What exactly is the AGBI and how do we use it?

By now, you've probably occasionally come across a source known as AGBI, or American Genealogical Biographical Index, and maybe you've even attached it to your tree because it comes up as a hint for your ancestor, and everyone else has attached it to the same ancestor, and you don't want to miss out, right? But the details are usually vague, what is it even referencing and how do you know the records are for the right person?

The AGBI on Ancestry is basically an index of an index. It's referencing a big series of books that indexes tons of sources on early Americans. I don't know why Ancestry's index doesn't include all the data included in the book's index, but it doesn't. So to find the original source, you first have to look up the AGBI book index. You can find the books in a number of places online, I usually use the one at FamilySearch because it's free and accessible from home (it's not a restricted collection) - scroll all the way down (passed the listings that say off-site storage). 

Ancestry's index should include a volume and page number, although weirdly the books don't include page numbers, that's okay, because they're in alphabetical order. So simply open the volume you're looking for, and then find the name you're researching in alphabetical order. There will likely be several entries for the name you're looking for, but you can usually tell which one you need from the location and/or time period included in Ancestry's index. Even so, the AGBI books can be seemingly as vague as Ancestry's index is, and sometimes it takes some understanding and/or Googling of what it's referencing. 

For example, "Pa. Archives" is not a reference to the Pennsylvania State Archives, it's a reference to another series of books that includes primary records from early Pennsylvania called the Pennsylvania Archives - there should be a series number, a volume number, and a page number. The Pennsylvania Archives are also available online at various sites, Google Books, Archive.org, Ancestry, FamilySearch, Fold3, etc.

Another example is a source just called "Transcript" - this is a reference to the Boston Evening Transcript, a newspaper that ran a genealogy column from 1906-1941, including details on ancestors not exclusive to Boston or Massachusetts. Obviously, it's very much a secondary source, so I'd be careful with it, but it's available from Newspapers.com covering the years 1848-1914, and at American Ancestors covering 1911-1941 (select the Boston Evening Transcript from "Database").

You'll also see references to Revolutionary War Rolls and Pensions, those are fairly self explanatory. There's also states with "Heads Fams" which is referring to the names of the Heads of Families listed on the 1790 census. Since the 1790 census is already widely available online and probably already attached to your tree when appropriate, this isn't a very useful citation anymore. There's lots of other sources included in the AGBI, but usually they are self explanatory, or you can find out what they mean with a little bit of Googling.

It's really important that you find the original record the AGBI is referencing because the index is so vague, there's really no way to know from it whether it's for the right person you're researching or not. You may often find that once you look up the original record, it's not actually a reference to the person you're researching after all. Probably, researchers on Ancestry just attached it to their tree because the name and perhaps location and/or time period fit, without looking into it further probably because they simply don't know how to find the original. But particularly with common names, you can't assume that means it's for the correct individual, and now you don't have to be one of those people.

How Far Back Can We Go?

How far back can we research our family tree? It's a question that comes up periodically, especially from beginners who are sometimes overwhelmed with finding other people's trees going back very far. In practice, the answer will vary greatly depending on your tree. One branch might dead end in the 18th century, another might go back to the 16th century, and another yet might link to royalty and date back to Charlemagne (8th-9th century). But how far back is it plausible or realistic? At what point exactly do all these trees that date back to ancient times, mythical figures, Adam and Eve, etc become impossible? 

In general, the simplest answer for European research that has no known connection to royalty or nobility is that the 1500s is the end of the line. Like I say, not all your branches will likely even go back that far. Many times, the trail simply runs cold well before that point. For example, if you're American, you may never be able to find the specific origins of an immigrant ancestor. But if you're lucky, you may find a few branches here and there that go back to the 1500s.

Why the 1500s? Because that's when parish records began to be mandated in Europe. England was among the first to do so. In 1534, England separated from the Catholic Church and formed the Church of England, a protestant church, all so that Henry VIII could divorce his wife and marry his mistress. A mere 4 years later, England required that their brand new church begin keeping parish records of baptisms, marriages, and deaths/burials in 1538. Around the same time in 1540, the Lutheran Church also started requiring parish records be kept throughout their rapidly expanding churches in central Europe. In 1563 at the Council of Trent, the Catholic Church ordered that parishes keep baptism records, and not long after, other orders in various countries required marriages and deaths/burials. This meant essentially most churches in Catholic or Protestant Europe were expected to keep parish records from that point onward.

However, not all churches began adhering to these requirements right away. Many were slow to start keeping records, so depending on the location, you may not find parish records going back quite this far. In England, only 14.8% of parishes were keeping records by 1555, and that had risen to 54% by 1600. Most parishes in Italy didn't start keeping records until about 1595, but at the same time, a few Italian parishes (namely Palermo and Firenze) had taken it upon themselves to keep records long before the Catholic Church mandated it, sometimes going back as far as the 14th century! In France, general compliance wasn't until around the mid-1600s, and most Reformed churches were keeping records by 1650 as well. So in many places, you may only be able to go back to the 1600s.

Additionally, even when records were kept from this early on, not all have not survived to today. Many were damaged, lost, or destroyed over time, through natural disasters or war, or simply deteriorated over time. Some from the 16th century may have survived but there might be large gaps, making it impossible to connect the dots. 

So, how far back parish records go, and whether they've survived to today or not really depends on the specific location in Europe, but in general, it's safe to say the 1500s are the furthest plausible cut off point. Unless a branch has genuine links to royalty or nobility (and there's a lot of false links out there, so be careful), or you're among one of those rare exceptions of parish records going back to the 14th century, a tree extending beyond the 1500s is probably not accurate or reliable.

That doesn't mean every tree going back to the 1500s is reliable though, just that you would have to look more deeply to determine that. As I mentioned earlier, in some cases, your trail may dead end with your immigrant ancestor. If you can't find the specific origins of your immigrant European ancestor, it doesn't even matter how far back European parish records might go. And just because parish records may go back this far doesn't necessarily mean you can use them to reliably trace your lineage. Parish records are notoriously vague, containing very little information that can often make it impossible to say for sure if the records you're looking at are for the right person you're researching. Especially when you only have access to an index and not the original documents (which is common for early parish records like this). All it takes is more than one person with the same name born around the same time and location to completely throw their identity into question. Or one ancestor moving across the country with no record of it, and having no idea where to find them. Records can be so scarce, it's safe to say that if you're not descended from a somewhat notable lineage that was better documented, like wealthy land owners, merchants, or holding some sort of position like a sheriff (not necessarily nobility), there's a very good chance you'll never be able to reliably research back as far as the 1500s, even if the parish records exist.

Now, I keep saying "unless you have a genuine connection to royalty or nobility". So what if you do? Despite the amount of false links out there to royalty, some of them are genuine, and in those cases, it is possible (likely, even) to go back much further than the 1500s. Most royal and noble lines are well documented even before parish records were kept, because their titles were inherited, so documenting their lineages, especially male lineages, was very important. How far back they go depends entirely on the lineage, but many royal lines go back to Charlemagne, who ruled much of Western Europe in the late 8th century and early 9th century. Charlemagne's ancestry has also been traced back to his 5th great grandfather, a 6th century nobleman named Ansbert, whose wife, Blithilde (or alternate spellings), has been claimed to be the daughter of Chlothar I, but this is highly debatable. Ansbert is generally considered the end of the royal line, and not all lines will go back that far.

