Pets on a family tree?

Revised August 7, 2013

Wouldn’t you like to keep friends’ or pets’ information in the same place as your family tree?

I told you in my last blog that I would give you instructions on how to add people to a family tree without having them be connected to the tree. I will be doing this on Ancestry.com but I am sure other programs will also let you do what I am about to show you.

There are two ways that you can add a person but not connect them to the family tree.

I’ve put in pictures of screen for the first way of doing things but just words for the second method.

1. If the friend is listed on the same page in a census record as your relative (Helena) then you can pick the friends name and simply add the person onto the tree file. Bring up a census record for the person; in this case I know Helena has a friend who lives next door to her in 1910 so I brought up that census record for her. You do that from her profile page.

That one line on the census transcript page that says – [Neighbors: View others on page] will bring up a list of the neighbors and the friends name will be on it.

You click on “View Record” next to the persons name and the person’s transcript comes up.

Click on Save record to someone on my tree.
You don’t want to click on bottom save because that will require more steps.

Once you click on Save record to someone on my tree this page will come up; Click on Add this to a new person

Select Gender and Click on Save. The friend is now in the file but not connected to the tree.

The profile page comes up where you can then select to view her family tree. Remember you are adding the person you selected from the census page so all the census data for the person will be on the profile page.

When you click on view the person’s family tree, it will appear all by itself not connected to the main tree.

Go back to her profile page and there click on Tree pages

Click on Tree overview

Now click on People on right side of page,

you will get a full list of everyone in the file.

See the friends. After I had made lone trees for each of the friends I went into their profile pages and changed their last names to Friend – Oakes (Friend – the last name), so that they would be listed together since the list is in alphebetical order by last names. If I had not done this they would be in different places on the list and if you have a big list on a family tree you would have to go through lots of pages to find them. This way (Friend – Oakes) all the friends of Helena are together.

2. If the person is not a neighbor on a census record then:

Just create the person as the son or daughter of the parents of the home person (remember above we saw home person – Helena) on the People slide.

The friends are not siblings so we put them on the tree and remove the relationship to the mother and father.

For screen prints of panels about relationship you can see blog posting “How To Fix a Relationship”.

Remove the relationship to the mother and father will leave them on the file but with no connection to the tree.

You can add a child in several ways; one way is to go into the page which shows the tree.

Then move the mouse over the parent of Helena then click add relative.
When the panel comes up click on child.
A new page comes up fill in the box; example “Blanche” click the gender box, then click save.
Blanche now appears on the tree as a sister of Helena.
Move the mouse over Blanche and click view profile.
Once profile comes up click on “edit this person”.
A new page comes up; find “Relationships” click on it.

For screen prints of panels about relationship you can see blog posting “How To Fix a Relationship”.

You will see a page which has Father, Mother, Spouse, and on the right side you will see “Remove”.
Click on “Remove” and OK on the panel that comes up.
Do this for both Father and Mother. Then the page will have no relationships listed.
Click Done.
You will then be on Blanche’s profile page and you can type in her new name “Friend – Oakes”; or I suppose you could have changed her last name when you added the child.

The next part is just like above.

If you view her family tree it will appear all by itself not connected to the main tree.

Now click on Tree pages- Tree overview and click on People on right side of page, you will get a full list of everyone in the file. Helena’s family and all her friends.

It all seems complicated but it is just a few simple steps to save you hours of looking through lots of file folders for the family trees of the friend.

You can also use this Trick if you want to keep track of other people in the family history who are not necessarily relatives.
Let’s say a relative owned a business with some other person you can have that persons info right in the family tree. If the relative was a small town doctor and worked with the same nurse for years and mentioned her in his writings you could have her information right in his family tree and not have to worry about keeping a separate file on her.

There are many things you could do.

How about pets? You want to include a picture of Spotty the family dog in the family tree you can create a profile page for the dog. Why not have a profile page for other things like Cars, Trucks or Trains that the relative drove.

There are many things that can be done using this method of adding a profile page onto the family tree file without having to connect it to the tree. I am sure Ancestry.com never thought we would be using their product like this but if it helps to save us time why not.

I hope this will help you in creating a more interesting family tree.

Thank You.