Navigating the Viewer

Learn how to navigate through your family database

Navigation Bar Menus

The navigation bar at the top provides access to all features:

Relationship Calculator - Calculate how two people in the database are related.
Run Query - Search the database with custom filters including name, date range, place, events, keywords (e.g. 'mayor' or 'witch'), etc.
Person Output - Generate reports for the current person: Profile Sheet, Family Group Sheet, Ahnentafel Report, and more.
  • Profile Sheet - in a Word-like document this gives most details about the current Person
  • Research Request - produces a small download text file about the current Person that can copy-paste into an AI website to ask for research advice
  • Ahnentafel Report - listing for the current Person of all his/her ancestors by generations. Ancestors on more than one branch of the tree (thanks to cousins/relatives marrying each other) have a red number denoting how often s/he appears in the report.
  • Family Group Sheet - standard basic Genealogy Family Group Sheet for the current Person. Some additional facts and research needs are listed below the FGS.
  • GEDCOM File - generate a GEDCOM file for the current Person (after answering the questions for how many generations of ancestors and descendants to include). GEDCOM files are the standard means of passing genealogical information between genealogy software and for uploading to genealogy websites.
  • Ancestral Lifespans - graphical display under a timeline showing the lifespan all ancestors of the current Person
  • Historic Timeline - shows historical facts within the lifetime of the current Person
Reports - Browse people by categories like cemeteries, occupations, military service, places lived, and more. These are not based on the current Person. Note that downloaded CSV files can be opened either in a text editor or in Excel.
  • Calendar - List of all Events for everyone combined that occurred on each calendar date without regard to the year of each Event. All January 1st events shown first followed by all January 2nd events, and so on.
  • Cemetery - List of the Cemeteries in which people were buried
  • Chronology - List of all Events for everyone combined in a pure chronological order.
  • Education - List of Schools that people attended
  • First Name - List of everyone ordered by First Names
  • Images In - List of Images/Photographs in which People appear
  • Land & Deed - List of all Events of types Land and Deed transactions
  • Last Name - List pf everyone ordered by Last Name then First Name
  • Military - List of all military Events of either which branch of service they were in or which battles they were in
  • Occupations - List of the Occupations people had or what their Job Titles were
  • Places Lived - List of Places where people Lived
  • Religions - List of Religions to which people belonged
  • Ship/Immigrants - List of Ships on which Immigrants sailed to the U.S.
  • Will & inherit - List of Events in which people either were mentioned (e.g. an Heir) in a Will or made their own Will
  • Ancestral Stats - list of some statistics about all of the family lines in the database.
  • Ancestral Birth Places - list of the birth places of all ancestors in the database.
Downloads - Generate and download a GEDCOM file for any of the six Family Groups (family lines each belong to one or more Family Groups). Also can download the spreadsheet of Ancestral Events used for research.
Explained/Defined - Reference pages explaining date formats, genealogy terms, relationship charts, and more.
Miscellaneous - Additional tools including the Family Tree, Pedigree, Events Mapper, Source Viewer, Township Map Search, and, Repository Search.
  • Family Tree - A family tree will start by showing the currently selected person in the viewer, also with her/his spouse, and both sets of parents, and all four of their grandparents. From that point, you can click the gray arrows (triangles) to expand to the next generation, or, collapse all generations to its right. Any person's name can be clicked to make her/him the main person in the viewer. If someone's name is too short to fully see in the box, hovering the name will popup the full name. To show descendants, click the Plus Sign (+) inside the blue circle to see a list of children, then click one of him/her to expand as a new generation along with the spouse of that selected child.
    NOTE: each tree is for all blood relatives of the starter person and his/her spouse. Anyone who married into that family line will only be listed as a spouse of one of the starter-plus-spouse's blood relatives. To see the family tree for someone who married into this "blood line", click that person to bring her/him up as the viewer's main person and click to show her/his family tree.
  • Pedigree Chart - A pedigree chart will start with the currently selected person in the viewer. Then it goes backwards in time (and shown left to right) for the specified number of generations (maximum 12, else, pedigree gets too tall) of the ancestors of the starter person.
  • LIfetime View - A three-tier (high-medium-low) display of where the person stands for information gathered. The legend across the top explains the color coding. The point is to show what still needs to be reserached for the person. The more green boxes, the better documented the person is.
  • Events Mapper Tool - A separate application file, it pulls in all Events for all Ancestors and maps them by U.S. county. Click a county to get event details per person. Checkboxes optionally narrow the Family Groups (six maximum) seen. Several radio button options are available to filter which events are included in the mapped counties. There also is an option to select a place at any level (e.g. state, county, town) and see it in the map.
  • Repository Search - Many genealogical sources are found in places such as libraries, courthouses, town clerk offices, historical and genealogical societies (Spoiler Alert: not all genealogical relevant information is found on the Internet!). This database has a collection of selected repositories. This option allows viewing that list.
    NOTE: the aforementioned Event Mapper tool has an option to show repositories by location. Click them to get their details.
  • Find Township Map - Many genealogy sources, particularly early U.S and State censuses, grouped residents by Township rather than Town (note: some, but not all U.S. states have Townships). Google Maps does not always support townships. However, township maps can be found from other sources. This option starts a Google Search for the selected U.S. county.
  • Source Viewer - Search the Sources of information used to quantify the profiles of the people in this database. The list can be filtered by the source type. If a source has an accompanying image/link, that can be clicked to see the image.
Help - Access help documentation and contact information.

Quick LInks

Just above the Navigation bar are these quick-use links for the oersib:

Family Navigation

In the "Relatives & Other Information" section, all family member names are clickable links. Click on any name to navigate directly to that person's profile:

Keyboard Shortcuts

ShortcutAction
Ctrl + SOpen Person Search
EscClose any open modal/popup
↑ / ↓Navigate search results
EnterSelect highlighted search result

Expanding/Collapsing Sections

Click on any section header (Events, Relatives, Sources, etc.) to expand or collapse that section. The chevron arrow indicates the current state.

Tip: Right-click on a family member's name to open their profile in a new tab while keeping your current view.
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