Wednesday, June 3, 2020

Checking Out the WikiTree "Ancestor Listmaker" App

The latest WikiTree newsletter had a notice that "Independent developer Chase Ashley has created the Ancestor Listmaker app. Enter your WikiTree ID (Seaver-15) to see your ancestors who were European aristocrats ... Mayflower passengers ... participants in the American Revolution ... Huguenots ... immigrants ... and much more. Give it a try and let Chase know what you think."

That sounded interesting, so a quick click to   https://apps.wikitree.com/apps/ashley1950/index.html showed me:

The directions to use this app are pretty easy to follow:

This app allows you to:
  • See a sortable list of all ancestors of a particular person (Descendant) for up to 20 generations back.
  • See a sortable list of all ancestors of Descendant who fall within a selected category up to 20 generations back.
  • Download any of the lists to a .csv file, which can then be opened in a spreadsheet (e.g., to use as a tracking sheet).
I entered my own profile name and number (I am Seaver-15 on WikiTree), selected 20 generations, and clicked the dropdown menu to select a group.

Here is the list for "All" ancestors of mine on WikiTree back through 20 generations:

WikiTree has 4,840 ancestors of mine in their collaborative family tree back through 20 generations.  The list is alphabetical, with birth and death dates and places.

I picked the "US Immigrants" category:

I have 678 ancestors who immigrated (birth in another country, death in USA).

What about ancestors who participated in the "American Revolution?"

I have more than those five, but they probably don't have the 1776 sticker or 1776 Project on their profile.

As you can see, there are links to each WikiTree profile on the lists.  

The available categories include:

  • All
  • American Revolution
  • European Royals and Aristocrats
  • Filles du Roi
  • French and Indian War
  • Huguenot
  • Jamestown
  • Location Text
  • Magna Carta Gateway
  • Mayflower Passengers
  • Mexican-American War
  • New England Witches
  • New Netherland Settlers
  • Notables
  • Orphans
  • Palatine Migration
  • Puritan Great Migration
  • Quakers
  • U.S. Civil War
  • U.S. Immigrants

Obviously, you and your ancestors need to be included in the WikiTree system.  You can upload a GEDCOM file to WikiTree, but you have to determine if each person in your GEDCOM file are already in WikiTree.  You can edit profiles of Public persons in WikiTree, although you may have to request access to the Trusted List of a profile.

I don't have all of the pre-1600 ancestors in my RootsMagic tree, mainly because I have not done enough research on many of them.  I ran the "All" category again for 12 generations, and had 1,628 ancestors listed.

Of course, there is the possibility that some of the profiles or relationships in WikiTree are incorrect.  In addition, some of my known ancestors in my RootsMagic tree are not in WikiTree, and so there is more work for me to do in WikiTree.  No family tree is perfect!  Especially mine, it seems.

I think that Chase Ashley has created a useful listmaker, and I appreciate the effort.  It will be interesting to see what will be added to this app in the future.  Thank you, Chase!

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Disclosure: WikiTree is a free collaborative family tree website, with over 23 million entries.  I have used WikiTree since its' inception, and have accepted no remuneration from this company.  I have enjoyed meeting and seeing WikiTree personnel at genealogy conferences.

The URL for this post is:  https://www.geneamusings.com/2020/06/checking-out-wikitree-ancestor.html

Copyright (c) 2020, Randall J. Seaver

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1 comment:

EvaL said...

The categories are very United-States-oriented. This wouldn't do very much for anglophones in other countries.