As you can see, even royal lines only go back to about the 6th century at the most, so proving European descent from BC is just not possible. There are many theories out there, but none are proven. Any tree that goes back to BC is highly speculative at best. That's not to say the family trees of people who lived in ancient history can not be traced within Antiquity, just that there's a known genealogical gap in between Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

Sources:

• FamilySearch Wikis:
• England Church Records 
• Italy Church Records
• Germany Church Records
• France Church Records
• Medieval Lands - A prosopography of medieval European noble and royal families (using primary sources)
• Descent from Antiquity
• Parish register

Antenati's New Site Design - is it Actually Better?

Not too long ago, the Italian Archives website, Antenati, or "Ancestors Portal" got a face lift. At first, everyone raved about what an improvement it was, and admittedly, the ability to find and navigate to the records you're looking for has been a great improvement. Unfortunately, it has come at the cost of the Archives no longer supplying an inherent way to download full resolution images, which means we can't save copies of the records for our personal reference. We can take a screenshot, but to get the whole document, it will be too small to read. And if we zoom in to take a screenshot, we won't get the full document.

There is a way around this - but it's basically a hack, and who knows if it will remain available forever. It's also complicated and includes several steps involving the html code. But if you're brave enough, here's how to do it:

Step 1: Navigate to the image you wish to download, and click the icon with 3 horizontal lines located in the upper left corner of the image viewer window (see screenshot below, the icon is highlighted in yellow, click to enlarge).

Step 2: This will bring up a side bar on the left with information. Note the page number listed here (highlighted in yellow in screenshot below), because you'll need that later.

Step 3: Scroll down the side bar to the bottom where you'll see a link just below where it says "IIIF manifest". Click the link (highlighted in yellow in the screenshot below).

Step 4: Here's where it gets tricky. The link opens a page with a bunch of html coding. Different browsers seem to display it differently - if you're lucky, it will be organized with nested lines and different colors, making it easier to find what you're looking for, and the URLs will be clickable links. If you're unlucky like me, you'll see a big long block of text/coding with no links, no colors (shown below). What you're look for first is the page number you took note of in step 2. In the code, it will say "label":"pag. 31" (or whichever page number you're looking for). If you're having trouble finding it, you can use your browser's "Find" or "Find in Page" option to search for it (the screenshot below shows the page number 31 highlighted because I searched for it).

Step 5: Look just above your page number in the code for a URL that looks like this: https://iiif-antenati.san.beniculturali.it/iiif/2/wrZgxjz/full/full/0/default.jpg (URL is highlighted in grey and shows relation to the page number in the screenshot below) - the part that says "wrZgxjz" in my URL will be different for you. That's okay, that's what you want. That's the specific image code you're looking for. Copy and paste the whole URL (or click on it if it's clickable) into a new browser tab.

Step 6: If you're unlucky like me and the URL you copied and pasted includes duplicate slashes so you're getting a "Page not found" result, remove the duplicate slashes. The URL should look like this: https://iiif-antenati.san.beniculturali.it/iiif/2/wrZgxjz/full/full/0/default.jpg, not like this: https:\/\/iiif-antenati.san.beniculturali.it\/iiif\/2\/wrZgxjz\/full\/full\/0\/default.jpg or like this: https://iiif-antenati.san.beniculturali.it//iiif//2//wrZgxjz//full//full//0//default.jpg. If it's annoying to delete all those extra slashes every time, you can always just bookmark the proper URL and then just copy and paste the image code into the URL.

Step 7: Once you get the correct image to load, you can right click it and save the full resolution image.

Although the new site might be faster and easier to navigate, the inability to save crucial documents (which you'd think was the entire purpose of the site) is a huge step backwards. This hack is cumbersome, but for now, it's the only option. Good luck.

FamilySearch's Unindexed Images

Recently, FamilySearch made an update to their website in attempts to draw more attention to the wealth of unindexed records in their catalog, all available for free. The records available by using the search or even the collections list are a drop in the water compared to their vast catalog. You have always been able to access the catalog by click on "Search" and then "Catalog" from the drop down menu. Although it's readily available, it generally does not get used by people who don't know what it is or how to use it. Due to the fact that the images are not indexed, you can't search them by name or other details, you have to manually browse the images. To find the right collection, you have to search by location, collection title or author, keyword, subject, or, if you know it, film number (because the catalog used to be for looking up film rolls you could order). It's usually best to search by location, but this also requires knowing what jurisdictional "level" records are held at. For example, probate records are usually held at county level, so if you're searching for probates in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, you have to search the location field for Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Looking under just Pennsylvania will not find collections cataloged at lower levels, like county or city.

FamilySearch Catalog

FamilySearch's answer to this was to create a new option under the "Search" menu at the top of the site called "Images". Here, they have tried to simplify a way to find unindexed collections by making the location search field the only option unless you click on "more" and again on "advanced", which allows you to also search by time period, record/collection type, film number, etc. But unfortunately, the results seem to be lacking a lot of existing collections and the ones it does include are organized in a very convoluted way.

In the catalog, if I search for Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, I get a list of record/collection types, which I can click on to see the individual collections and select any of them. Fairly straightforward. In the new "Images" search, I get a huge list of over 8,000 results, many of which seem to be from the same collection but for some inexplicable reason, are broken down into multiple results (it appears they are broken down by individual film roll number, even though the film number isn't included in the results list). This means, for example, there's dozens of listings of probate collections, sometimes even multiple listings for probates from the same year! How am I supposed to know which one to use? In the screenshot below, it shows how if I'm looking for a Philadelphia probate record from 1913, there's multiple listings for it, and they aren't duplicates, they're different records. This is going to be far more confusing for people than the catalog ever was.

Of course, I can narrow down the results by using those more advanced search options, like adding a year and record type (1913, Probate), but that doesn't solve the problem of there being multiple results just for 1913 Philadelphia Probate records. In fact, there's 115 results! How on earth am I supposed to know which one to use? There is literally nothing distinguishing them from each other except sometimes the image count.

Maybe I just haven't gotten the hang of it yet, but so far, I haven't had any luck finding actual records or collections I know exist in the catalog with this new "Images" search option. As far as I can tell, it looks like they are not including collections that are only visible at a Family History Center or affiliate library, which is a huge portion of their catalog.

I do not understand the purpose or function of this new Images search. They now have 3 different ways to find records on their website (for some, it was confusing enough as it was to have 2 different ways), and none of them include their entire database of records. Honestly, I suggest you skip this and just use the catalog or search engine as usual.

How to use Ancestry.com's Sharing Links

Many people, both Ancestry.com users and non-users, seem to be unaware of the company's option to provide a link of an individual record that anyone, even those without an account or subscription, can view, so I think it's important I detail how to use it to get the most out of it, both when sharing and receiving. The transcription is limited and you have to use your browser's option to save the image, but the image (when there is one) is available in full size to anyone when using this link. It's particularly useful to use with records that are only available online at Ancestry.com (and in my screenshots, I'm deliberating using a record from a collection only available online at Ancestry.com as an example). The link also does not expire like it does at some other websites so there's no time limit on accessing the record. So how does it work?

Ancestry.com has a help article with details, however it doesn't cover how to get a shareable link without actually emailing it to someone or posting it on Facebook or Twitter, and doesn't detail how to save the image of the record from the sharing link, so that's what I'm going to cover.

Click the "Share" button and select an option

For Ancestry.com subscribers:
1. Open any record on Ancestry.com that you want to share. Maybe you want to share it on Facebook or other social media, or you're adding it as a source to a collaborative tree like FamilySearch or Wikitree.

