Monday, October 27, 2014

Kinpoint Can Be Used To Find Research Opportunities

Donna Potter Phillips on her Tika's Teachings blog posted Tika & Kinpoint... A New Genealogy Opportunity today.  This was the first I had heard of it, so I had to try it out.

The website is www.KinPoint.com, and it works in tandem with the FamilySearch Family Tree.  The "About" page for KinPoint says:


 When you first come to the site, you need to log in using your FamilySearch credentials (they are free).  Usually, that identifies you as the #1 person on the pedigree chart.


The default was five generations.  The boxes for the four grandparent lines are color coded (the user can use the "Themes" menu to change the colors).  On the right is information about myself, since I am highlighted.

I wanted to see eight generations, so I clicked on the "Generations" down arrow and selected 8, and saw:


If I run my mouse over a person on the chart, I can see the basic details in a popup window.  If I click on a person, I can see more vital record and relationship information about the person.

If a person is color coded, then I think that means that birth, marriage, death, spouse and parents have been identified in the FamilySearch Family Tree.

If a person on the chart has a white background, that means that the person has been identified, but one or more elements of the vitals and relationships are missing.  I clicked on Thomas J. Newton and saw that the death, father and mother were missing:


The boxes with a gray background indicate that no one in the FamilySearch Family Tree has been identified as a parent for the child with a colored or white background.

Some of the boxes with missing data have one or more orange dots, and some have one light orange dot.  I clicked on Jonathan Keyes, who had a white background and one orange dot, and saw:



I think that this fan chart is useful in identifying information that is missing from the FamilySearch Family Tree.  I can go to a specific person profile in the FamilySearch Family Tree by clicking the green "tree" icon next to the person';s name on the right-hand side of the screen.

Of course, if the FamilySearch Family Tree has sparse data, or the information is wrong, those problems will carry over to the KinPoint fan chart.

The best use of this chart is to identify missing data, not as a printable chart.  There are other options for a large printable fan chart - see www.TreeSeek.com.  Here is my current 9 generation TreeSeek chart, which also uses FamilySearch Family Tree data:


I still love this chart!  Looking at it in detail, I see that I still need to do a lot of work in the 8th and 9th generations!  Some relationships are wrong, and some are missing (assuming my research is correct).

My thanks to Donna Potter Phillips for the pointer to KinPoint!

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2014/10/kinpoint-can-be-used-to-find-research.html

Copyright (c) 2014, Randall J. Seaver






4 comments:

Unknown said...

Looks interesting, but attempting to try it for myself has been fruitless.

At some point, Family Search added a new "me" to my tree, one which is unconnected to anyone. This, unfortunately, is the "me" that Kinpoint sees, with a completely empty chart. I have been unable to get Kinpoint to see or use another individual, such as the "real me" that still exists in my tree, or to delete the "fake me" that Family Search added. (The addition is shown for August of 2014, which rules out something I did as I haven't been on Family Search in a year or more.)

Any ideas?

Unknown said...

Looks interesting, but attempting to try it for myself has been fruitless.

At some point, Family Search added a new "me" to my tree, one which is unconnected to anyone. This, unfortunately, is the "me" that Kinpoint sees, with a completely empty chart. I have been unable to get Kinpoint to see or use another individual, such as the "real me" that still exists in my tree, or to delete the "fake me" that Family Search added. (The addition is shown for August of 2014, which rules out something I did as I haven't been on Family Search in a year or more.)

Any ideas?

Unknown said...

Sorry for the double comment, Firefox crashed in the middle of the first one and didn't show me that it had actually posted. :/

Jana Iverson Last said...

Randy,

I want to let you know that your blog post is listed in today's Fab Finds post at http://janasgenealogyandfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/2014/10/follow-friday-fab-finds-for-october-31.html

Have a great weekend!