How to use the Fan Chart View to find direct ancestor How to use the View Descendancy 5
The Secret Combination- Family Tree Descendancy View and FindaRecord.com FindaRecord.com searches for you at Ancestry.com, FindaGrave.com, MyHeritage.com, BillionGraves.com, and more. Finds those needing ordinances. Finds problems that need fixing and more. Makes nice lists for items to work on. You can use FindaRecord.com by going to their website or by downloading the FindaRecord Browser Extension (App) from their website. When you download the Extension, its icon shows at the top of the FamilySearch-Family Tree page and is accessible on any person s page you have selected. Watch the FindaRecord video demonstration. 6
Appendix A Virtual Pedigree (another great tool from BYU) ron ray To find this site, google: virtual pedigree. This was shown to me by Paul Hyer. It is managed by BYU and uses your login to FamilySearch. This site shows you all of your tree at once. You can go back to the 1700s or 1800s to find an ancestor to put together his or her descendants. It will show you the ones that should have children or spouses, but aren t found yet. It is a great way to pick a line to work on. It shows a great deal of information with very few clicks. Ok, I log in. You can close one or both side panels by clicking on the arrows. Let s just close the right side to have more room. You can scroll your mouse wheel backwards and forward to zoom in and out. You can click on anyone and drag them around. The left panel shows the key for items you will see on the pedigree chart. You can find family lines in minutes for anyone that needs work, i.e. missing children and spouses in Family Tree. 7
Here is how it works. I pick a line and go back to early 1800s for non-pioneer lines or 1700s for pioneer lines. This will be our person of interest. (We will need to check sources from myself to this person to be sure he/she is real and a direct line ancestor. To find a direct line ancestor, you just click and drag the lines back in time). Many of my lines are pioneer lines and their work is all done? Wrong, When it comes to descendancy research, even pioneer lines are only about 2 hundredths of 1 percent complete. Next, I double click on a person, any person Adam New he will be my person of interest. Now Adam New shows up on the right. I can click and drag his descendants around. They show me there are lots of possibilities for finding children and spouses that do not exist in Family Tree. After proving that Adam New is an actual direct line ancestor now we start going down in time finding sources that prove who each family member is. Once we have a family corrected in a program like RootsMagic, with all the sources then it is time to correct Family Tree and add the sources to keep it correct. 8
One more way to find thousands to work on. Appendix B RootsSearch (an extension/app for the Chrome browser only) ron ray RootsSearch extension can simplify your searching for family records. To find it, do a google.com search for RootsSearch. The screen shows an example of it. Click Add to Chrome. Once added any time you are in Family Tree and open someone s Person Page, a little magnifying glass icon for RootsSearch will show at the top right. 9
When you click on the RootsSearch icon, you will see this pop up window with all the info about the person you are looking at. This info will be used in the searches you choose by clicking on the buttons on the right, i.e. Ancestry.com. Instead of having to type in the information about the person for searches, RootsSearch does this for you. If you click on Options you can choose more or different sites to search. So in just a few clicks it finds the records for you to verify. Ancestry.com and FamilySearch are great sites to check each time. Note: for Findagrave I had to delete all info on RootsSearch pop up window except his first and last name. Then it showed the record. 10