2. In the upper right area, click the "Share" button (shown above) - if the Share button doesn't appear, try refreshing the page. There will be three options, one to email someone a link, one for posting it to Facebook, and one for posting it to Twitter. If you're actually doing one of these things, then just select the appropriate option. Be aware that when selecting Facebook, it does not seem to give you the option to post it to one of your Facebook groups, let alone a specific topic within a group. So this is only an option if you want to share it in your newsfeed with all your friends. If you do want to post it in a specific topic in a Facebook group, use the following option instead...

To get a shareable link to copy and paste anywhere, close the popup window

3. To get just a shareable link that you can copy and paste to anywhere, select either the Facebook or Twitter option (the email option doesn't work with this for some reason) but instead of posting it to Facebook or Twitter, close the popup window. Either click the little X in the upper right corner of the popup window, or click "cancel" (shown above). The window will close and then a new popup window will come up with the option to copy a shareable link (shown below). Click the URL once and it should select the link, then right click it and choose "copy". You can then paste it anywhere you want.

Copy the sharing link to paste it anywhere

For non-Ancestry.com users:
1. Whenever you see an Ancestry.com link to a record that includes the word "sharing" in the URL, that means it's a shareable link and you'll be able to view it even if you don't have an Ancestry.com account or subscription.

As you can see, the transcription of the record is limited in the shareable view

2. When viewing the record, if it includes an image you want to save, first click on the image or the "click to zoom" option that comes up over it when you hover over it (shown above).

3. A popup window with the full image will appear - you can zoom in to read it better, but it does not matter what the zoom setting is at to save the image. There's no Ancestry.com option to save the image so you have to use your browser's option. Right click the image and select "save image as" or "save picture as" or whatever similar terminology the browser you're using says (shown below). Then name and save the image to your computer as you normally would - make sure you note where you saved it so you don't have trouble finding it later.

Save the image to your computer

Hope this helps, have fun sharing!

Breaking Down Brick Walls with DNA

I'm going to detail one example of how DNA helped me break down a brick wall in my tree. This may be a somewhat unique case that might not always apply to every situation, but it's still worth detailing so people can get an understanding of how to work with your DNA matches in general.

Hope's baptism confirming her parent's names, but not her
mother's maiden name.

My 4th great grandmother was Hope Gibbs, b. November 3, 1805 in Philadelphia. I knew from her baptism record that her parents names were Caleb and Isabella (maiden name unknown), but I didn't know anything else about them. My grandmother had left notes with the names and some details of Hope's sisters, and indeed, research of some of them not only confirmed those details but also listed Caleb and Isabella as their parents, but still no details on those parents. I even found some DNA matches who were descended from those sisters, but none of those matches knew more about their parents.

I then found a marriage record of a Caleb Gibbs and Isabella Brannin in 1799, in Mt Holly, Burlington, NJ (Ancestry.com wrongly transcribed the location as Philadelphia), but given the difference of location, how could I know it was the right couple I was looking for? Further research on the couple married in 1799 revealed they were Quakers, and Isabella was the daughter of Barzillai Brannin/Branin, and the granddaughter of Michael Brannin/Branin, but I still was unsure about the connection to Hope Gibbs. Were these really her parents?

It took me a while to think of this for some reason, but I eventually decided to look for the surname Brannin in my DNA matches (well, my mom's DNA matches, since she is one generation closer to the ancestors in question). Theoretically, I figured if my Isabella was a Brannin, I (or my mom) would have DNA matches with people descended from her father or grandfather, I just hoped Brannin wasn't so common of a name that I got unrelated hits for it among my matches. It would be much more difficult if the name was something like Smith, and indeed, I had previously tried to search my DNA matches for the Gibbs surname, hoping to find people who descended from a father or grandfather of Caleb, but Gibbs was too common of a name and I was getting results for DNA matches with obviously unrelated Gibbs ancestors due to their location or time period (my DNA relation to these matches obviously lies elsewhere and the Gibbs surname is just a coincidence).

But the results and conclusions of the Brannin surname search were almost instantaneous - I quickly found 10 DNA matches descended from either Barzillai or Michael Brannin (two shown above), which would only be likely if I was descended from or at least related to them genetically. Not all recurring ancestors among your DNA matches will be your ancestors, some may be related to you in other ways, but combined with the existing question of whether my Isabella was Barzillai's daughter, the DNA matches conclude that the two Isabella's were indeed the same. Worth noting is the fact that two of the ten matches shared a segment with my mom of over 14 cM, which has over a 99% chance of being identical by descent, so these are not false positive matches. Also worth noting is the fact that some of the ten matches I found I had to uncover myself because their trees didn't go back far enough, but with a little digging, I expanded on their tree and trace their Brannin line back to Barzillai or Michael. Sometimes, you have to do a little of the legwork yourself.

Quakers are good record keepers, so confirming Isabella's identity was a huge breakthrough for me, and I then spend the next few days building this new branch of my tree, going back several more generations on both her paternal and maternal sides, something I couldn't have been sure of if I hadn't found the DNA connection. Of course, this also confirmed Caleb's identity as the man who married her, but unfortunately the Quaker records didn't go back as far for his ancestry. It at least confirmed his parents as Samuel Gibbs and Mercy (maiden name unknown).

By the way, if you're wondering about the notes showing simultaneously with both DNA matches in the screenshot above, that is with the use of Chrome extension MedBetterDNA. It allows you to always display notes so you can refer to them quicker and easier. It also has a lot of other useful tools, like the the hashtag option, which you'll see I'm also making use of - it lets you search your matches by hashtags in the notes field, so you can more quickly find the matches you're looking for. You may also notice the emoji icons I'm using - the green check mark and the black heart. There's no hidden meaning to the black heart, I'm just using it as a quick visual reference for that particular branch of my tree. Every one of my 2nd great grandparents gets a unique icon for their branch and I was running out of heart colors - that may seem excessive with 16 second great grandparents but it's working for me. The green check mark denotes matches with whom I've identified our most recent common ancestor. As a visual person (I am a photographer, after all), I just find the icons help my brain sort my matches. For non-windows users, you can also make use of flag emojis (the flags don't work on Windows for some reason) to identify matches with a MRCA from a known country.

I hope this helps illustrate how you can use your DNA matches to confirm questionable branches like this. Keep in mind that the further back the ancestors you're looking for are on your tree, the less likely you'll be able to reliably use or find identical by descent DNA matches descended from those ancestors. In this case, we were looking at my mom's 5th or 6th great grandparents, meaning she'd be around 6th or 7th cousins with those DNA matches, which is still within the realms of identical by descent.

The Importance of Primary Sources

This death certificate is only a primary source for the death
info. His parents names are actually wrong, and his birth year
is in conflict with records from when he was alive, suggesting
the informant, his son, may have gotten it wrong.

