To start select "Starting points" from the side-bar. This gives you a list of, mostly, ancestors. Choose one and check out their descendants.
Or go to the "Surname" list, choose a surname that interests you and check out the people on it.
Wherever the name of an individual occurs it is a link to a "card" of basic
information about that individual. The page also carries links to extra
information, These are explained below.
Home Page brings you back here. In addition, the heading
"Hancock-Hollands Genealogy" will also bring you back here so, for instance,
you can login to set your cookie then return here for the Links List.
Ancestors will present a simple tree diagram of that person's
ancestors and also, below them, boxes with their children. In each box you
can click on the person's name to see their personal data or on the empty
space in their box to make them the root of the diagram. By choosing
ancestors boxes you can move up the tree; by choosing children's you can
move down. The page also has a link to show a simple indented list of all
that person's ancestors at once.
DescendantsShows a simple indented list of descendants
Relations sets the current person as the reference for calculating
relationships and pedigrees. After you've done this, at the bottom
of each subsequent card display will be shown the relationship between
the first person and the current one and their most recent common ancestor.
Pedigree will present a table showing all the couples and their marriages
that lead down to the person chosen previously. Obviously, if you choose to do
this on someone who is not a direct ancestor, no pedigree wll result.
At the bottom of the Pedigree page is a link, Chain of evidence, which will show you all the source data that supports the pedigree. Also at the bottom of the Pedigree page is a button, "Google Earth". If you have Google Earth installed, clicking the button will show the location of the birth of all the people in the pedigree, at least where I've found it on a map. See how your ancestors moved about!
At the bottom, below the table of data, are two more links:
Source Data will show the text of source material such as birth
certificates or parish register entries. If you are a guest this link will
not appear
There are some special links in source data. If the information is from
the IGI on-line there will be a link in the table to take you directly
to the IGI page for confirmation. If the data is from a census then the
census reference is a link that will display the whole household.
Photographs will present a list of thumbnails of any photographs
we have showing the individual concerned. If there is no link then there
are no photographs. Click on the photograph to see it full-size.
On the full-size image you can point to people's faces with the mouse to see
people's names. Click on the face to see their personal data.
Others with the same surname will list everyone we have with the
same surname.
With the increasing interest in genetic genealogy we have added two more
links to the individual data page. The first, Y-tree, will only appear
if the individual is male. When you click on it you will see a tree of all
individuals who share the same Y-chromosome with that person. The person
themself is highlighted in bold italic.
The tree shows only males.
Similarly the mtDNA link will show all people who share the same
mitochondrial DNA with the person chosen. This link appears for both males and
females and the tree shows both too.
If you wonder what this is all about you can go to World Families Network or the National Geographic Genographic Project to find out more.
Note that in each of the above navigation phrases one letter will be bold. If you hold down Alt and press that letter on the keyboard, then press Enter (Windows) or Hold down the "cmd" key and type the letter (Mac) you will follow the link as if you'd clicked on it.
Wherever a person's name appears it is a clickable link that will take you to their data card. You can move rapidly through the data by choosing the "Ancestors" and "Descendants" links repeatedly. "Home Page" will always get you back to the begining.
In many places a number appears in parentheses after a person's name. This is their age at the event concerned. It always referes to the person whose data card it appears on. So, for instance, a (25) appearing after the data of birth of one of the children on somebody's data card is that person's age at the birth of that child. Where no information exists about a person's death the age after their own date of birth is the age they are or would be today. Use your judgement to decide which it is!
Every date that appears on a persons information card is a link. Click on this link to see who else in our family tree database was alive at that time.
Icons appear on the data card pages for each person, one next to 'Ancestors' and one next to 'Descendants'. If you click on the 'Ancestors' icon it will show a map of England with the location of that person's ancestors' birthplaces marked by a little tag with their surname on it. similarly with the 'Descendants' icon: the map shows the birthplace of the person's descendants.
In addition, next to many people's place of birth will be an OS grid reference giving the location of the place and, if you click on that, another window will open showing you the location in Multimap. Or if you chose Google Earth as your map provider then you will see the latitude and longitude and clicking on it will take you to that location in Google Earth.
There are limitations. I don't have a birthplace for everyone and I don't have a grid reference for all those I do have. However, the grand plan includes extending coverage to marriages and deaths. You have a choice of map-provider. At the bottom of every page are links. Click on the map provider of your choice and the page will refresh with map links changed to suit. Multimap or Old Maps. The latter makes a lot of sense for Victorian ancestors. Or Google Earth if you've got it installed. This is nice though because it works for the whole planet not just England. Or Magic an interactive map service provided by HM Government, which supplied lots of extra information. Or StreeMap which gives you a nice big copy of the OS 50000 map and a handy arrow pointing to the exact location. This only works if I know an exact location still, it is very handy
In addition to all of the above, sometimes the place will be, for
example, Jun Droitwich 18 333. This is the GRO index reference for the
event. With the easy availability of index data from freebmd I will have occasionally
found a reference but not yet pursued it. So I put the GRO reference in.
After all, it gives me a year and a registration district, enough to be
going on with until I can get a certificate to refine the data.
This system has grown consideraby since I first started it and quite a few
parts are really there as research aids for me so it looks quite complicated.
So perhaps a few tips may be helpful.
Up and Down the Tree Having found an indivdual, by alternately
choosing 'Ancestors' and 'Descendants' you can move quickly round the tree.
Multimap When you're presented with a map from Multimap don't
forget to check out the aerial photographs. Some rural areas have hardly
changed at all in the last couple of centuries.
Old Maps When you've got a map from www.old-maps.co.uk it won't
look so great; it's just the low-quality map for navigating. Click on the
button on the bottom toolbar 'Enlarged view'. It's often possible to find
the road-names on the large map.
Google Earth If you keep Google Earth open while you select
individuals to display on it, all the placemarks wil be collected together.
You can then save that collection to refer to later.
Tips