Jason Duncan unveiled his browser app "Ancestor Map Builder 2.0" one week ago on his Substack page -- see https://webjmd.substack.com/p/ancestor-map-builder-20. It looked interesting to me.
Jason describes the development of his app as:
The other day I had an idea about creating a single map to show where all of my ancestors lived by representing each of them with a pin that was located at the place where they were born. Connecting lines would link the parent to the child, and together these lines would trace the the paths that led, generation by generation, to my birth in 1976.
So that’s what I did, and I really like the results!
You can see the Ancestor Map that Jason created at https://webjmd.com/ancestormap/. His Substack post describes the background for the app and provides directions for building an Ancestor Map of your own using his app. The App is currently FREE to use.
The link to try out this app is https://webjmd.com/mymapbuilder/.
So I did. I clicked on the link to "Ancestor Map Builder 2.0" to build my own ancestor map.
The first step is to add or upload your ancestor data. There are four options -- upload a GEDCOM file, upload a CSV file, add names and places manually (type or copy/paste), or use an existing map. I chose to enter my GEDCOM file (I picked the one with only my direct ancestors -- all 2,955 of them). After uploading the file, it listed all of the ancestors for each generation!
The second step is to select the place that your key person (that was me!) was born, so I did that and typed in my birthplace and clicked the place on the map.
For the GEDCOM option, the list will prompt you to use the map to identify the location of the birthplace of each ancestor. There is a field on the left that highlights the next ancestor on your list and the birthplace, if known. Go to the map and maneuver to the place on the map and then click your mouse. The map covers the entire world, but not every town. I used my mouse wheel to Zoom in and out (there are + (zoom in) and - (zoom out) buttons at the top left of the map), and dragged the map right or left, up or down, to get to the approximate area I wanted to click.
I did this through my 2nd great-grandparents (so 32 ancestors and birth locations). That took about an hour. I made some mistakes, and was able to correct them by figuring out who the ancestor was, and then clicking the red "!" link on the ancestor list and going to the map to click on the correct location.
I can save the map at any stage to my computer. I saved the MapBuilder link to my Desktop.
Here is my map in it's present status:
I can Zoom in on any region or location - here is my Map zoomed into the eastern USA where almost all of my recent ancestors were born:
(Oops, that has three of my errors before I fixed them!)
Errors happen when you click on the map by mistake.
The lines are color-coded by grandparents birthplaces.
Note that this is a straight-line application -- it doesn't show you the actual migration paths -- only the birthplace from one generation to another.
If I add two more generations (another 96 ancestors), the map will get busier but will probably be more useful and show several morel ines from Europe
Try this -- it may be helpful and useful to you. And even fun!
I learned that my ancestors all had a compass that led them to the Southwest area of North America, but I already knew that!
My wife's map will be much more interesting!
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