I often see people asking about which source is better for a certain fact or event and this is a good time to address the differences between a primary source and a secondary source. A primary source is a document which is recorded at the time of the event it's detailing. A secondary source is one that is detailing an event that occurred in the past, and therefore may be more likely to be incorrect. A primary or secondary source can also be a person, regarding whether or not that person was alive/witness to the event in question. So to understand the reliability of a record, we have to understand what it's a primary source for, and what it's not. Here's a quick rundown:

• Birth records are the only primary source for a birth. This may include a birth announcement in the newspaper, but the further back you go, the less likely this becomes. Equally, the further back you go, the less likely that civil vital records were kept. Delayed birth certificates aren't a primary source, but may be the only record of a birth in existence. Also keep in mind that some places would fine individuals for reporting a birth too late, which means they may have lied about the birth date to avoid being fined.
• Baptism records are only a primary source for the baptism, not the birth. However, if the baptism occurred only a few days after the birth, that's pretty much as good as a primary source for the birth too (if it recorded the birth date - do not assume the baptism and birth date are the same if both aren't recorded). Especially if there's no birth record in existence, a baptism record is likely as good as it's going to get. However, if the baptism took place years after the birth, maybe even months, that is not a primary source for the birth because enough time has passed for the actual birth details to have been remembered incorrectly.
• Marriage records are only a primary source for the marriage. Particularly if the parents of the bride or groom were deceased, you can't be sure their names are correct. Be careful not to mistake a marriage bann, engagement announcement, or marriage license for the actual marriage.
• Death records are only a primary source for the death. If it includes an address where the deceased was living at the time of death, then it's also a primary source for that. But it's a secondary source for the birth date and location, both because the document is normally recorded many years after the birth (unless it's an infant death), and because the informant for the death record is often someone who wasn't even alive or present at the time of the deceased's birth. It's also not a primary source for the parent's names or birth locations; it's very common for those details to be incorrect. Death records are usually a good source for the burial location, even though they are recorded before the burial takes place, and therefore that info theoretically could change before it happens.
• Obituaries are generally considered a type of death record and therefore can be considered a primary source for the death if they are published within a few days of the death, as is typical. Excepting potential printing errors, of course (i.e. the informant may have provided the correct death information, but the typist misprinted it).
• Gravestones aren't really a primary source for anything! At the most, they may be a primary source for the location of the burial, but I have seen gravestones erected for people before their death, who then actually wind up buried elsewhere. However, when this happens, there's usually a lack of at least a death date on the gravestone. It's also not a primary source for the date of the burial, since gravestones don't normally have the burial date listed on them. You might think it's a primary source for the death date, but gravestones often aren't created for weeks or even months after the death, plenty of time for people to remember the exact date incorrectly. 
• Cemetery/burial records are only a primary source for the burial information. Unlike gravestones, these usually include the interment date and wouldn't exist unless the deceased was actually buried there.
• Census records are only a primary source for data that was current at the time the census was taken, such as: residence, occupation, citizenship, literacy, etc. All other data that occurred prior to the census - birth/age, marriage, immigration, etc is secondary. Additionally, even things like the occupational data may be subject to the knowledge of the informant and could be incorrect. Also don't forget that in the US, pre-1880 censuses did not record relationships to the head of the household. While you can often surmise relationships based on the order in which people are listed, ages, and names, you can't be sure about them without other supporting documents to confirm. 
• Family bibles may or may not be a primary source for any or all of the data within, depending on when each item of information was recorded and who recorded it. Unfortunately, there's generally no way to know for sure when the data was recorded, or who by. You can sometimes get an idea based on the handwriting and/or different types of pens used at different times. For example, you might note the birth info was recorded at a different time from the death info. But this still doesn't assure they were recorded at the time of those events. They could have each been recorded years after the fact, whenever the author (and we may not even know who the author was) got around to it.
• Wills and Probates can contain a lot of valuable and reliable information, like the names of someone's children, the details of their estate/property, etc. But even though they are related to the death fact, they typically don't contain a date or location of the death, let alone a cause of death. Don't mistake the will or probate dates for the death date, but you can usually get a time frame for the death date - sometime after the will date, and before it was probated.
• Lineage books are a secondary source for everything in them, since they are written after all the events took place. However, many lineage books use primary sources for at least some of their information. That doesn't necessarily mean the entire book is reliable, but the particular data coming from primary sources should be. Not all authors note their sources, but many do.

A gravestone with no dates - this person was
actually buried in a different cemetery (I
believe his parents erected gravestones for
their children in the family plot, but some of
them wound up choosing other cemeteries. This
is not typical in my experience.

Naturally, we do not always manage to find a primary source for each bit of information and that doesn't mean we can't use secondary sources. Even primary sources can be wrong sometimes, they are just much less likely to be so. We just have to work with what we have, and what exists, and understand what is more or less likely to be accurate. Having data from a secondary source doesn't mean we can't put that data or that source in our tree, it just means we should keep looking for better or additional resources to help confirm or deny it. Family trees are forever a work in progress and no one should assume that once a piece of information is put into a tree, it means you're confident it's accurate. The sources you cite in your tree should speak for themselves as to their reliability.

Judging which secondary source is more reliable for what type of conflicting data can be difficult, and we have to weigh when, how, and by who the data was recorded/provided. You may think it makes the most sense to go with a birth year that you find on most of the records for an individual, but what if all those records are from later in his life, or even after his death? A record from his childhood, closer to when he was born, and when his parents, who were there for the birth, were still alive and one of them may have been the informant may actually prove to be the more reliable source. Of course you can never know for sure, so it's also best to put all recorded facts in your tree as alternate data, but you still have to pick a default/preferred one. Hopefully, this has given you some things to consider when choosing a default/preferred fact to go with, and given you a good understanding of primary and secondary documents.

How To Do Pre-1850 Research?

The will of Jonathan Gilbert, naming all his children (Charles
and Israel's names highlight)

It's one of the first questions people ask once they've been researching for a little while. Why do most branches seem to brick wall around 1850? How do I get back further?

So often, our main resources in genealogy are census records, and in the US, pre-1850 census records only list the head of household by name. This makes it difficult to identify families and find parents names of people who were adults and living independently from their parents by 1850. Additionally, most states in the US were not issuing birth and death records this early on, meaning we have to rely mostly on church records and obituaries. Many church records either haven't been digitized, making them hard to track down, especially if you don't know where to look because you don't know where specifically one was born or what church they attended, or they may have been lost or destroyed over time. Unlike civil records, churches have no obligation to archive their records, or even keep them in the first place. As for obituaries, often times they are only a brief death notice with nothing more than info on the individual's death and burial, and that's assuming they available online or you can find access to the right newspaper offline. Occasionally, you might see a burial record that name's the decease's father, but not always. So to say that records become more scarce before 1850 is putting it lightly.

It's frustrating, but the good news is, there are other sources. Records like probates, deeds, and tax lists are often some of the oldest records available, and recently, more and more of them are getting digitized. Now, I can't promise these records will always break down your brick walls but they are worth exploring, and here's my most recent example.

In search of the parents of my 4th great grandfather Charles Gilbert (1784-1861, Montgomery County, PA), I finally found them through probate and deed records alone. Firstly, I knew that Charles had a brother Israel Gilbert, because there is a local history book detailing one of Charles' sons, Seth, and stating he had an uncle Israel Gilbert (and yes, it also confirmed Seth as the son of Charles Gilbert and my 4th great grandmother Jane Sutch). Next, I was looking for deeds bought or sold by Charles, and one of them from 1811 mentioned Israel, so I knew I was looking at the right Charles Gilbert. It also mentioned several other Gilbert men, and indicated the estate of the deceased Jonathan Gilbert. My spidey-sense immediately tingled, as it sounded a lot like Jonathan was the father of all these men and his sons were taking care of his property after his death. But how do I confirm it?

Jonathan Gilbert's will confirming his wife's unique name,
shared with her granddaughter

I went looking for wills of a Jonathan or Jon Gilbert in the right area around 1811 and immediately found one dated 1808 and proved in 1809. It lists all his sons names, matching those in the deed, and his wife's name. The clincher? His wife's name was Dedemiah, a rather unique name shared by none other than Israel's daughter. Bingo! Mystery solved, with nothing more than a deed and a will.

Israel also had a son named Jonathan, probably named after his father, but given the popularity of this name, that alone wouldn't have been enough to convince me.

