New starters

When you’re just getting started, the easiest and most helpful way to use our community is Member Connect. This will put you in touch with other people who are discovering your family, and let you benefit from what they’ve found out.

Member Connect works within your family tree. Rather than creating another one, we’ll use the Lesson One tree we made in Monday’s lesson.

1. Too easy?

   1Select your tree from the Family Trees menu. In the main pedigree view, find William Bradshaw, hover over his name, and select View profile. This will take you to his profile screen, where you can see and edit all his information. Click ‘Member Connect’ on the right. You’ll see a list of Suggested Connections. These are other members who seem to have the same William Bradshaw in their tree. As we write this there are three, but who knows, by the time you read it there may be more!

2. Too easy?

   2Read through the suggestions, looking at the details the other members have found. Any information that you haven’t already discovered is highlighted in green; anything that disagrees with your own discoveries is red; and details that match are white. Look for a member named family_historian_2011. You’ll see that they’ve found William in the 1841 and 1881 censuses and discovered two new children. Click the Connect button next to the member’s name.

3. Too easy?

   3You’re now connected to their tree. You’ll see the number ‘1’ in brackets after ‘Connections’ at the top – click this option to review all the details they’ve found, and add any you like to your tree. For example, click the ‘New’ icon next to Mary A Bradshaw – a daughter we hadn’t yet discovered. Choose ‘Evaluate and save relatives’ and scroll through all the new information. Put a tick next to anything you want to save – let’s add all the new children for now. Then click ‘Save to your tree’.

4. Too easy?

   4Back at the Connections screen, scroll down to family_historian_2011’s information again and click ‘Bradshaw Family Tree’. You’ll see the main view of this other member’s tree. You can move through the generations and view each ancestor’s Profile screen, just like with your own tree – although obviously you can’t make any changes. The only people that are hidden are living relatives. You’ll see far more discoveries on the Atkinson line – click the green arrows on the right of the names to go further back.

5. Too easy?

   5Obviously this is just an example. But if it was real it would be hugely exciting. We obviously share many relatives with this member – it would seem we’ve found a long lost cousin! We would certainly want to get in contact – to do this, you would click on the name at the top of the family tree, and choose ‘Contact’. You could then type in your message, and send an email to their Ancestry.co.uk home page. Again though, please don’t do this now, as we’re not true relatives!

Are you finished? Start the next lesson