Wednesday, June 8, 2022

Rabbit Holes With Randy -- Six Degrees of Randy Seaver From WikiTree

 I received a weekly email from WikiTree today and it had a note about Six Degrees of Randy Seaver.  I can't resist not trying something like this out.  I wondered how will it help me find ancestors or likely DNA Matches that I share a common ancestor with?

1)  This tool was created by Greg Clarke, who is excellent at trying out new things and developing them into a useful tool on the WikiTree website (FREE, a collaborative family tree with over 30 million profiles based on sourced information from records and other researchers).  Of course, all of this depends on ME being in WikiTree with my family tree of ancestors, aunts/uncles of my ancestors, and the spouses of those aunts/uncles.

2)  Greg Clarke explained how the tool was developed and demonstrates how it is used in the WikiTree YouTube video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mWw2AmSiWU&t=2908s.

3)  On the chart above, there are two controls.  

*   Display options - just a circle, a first initial, up to 3 initials, or a name (first name only).  I chose the last one - first name only.

*  Degree options - 1 degree to 6 degrees - the user can advance the number of degrees using the red arrow button.

Colors are used to show the profiles for each degree.

4)  I was on 1 Degree when I took the screen capture.  Here's my 4 degree screen capture:

My ancestors and aunts/uncles and spouses of aunts/uncles are included - this 4th degree has 81 connections (sum of degrees 1-4).

5)  My 6th degree connections are shown below - now I have 482 total connections, with 261 in the 6th degree:

If I click on any one of the names, I can see basic information about that person connection.  I chose Sophrona, the second wife of my 3rd great-grandfather Abraham Kemp (1795-1861) of Ontario, Canada.  The information panel for her appeared on the left of the screen:

I am not related to Sophrona, because she was Abraham's second wife and I descend from the first wife of Abraham, Sarah Fletcher.

6)  What can I do with this information?  I can use the WikiTree tools to find descendants of Abraham Kemp.  In the WikiTree page for Abraham James Kemp (1795-1861) - he is Kemp-176.  I can find a Descendants list (under Kemp-176 > Descendants) and it will show me the descendants of Abraham Kemp already in the WikiTree website:

Unfortunately, there are only a few deceased descendants on this list because I, and other researchers, have not entered their family information for their family lines back to Abraham Kemp.  I have hundreds of known descendants (living and deceased) of Abraham Kemp in my RootsMagic file, in my Ancestry Member Tree, in my MyHeritage family tree, and in FamilySearch Family Tree, including 30 Ancestry DNA Matches from five of his children.  Also, my source citation information is unfinished for many of the known descendants of Abraham Kemp.

7)  I could take my RootsMagic tree, create a GEDCOM file for descendants of Abraham Kemp, and submit it to WikiTree.  I could even do that for all 16 sets of my 3rd great-grandparents and significantly add to WikiTree's collaborative tree.  But it would require effort and time to compare new profiles with other WikiTree profiles, put my EE source citations into WikiTree style sources, add links to relatives, and much more.  I just haven't done it due to lack of time and interest. 

While this six degrees tool on WikiTree is interesting and new it suffers from the lack of attention by researchers who have not entered information for all of their lines back in time to the 6th degree ancestor. 

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The URL for this post is:  https://www.geneamusings.com/2022/06/rabbit-holes-with-randy-six-degrees-of.html

Copyright (c) 2022, Randall J. Seaver

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4 comments:

Tricia said...

Well am I excited to see this post. :-)
Hope you are feeling better.

Marian B. Wood said...

Hi Randy! Sending healing thoughts. I tried out the Six Degrees and my results were smaller than yours, but still fun and fascinating.

Linda Stufflebean said...

Welcome back to your genea-cave and blogging. Hope you are feeling better each day.

ByAPearl said...

Randy, it does my heart good to see your post and know that you have recovered enough to root around in Rabbit Holes. My Six Degrees tool shows 34 total WikiTree connections....all entered by yours truly. Take care!