It doesn't always go this way, of course. Not everyone owned land, and not everyone had a will, and even when they did have a will, they did not always take the time to consider us future genealogists and list their children by name. Sometimes, probate records regarding the execution of the will, can name children though, so be sure to read those too, no matter how boring they seem.

Montgomery County, PA Deeds 1784-1866 can be found online (but not indexed yet) at FamilySearch.org
Montgomery County, PA Probates can be found at both Ancestry.com (indexed), and FamilySearch.org (not indexed)

"Secret" Hidden Collections on FamilySearch

So, FamilySearch are discontinuing their microfilm service soon. Everything will be digitized by the end of 2020, which is a bummer we have to wait so long for some films, but here's the good news: there are already a number of collections digitized but not yet indexed. That means they won't show up in the search engine when you're searching by someone's name. You have to find the collection in their list of collections and then manually browse the images. It's tedious, but if you're anxious to find something and don't want to wait for it to be indexed, it can be worth it. Additionally, there's some collections already digitized but not even found in their online collections list yet! The way to find them is to search for microfilm from the catalog and if the film has a camera icon on the right, you can click on it and be taken to the digital images. Of course, first check to make sure the collection hasn't been indexed, so you're not wasting time manually searching the images when you don't need to.

Above is an example of one such collection. The Montgomery County, PA Deed, 1784-1866 is not found in the online collection list (at least, not as I post this - it could get added any time), you can go to the list and narrow it down to Pennsylvania and see there is no mention of any records of deeds. Yet if you search for it in the microfilm catalog, you'll see the camera icons (circled in red in the screenshot above) you can click to view the digitized images. Of course some collections may have restrictions on them, meaning you can only view them from a computer in a Family History Center or affiliated library, but it's better than nothing/waiting for microfilm to come in.

What this means is that there may already be collections you need that have been digitized, you just need to do a little more digging to find them. So there may be more available now than you realize. Of course, if you'd rather wait till everything is indexed, you're welcome to do so. But the end of 2020 date is just for scanning everything, that doesn't even include indexing. You could be waiting much longer than 2020 if you wait for everything to be indexed. So I would advise regularly checking the catalog to see if there's any collections that have been scanned but not yet added to the collections list or indexed.

Discontinuation of FamilySearch's Microfilm

So for those who haven't heard, FamilySearch is going to be discontinuing distributing of their microfilm come September 1, 2017. You can read their announcement of it here. This is because they are in the process of digitizing all their microfilm for online access and estimate they will be complete by the end of 2020. Of course, I hugely appreciate the massive undertaking of scanning so many records from microfilm and making them available for free, the contribution their organization has made to the genealogy community is outstanding, but it is still disappointing to know there is going to be an almost 3 year downtime in which many records won't be accessible at all. That's assuming their projection is correct and they complete everything by the end of 2020. Hopefully, it does not take longer than expected.

According to FamilySearch, they have 2.4 million microfilms at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, and they have so far digitized 1.5 million of those. That means there is still almost a million more films (37.5%) which need to be scanned. Granted, they have prioritized those which are most frequently ordered and already digitized them, but there are probably thousands (millions?) of people out there who need access to those roughly 900,000 films still not scanned, who will no longer have it for the next 2-3 years. I am one of them, in the last 2 years I have order dozens of microfilm which not only was not digitized at the time, but remains still un-scanned today.

I am just surprised that they aren't waiting until everything, or at least close to everything is done before discontinuing it. They've only just passed the half way point of completion. I have seen arguments as to why they are discontinuing the microfilm service, and they all make sense for discontinuing it eventually, just not right now, before their scanning project is at least a little closer to being complete. It is certainly disappointing, but it's not like it's the first time I've been forced to wait years for access to certain records. Fingers crossed their timeline projection is accurate.

Newspaper Mentions of Incoming Ships

My ancestors were the few who stayed on board the Australia
in spite of the disabled engine

Here's a tip many people may not know about. Newspapers typically reported the arrivals of ships, so if you're looking for more information on your ancestor's immigration, check newspapers.

For example, I had the passenger list for my ancestors, Giovantomaso Scioli and Lorenza Palladino, arrival in New York City on March 10, 1880, but frustratingly, the passenger list didn't mention the departure port or date. Wanting to know when and where their ship left from to get the full picture of their journey, I found NYC newspaper articles on March 10th and 11th, 1880, which told me not told me the ships departure details, but also that the ship made the journey on a disabled engine and hit a storm just before arrival!

That's probably a unique situation, but at the very least you should find a listing of ship arrivals with the details of its departure (example below). Sometimes, passenger names are even listed so if you're struggling to find any passenger list to begin with, you might want to try newspapers too (example below.

When it all comes together

Mary Cath. Brady, Martha Washington House, William Henry
McBride, and Daniel H McBride are all children of the John
McBride in my DNA match's tree, mentioned here as the heirs
of Catherine McBride, the mother of "my" John McBride.

This is a great example of how a combination of DNA and paper research can break down a brick wall. And it's why you should read all pages of a multipage document, even if it doesn't seem like it has any useful information at first. Additionally, probates often seem to get overlooked, but this is also a great example of how important they can be. When you're stuck, always look for a probate record, of all relatives involved. Even if they are female (women sometimes had wills and probates too!).

I had a suspicion that one of my DNA match's ancestor was my 5th great uncle, John McBride. The DNA match had the same name in her tree, but she knew nothing about him apart from his name (which she found from orphan court records), his wife, and his children. I had his birth and death data, and obviously his parents names (and records to back it all up), but no records confirming his wife's name or any children. The only thing they had in common was both location and time period, but there was no proof they were definitely the same man. It was like I had half the story, and she had the other half, but we had no way to link them together.

I finally read ALL the pages of John's mother's probate records. Initially I'd only read her will, thinking if she names her grandchildren by her son John, and they match the names of John's children in my DNA match's tree, that obviously proves they are the same man. The will doesn't name them (only says "my grandchildren by my son John")... but upon further inspection of the follow up documents, such as the distribution of her estate, it does list several people whose names match perfectly with the children in my DNA match's tree! Although it doesn't specify they are her grandchildren, given the context (i.e., her estate is being distributed to her heirs, as specified in her will as her grandchildren), it would be too much of a coincidence for so many of them to be listed on this woman's probate records if they weren't her grandchildren.

So when you're struggling to find a connection to a DNA match, it pays to do some digging around on a hunch, even if it seems like a long shot or there's not enough info to say for sure. The only connection I had was a name, and an extremely common first name at that, with a surname that isn't unheard of either. Even my DNA match in question was skeptical when I first proposed the idea to her, but a little digging proved my hunch was right!

Ancestry.com to Discontinue Family Tree Maker

Update: Ancestry.com just announced that software developers MacKiev have bought the rights to FTM and will continue to develop it, including a tree sync feature with Ancestry.com. MacKiev have been the FTM developers for Mac for years so acquiring it for Windows is a natural step for them. Additionally, Ancestry.com have made an arrangement with RootsMagic to allow integration with them, including a tree sync feature. This is even better news than I expected, because now users will have two options for syncing their Ancestry.com tree with desktop software, where previously FTM was the only option.

All is right in the genealogy world again!

---

Today, Ancestry.com announced their plans to stop creating and selling Family Tree Maker as of December 31, 2015. Tech support will continue until January 2017, and it sounds like it's at this point that TreeSync will be disabled as well.

