Tuesday, March 8, 2011

GenerationStation - Adding and Connecting More Family Members

When we last worked with GenerationStation (www.GenerationStation.com) last Friday in GenerationStation - Adding Family Members, we created a Person Page for Devier James Lamphear Smith.  A biography and a photograph was included.

Today I want to add Devier's wife to the collection, and connect them both to their daughter, Abbie Ardell "Della" Smith.  Note that I had already added Della to the collection, and identified her mother as Abbie A. Vaux.

Starting with Devier James Lamphear Smith's page:


I want to add the Spouse information, so I clicked on the "Add Details" link for Abigail A. Vaux (in the right-hand area).  I added her birth and  death date and location, then added text to her Biography page.  I did not have a thumbnail head shot of her, so I didn't upload a photo at this time.  Here is Abigail A. Vaux's page:


Now I need to connect both Abigail A. Vaux and Devier Smith to their daughter, Abbie Ardell "Della" Smith.  I clicked on the "Family" button and saw:


There are links on the left side to Add a parent, a spouse, a sibling, or a child.  I chose to "Add a Child":


An empty set of fields opened and I started typing the child's name - I got as far as the middle of the middle name when the name of Abbie Ardell "Della" Smith appeared to the right of the text fields.  The system offers suggestions for children, and presumably parents, children, and spouses if they are already in the system (presumably submitted by any registered user).

I clicked on the "Link to profile" button below the suggested person and the child was added to the profile for Abbie A. Vaux

I went back to the "Family" page for Abigail A. Vaux and saw:


The spouse and the daughter are linked to her.

Now I need to link the daughter Abbie Ardell Smith to her father, Devier James Lamphear Smith using the same process.  Here's the page for Devier making the connection:


And after the connection:



And here's Abbie Ardell "Della" Smith's page showing her connections:




I see that Della has two mothers now - one with details and one without.  That's a result of identifying her mother as Abbie A. Vaux when I created Della's profile.  Now how do I delete the second profile for Abbie A. Vaux?  I could find no way to do it.  There is no online Help file yet - you have to email the website.

I still don't see any way to add a Marriage date and location for a couple.  Did they leave it out on purpose or by mistake?

This process seems a bit arduous to me, but it is fairly logical and straightforward once the user gets the hang of it.  I chose to do this exercise by selecting "Create a New Person" rather than starting from a Child's page and selecting "Add People" from the "Family" page or "Add Parents" from the "Snapshot" page.  The latter seems to be the easier path to take.

Having to enter data one person at a time works fairly well, but it does take time.  This is not unlike other online family trees (e.g., Geni, FamilyLink, etc.) that do not permit GEDCOM uploads.  Using this "one person at a time" method does prevent many duplicates in the system that would occur when thousands of GEDCOM files are uploaded. 

1 comment:

Mike Dowdle said...

For now, you can remove that duplicate relationship under the family tab. Thanks for your thoroughness (and your patience)!