I can not even begin to describe how upset I am by this. The loss of TreeSync means there is literally no way to mass download the Ancestry.com documents I've attached to my tree. The only method is to manually download each documents one by one, which is simply not possible with the size of my tree. The only other solution is to perpetually maintain my subscription (how convenient for Ancestry.com), because when canceling a subscription, you lose access to the original documents attach to your own tree. I find it totally unacceptable that I will not be able to access, download, and archive these documents I've paid a lot of money over the years to have access to, once I unsubscribe. Therefore, my only option is to download what I have with FTM's TreeSync before it's disabled, and then cancel my subscription and use other resources from then on.

This will mean my research will take a huge hit, of course. Ancestry.com is undeniably the biggest online resource, and cutting myself off from that will make my research much more difficult. But I really see no other way around it.

The least they could do is maintain and open up their API for the sync so that other programmers could create third party software that syncs with our Ancestry.com trees. But that will never happen, because that would mean users don't have to perpetually subscribe to access the documents attached to their own tree (as if they don't suck enough money out of us already). They won't even maintain the sync for their own product, let alone for a third party.

It's true that you can always download your gedcom from Ancestry.com and use all your data in a third party software for the more advanced data management options the online tree doesn't offer, but it will not contain any media or documents, which is the backbone of any properly researched tree.

Congratulations Ancestry.com, on this completely regressive decision. Genealogy is my biggest hobby and this is the most depressing genealogy news I've heard in... well... ever.

Things You Should Know About The New Probate Records at Ancestry.com

Christian County, Kentucky Will Book Q, p. 172-173

Ancestry.com recently added a boat load of probate records from many, many counties in many, many US states. The best part is, that they are digitally indexed so unlikely many of the probate records at FamilySearch.org, you can do a name search to find them! The overwhelming amount of them being added all at once was very exciting, but after looking into it, here's some realities of the collections:

1. Not all records are digitally indexed. I was having difficulty finding anything so I tested it on a will I already had - Leonard Wood in Christian County, Kentucky 1857 (will book Q, p. 173). I couldn't find it with a name search, but did find it by looking manually. It's not a case of it being transcribed wrong, it looks like it's just not indexed at all (the button to bring up the digital index is grayed out on both the will page and the handwritten index pages). I can't even attach to my tree - the only save options are save as web link or save to my computer. Lots of people are going to miss a lot of things when this appears to only be half-indexed.

2. Many of the records were already available on FamilySearch.org. Granted, some of the records were not on FamilySearch, and the benefit Ancestry.com has over FamilySearch is that many of the records are indexed. But as addressed above, not all of them are.

3. Not all collections are complete. For example, the Philadelphia Wills begin in 1838 so anything before that is still not available online (FamilySearch.org doesn't have any Philadelphia probates). They do have earlier years for Administration records though. The date range for each county is difficult to see upfront because the collection is for the whole state, which is then broken down into counties. The specific date range for each county varies and isn't mentioned so you have to look through them to figure it out. Also, not all collections include all counties for that state. For example, the Pennsylvania Probates says it has records for about 90% of PA counties.

4. Not all collections have a manual index. For some, the odd missing digital index isn't a big deal, as many of the collections have a handwritten index in the images which you can manually browse. Unfortunately, not all of them do. The Philadelphia Wills, for example, do not.

Cynthia Herrin: A Red Herring

Cynthia Herrin is responsible for a number of genealogy records collections for various locations, but it's believed that at least one of them is not credible, namely "Edgecombe County, North Carolina Vital Records, 1720-1880" aka "Early Families of Edgecombe County, North Carolina, Its Past and Present". According to Cynthia, she had found an old genealogy book relating to Edgecombe County, NC, compiled all the data from it and submitted it to Ancestry.com, who accepted it. She then supposedly threw the original book away, claiming it was in poor condition whenever anyone asked her to produce the source and prove her information was reliable. The original book has never been found anywhere else, even by the expert researches at Edgecombe County Genealogy Society. See this topic for more info. Therefore, there is no evidence that this information is reliable.

She claimed the same type of thing with a book called "Bertie Beginnings: The Story of Our County and Its Distinguished Citizens" - see this topic at RootWeb for more info.

And with one called "Our Pioneers: Families of Early Oakland County, Michigan". See this topic for more info.

Most of these have since been wisely removed from Ancestry.com but Cythnia is also responsible for this Fayette County, PA collection which still remains on Ancestry.com. It should probably be removed.

Please comment below if you know of any other dubious collections Cynthia Herrin was responsible for and I will add them to the list.

The New Ancestry.com Design

If you haven't noticed already, Ancestry.com is updating their site design and layout. I believe they are trying to make it more tablet friendly by providing bigger buttons to click, and fewer options on each page to make everything cleaner and easier to view/use on the smaller screen of a tablet.

Switch between New and Classic site

They had several months of Beta testing it by providing it to certain users and getting their feedback and now it's gone semi-live to all US members. They are now in a transition stage where you can currently swap back and forth between the "classic site" and the "new site" (shown left - clicking your username in the top right corner of the site will give you the option to switch) but in time, only the new site will be available.

This is concerning because at the moment, there are a lot of problems with the new site. Many complaints have been addressed and resolved, which I'm grateful for (see this list of upcoming additions they're working on re-adding), but they have only been regarding missing features which have since been re-added. The bigger concern is the lack of efficient functionality, which in some cases would require another redesign of the layout to resolve, something the developers seem unwilling to do.

Granted, while leaving the new site to return to the classic site, we are given the option to provide feedback on what we don't like about the new site. Unfortunately, there is a max character limit and my complaints exceed it. I have detailed them on the Ancestry.com message boards but I will do so again here, so I can also post multiple screenshots of what I'm talking about. I have highlighted in red the most concerning issues which should take priority for resolving. I am also updating it regularly to note new issues that have cropped up or one which have been resolved.

1. Inadequate handling of Before, After, Between, and even About date tags. When viewing Facts, it does seem to respect the "Before" and "After" date options, but it does not respect them very well in the LifeStory view. The event shows the "Bef" or "Aft" tag but in the description, it says "She died IN 1859 when she was 68 years old" instead of saying "She died AFTER 1859" (shown below). Equally, under the individual's name at the top of the profile (while in LifeStory) it just shows a year range of the person's life and does not note even "About", let alone the others, though it does say "about" in the description. Regardless, this will be very misleading to many people, not only while viewing other people's trees but also even while viewing our own.

New site LifeStory handles Before/After/Between, and even About
date tags poorly

Of course, the system doesn't handle the "Between" tag well either, but that was always a problem with the classic site too. Instead of redesigning the whole site to make it look prettier or work better on a tablet (because no genealogist in their right mind would ever do heavy tree work or research on a tablet anyway), they should be focusing on resolving problems that have plagued the site for years.

Member Connect in profile on Classic site

Resolved: 2. Missing Member Connect in profiles. I know Member Connect can be found under the Community section but it's still missing from the profile view. On one hand, I appreciate that they are removing an emphasis on using member trees to do research but the Member Connect tab on each profile (shown right) was still useful for having a quick look at what info and sources other people had for a certain individual. To do this now, I will have to do a search for public member trees who have the same individual and click on each one to get an idea of what info/sources they have. This will be much more time consuming and a major disruption to my workflow.

ETA (Edit To Add): This feature is listed on the things to be re-added.

ETA: This feature has now returned, however, the header details with the individual's vital data from your own tree, along with the other profile options, are not included on the Member Connect page like they used to be. Better than nothing though.

Can't view sources attached to some facts
without lots of scrolling

Partially resolved: 3. Poor handling of the way the sources for a certain fact are now shown. We used to be able to click on the sources for a fact and see a short list of the sources attached to that fact (shown below). Furthermore, from there we could click on those sources and view the citation details. Now, while clicking on a fact does draw a line to and highlight the sources for that fact, if one source is at the top of the list and another is at the bottom, we can't view all the sources attached to that fact at the same time. Even if there's only one source attached to that fact, if the fact is lower down on the timeline and the source is up at the top, I have to scroll all the way up to the top of the page again just to see which source it is (shown left). This is also a major disruption to my workflow, adding lots of unnecessary and tedious scrolling up and down.

Classic site shows condensed view of fact and all sources attached to it
Also, all sources shown are clickable, taking you to the transcription
or citation details

Edit Fact does bring up a list of sources, but you
can't click them to bring up citation details

Granted, there is the option to double click or press "Edit" on the fact in question and then go to "Source Citations" to see a list of all the sources attached to that record (shown right). Unfortunately, not only does this require extra clicking but also, this list is intended to merely give you the option to delete those sources from that fact. If the source came from a site outside Ancestry.com, the source is not clickable so you can't open the citation details from there. While Ancestry.com sources are clickable, they only take you to the image of the original document, you can not open the citation details or the transcription of the record from there either. To view the citations details or transcription, you have to close this window and still wind up scrolling up/down the page to find the right source and open the details.

In other words, there is no easy way to quickly view all sources attached to one fact and from there open the citation details/transcription. From talking to others, it seems many, like me, dislike this while there are also others who prefer having all their sources listed in the middle of the page and don't mind the scrolling. So I think I have a solution that would suit everyone: simply bring back the ability to click on "(x) Sources" on the fact to show a small list of the sources (and allow them to be clickable). Basically, it would work the same way it does in the Classic site, but the option to click the fact and show the purple lines to the sources in the middle of the page would remain. So people who want the old method could still use it, while people who prefer the new method could ignore the old method and use the new one. This should be a simple solution that suits everyone and isn't difficult for the developers to implement because it doesn't require rearranging the layout.

ETA: This is partially resolved now. While "(x) Sources" on the fact is now clickable (yay), it opens the same list of Source Citations attached to that fact as if you were to open the fact details and click on Source Citations. So it does save you an extra click, but unfortunately "Other Sources" still aren't clickable from here. Also, this now appears to be "sticky" so if you click on it, from then on opening the fact details will take you straight to the Source Citations instead of defaulting back to the Fact Details. Unnecessary and annoying.

Partially resolved: 4. Everything on the new site seems to take more, extra clicks to accomplish the same thing, such as what I detailed above in point 3. Another example: to make a photo the primary photo for someone's profile, we now have to edit the photo details whereas previously the option to make a photo primary did not require going into "edit".

ETA: Many of the updates have reduced the amount of clicks.

To be resolved: 5. Inconsistencies/inaccuracies with the Historical Insights in LifeStory view. Others in the support community have pointed out date inaccuracies, such as an event during the Great Depression being put in 1953 instead of 1933. But also, I just don't understand how the system decides which historical events to put in which profiles. For example, it mentions the first World Series in 1903 in my great grandfather's profile... but my great grandfather was born in 1902 so he wouldn't have even remembered this event. His parents probably would have remembered it but when I open his parent's profiles, the first World Series isn't mentioned in LifeStory. I could excuse it showing me an event that occurred when my ancestor was only a year old, but I don't understand why I don't see the same Historical Insights on his parent's profiles, where it might make more sense.

August Bauer did not immigrate in 1848, but LifeStory
makes it looks like he did - also, no known "wave"
of German immigration during the 1840s.

When I look at another person, LifeStory tells me he immigrated from Germany during a wave of German immigration to the US in 1848 (shown left), but when I look at the Facts view, he actually immigrated in 1840. Granted, the wave of immigration might have covered 1840 and was not solely in 1848... but LifeStory doesn't tell me this and doesn't tell me the actual date my ancestor immigrated in. Looking at LifeStory, it looks like this person immigrated in 1848, not 1840. This is very misleading and a huge concern. What's more is that according to Homeland Security's Office of Immigration Statistics, the biggest decade of German immigration to the US was actually in the 1880s, not the 1840s. Germans were immigrating to US very consistently throughout history. Unlike other cultures or regions of Europe, there weren't really any German "waves" of immigration, it was more like a steady stream. This is why the Germans have the highest numbers of immigrants in total. There was a dip in immigration around 1770-1830 and so there was a spike in immigration in the 1840s but this applied to all immigration, coming from many different regions, not just Germany. Getting major dates wrong like putting the Great Depression in the 1950s instead of the 1930s is ridiculous but at least it's an obvious error that likely won't mislead most people. Everyone knows when the Great Depression was. But getting your history wrong when it's a lesser known fact is going to be extremely misleading to a lot of people.

ETA: The latest update says of inaccuracies in LifeStory: "We are looking at the language in the narrations and how to better generate narratives."

Resolved: 6. When looking at a media gallery, there is no longer any way to view just stories or just photos. Sometimes I have dozens of photos and only a few stories and I want to look at one of the stories. It's so much quicker and easier to just click "stories" and then pick the one I want rather than having to scroll through dozens and dozens of photos to find the story I want.

ETA: Not only can we now sort by the type of media OR show only one type of media, we also have the option to sort it all alphabetically which is something people have been asking for for YEARS. They're finally listening!

Resolved: 7. Placement of notes. While notes are still available, it's not longer easy to see whether there is a note attached to an individual or not. You have to click on "Tools" and then "View Notes" whereas before, the option to View Notes was displayed on the profile home page, serving as a clear reminder that there's a note for that individual. I don't know how often I will think to check "Tools" for possible notes.

ETA: There is now a global tree setting to show the link for Notes on the profile instead of buried in Tools. Under Tools, click "Show Research Tools" and then the link for Notes and also "View in tree" will appear below the person's name and vital data. Again, this is a global setting for your tree so despite the fact that it is turned on/off within an individual profile, it will apply to all profiles in your tree.

Partially Resolved: 8. No more Military pages? Is this feature being retired or will we see it again? I have data on certain military pages that isn't on the main profile, so if it's being retired, I need to go through them and move them over to the main profile before we lose access to the classic site and they are lost forever. However, if we will see the military pages returned to the new site, I don't want to waste time duplicating data on the main profile. At the very least, an official comment on whether this feature is being retired or not would be helpful. So far, all they have told us is that in the future they will evaluate whether to re-add the military pages or not. So this is still up in the air.

ETA: Military Pages will return but as view-only. You will no longer to be able to edit or add data to them, or create new ones. I imagine they do plan to retire this feature eventually though and are bringing it back as read-only so people can copy the data from the military pages to the main profile and no data will be lost.

Resolved: 9. When adding a new person, we don't get an option to add death details. We do get an option to add the person's email address though - because that is so useful in genealogy where most of the people you're adding to your tree are deceased. Otherwise, we can only add name and birth details. What if we have their death details too? We have to create the new person first, open their profile, and add the death details from there. Unnecessary extra steps when there's no reason the death details can't be available to add at the same time you're creating the new person.

ETA: It now appears that if the person is living, the death data isn't available to input but if you click "deceased" it will appear. I imagine this was their intent all along but perhaps wasn't working properly at first/at some point.

Resolved: 10. Editing a fact and hitting "save" doesn't update the display. While it does update the fact, in order to actually see the changes, you have to close out of the edit window and refresh the timeline page. Worse is that the edit window gives no indication that the changes to the fact have been successfully made. In the classic site, it would have a note saying the data was successfully updated. Now, when you click "save", you're left wondering if it worked or not and to find out, you have to close the window and refresh the page.

ETA: This appears to be resolved now. Editing a fact now confirms it was successfully saved with a notice in the popup window and when you close the window, it updates on the profile without having to refresh the page.

Mostly Resolved: 11. The lack of any indication of media on the profile. I have a lot of documents attached to a person or one of their facts/citations but without clicking "Gallery" or opening the fact/citation details, I have no way of knowing when this is the case. We used to have a preview of our media gallery on the home page of a profile and while this didn't show the full gallery, it did show us when any media at all was attach to that person. Additionally, attaching media to a fact or citation used to show up on the fact in the timeline. Not anymore. I know I personally am going to be missing a lot of things because I don't realize it's there! I'd like to see media thumbnails return to the facts in the timeline, and I'd also like to see an indication of which "Other Sources" have media attached to them and which don't.

ETA: Along with "(x) Sources" in small type at the bottom of each fact, there is now the same indication of media attached to that fact (or media attached to a citation which is attached to the fact). Like Sources, it is also clickable, which takes you straight to a list of the media attached to that fact. It's not a thumbnail, but it's something. Staff say they are evaluating whether to include thumbnails again or not.

ETA: Thumbnails have returned the facts they are attached to. However, there is still no indication of media on the Facts page if it's not attached to a fact (ie, still missing the "media preview").

Resolved: 12. Age of individual not showing in Facts timeline, only LifeStory. Facts view is more suitable for doing research on the individual and I don't want to have to click over to the LifeStory view every time I want to see what age someone was during a particular event in their timeline.

ETA: Ages are now showing on the Facts timeline. They are a faint grey, barely darker than the background, but they're there.

13. Image Display. Images that I have uploaded to my tree won't zoom in to the full sized image. It only zooms in about 50%, if that, making documents difficult or even impossible to read because the text or writing is too small. On top of that, unless you use the full screen button and then zoom in, the quality of the image is pixeled and blurry (shown below). At least there is a work around for this by using the full screen button (above the zoom button), but it's annoying and shouldn't be happening. The fact that there is no way to view the full sized image that I uploaded is unacceptable. I basically now can't read half the documents I've attached to my tree. Here's the original document of the examples shown below for comparison.

ETA: There is a workaround for this by right clicking the image and opening it in a new tab. In Chrome, the option is "Open image in new tab" (in Firefox, it's "View Image", which doesn't open it in a new tab but it's better than nothing - IE has no option for this at all). This will provide the full sized image in your browser without any clunky, buggy image viewer. It's a reasonable workaround for now, but this issue still needs to be resolved since many won't know about it.

Pixeled

Even when pixelating is resolved, image is still too small

Resolved: 14. Bug Report: Once you have ticked the box for "Use as Profile Image", you can't untick it. You can change the Profile Image to a different photo but you can't untick it to leave the Profile Image blank. You can untick it while uploading and keep it blank this way, but once there's a designated Profile Image, you can't revert back to nothing.

Resolved: 15. The titles of photos get cut short when viewing full size. Many of my photos are actually scanned documents and I need to see the full title of the image in order to know what document I'm looking at.

16. Viewing a hint doesn't allow you to attach it to someone else. You might sometimes get hints for someone in your tree which are actually a match for a different person in your tree by the same name. In the past, there was an option to save the hint to someone else in your tree. That is no longer an option when viewing a hint. You will have to find the same record yourself to attach it to anyone else.

Resolved: 17. There is no way to edit someone's living/deceased status after creating their profile. When you add a new person to your tree, it does give you the option to tick deceased or living, but once you've created the new profile, there is no way to change this status later apart from adding a death fact. But what if you know the person is deceased but don't know the date or place? Or what if you accidentally clicked deceased and later need to change it to living? This should be a privacy concern.

ETA: You can now change the living/deceased status under "Edit > Quick Edit".

18: The transcription box of an uploaded image/document doesn't show up when saved. When you're editing the detailed, the transcription box is there, and the data you type into it will be saved when you click save, but it doesn't display anywhere. The description box still functions normally and displays the data saved in it, but there are many documents I've uploaded which have data in the transcription box. While that data isn't lost, if it doesn't display, what's the point?

Resolved: 19: Stories can not be added to facts/events. That says it all, really.

ETA: This has been acknowledged as a commonly reported issue but no word on whether they will definitely resolve it or not.

ETA: Stories can now be attacked to facts.

20: Suffixes aren't included in the drop down list of people when searching for another person to add an image to. This is only problematic if you have more than one person with the same name and none of them have a birth or death date. However, if you do have a son and father, for example, with the same name, and no dates for either of them, but you do have a 'Sr' and 'Jr' put in for their suffixes, these will not show up in the drop down list and so there is no way to tell them apart.

Note: the suffixes do appear on the selection drop down list when searching for a person to attach a record to. This is only problematic when attaching an image to another person.

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I am not a glass half empty person, so I will not leave this post without mentioning some of the improvements. Unfortunately, there are fewer than I would have liked to see.

1. The addition of family events being shown in the timelines - ie, birth of the individual's child, death of their parents, etc. I've been wanting something like this for a while because it really helps put the family timeline into perspective, not just the individual's timeline. Also, the ability to hide this feature in case other users don't find it as useful and feel it only clutters the timeline was very wise.

2. Likewise, the ability to show/hide alternate facts. Finally! I don't have to click/open a fact to see if there's an alternate fact. One small example of extra clicks being reduced.

3. The option to "ignore" historical insights/events in LifeStory that don't apply to that individual, as well as the option to hide that global feature entirely. If the problems with the historical insights can't be resolved, at least we can turn them off.

4. The re-addition of many features people have pointed out were missing at first. Such as the ability to add or create a story was originally missing from the new site but has since been re-added. Supposedly, Weblinks will be returning as well so hopefully that is true since I have used this feature at times. ETA: Weblinks are now back too!

5. The fact that LifeStory and Facts views are "sticky", meaning whichever one you last viewed will be the one to appear when you open another profile. I was worried LifeStory would be the default and every time I opened a profile, I'd have to click on "Facts", but this is not the case. Thank you.

6. The look. I will admit that the new design does look nice. I know some people have problems with the contrast being too low but I did not find this to be a problem for personally. The cleaner, simpler style does look good, but it should not be at the cost of the functionality.

7. Quicker and easier to attach a source citation to other facts. Previously, if you had a source citation attached to someone and you wanted to attach it to other facts too, you had to click on "View All Sources" and then click the citation in question, followed by "edit this citation" and then tick the facts you wanted to attach it to and save. Now, you just click Edit on the source from the home page, then click Associated Facts and add the ones you want.

8. Undecided option for hints. No longer do you have to decide whether to accept or ignore a hint, or leaving it hanging in your list of hints still to review. You can now hit the "Maybe" button and it will be stored in a new "undecided" section.

9. Being able to link a spouse to a marriage fact. Previously, if you had created a marriage fact and not linked a spouse to it, you had to create a new marriage fact instead of being able to link them afterwards. This was problematic because certain Ancestry.com marriage collections won't automatically link the spouse when you're attaching the record and it's creating a marriage fact. So you used to have to attach the record, create a different marriage fact with the spouse linked to it, swap the record to the new fact, and then delete the old fact. Annoying and time consuming. But not anymore! Now, it's super quick and easy to just open the marriage fact and select the spouse you want to link it it, then hit Save.