Search for ancestors by place.

DavisGGardner

I would like to have a way of searching for a direct line ancestor, rather than for the entire tree. One of the searches I want to make is for all relatives from a given place (City or State or Country). Perhaps this could be a filter on the normal search page. For example, a nephew just got called on a mission to Belgium. I vaguely remember that I have ancestors from Belgium, but do not know where to look in my tree (and it would be a laborious effort). I would like to tell my nephew where his ancestors lived. There have been several times over the years that I wanted to search on only my ancestors and found the normal search provides way too many "false hits."

Miss Jessie

Hi Davis, you might be interested in the Family Tree Mobile app feature “Map my Ancestors.”

It has some of the features you requested.

https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/whats-map-ancestors/

DavisGGardner

Is there a similar feature in the larger FS for computers. I am so old that I do not use cell phones for genealogy (I need more screen "real estate" so I can better understand the context).

Paul W

@DavisGGardner

So, I tried to prove you wrong! I searched for a "John Smith" who was resident in Belgium sometime in the 1850-1920 period. Okay, there might not be a source in the FamilySearch collection that matches, so why did I get these three results (using "Exact" searches) instead of a "No records found" message?

See https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results?q.givenName=John%20&q.givenName.exact=on&q.residenceDate.from=1850&q.residenceDate.to=1920&q.residencePlace=belgium&q.residencePlace.exact=on&q.surname=smith&q.surname.exact=on

(You have to scroll down the right side of the screen to see my full search criteria - this would not have been necessary with searches using the old version)

Paul W

Update on above - the third result in the list is actually a kind of match! The record mentions a residence place of "Musson" and there is a place of that name in Belgium! Now to analyse to other two results.....

Paul W

Well, still no sense in the first result being presented, but clicking on "View Record" in the second actually does show the Residence Place has been indexed as Antwerp - albeit this is "hidden" on the other pages.

Perhaps, Davis, you should try a similar search, relevant to your ancestor (i.e. using his name and range of years you believe he was in Belgium - using the "Exact" options.

Miss Jessie

https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/comment/372774#Comment_372774

I’m sure many users would appreciate using the features in Relatives Around Me on a larger screen.

Relatives around me uses GPS to pinpoint the user’s physical location to provide relevant results for some searches.

The Family Tree Apps are available for iOS & Android tablets & cell phones. I appreciate the larger screens on my iPad. Tablets & mobile devices may also offer accommodations for visual impairment.

For example, iOS 15 allows me to customize font sizes on just the Family Tree App.

Miss Jessie

“Where am I From” is browser or web based & offers some features you might enjoy.

As always, results depend on accuracy & completeness in your portion of Family Tree.

dontiknowyou

I would like to have a way of searching for a direct line ancestor, rather than for the entire tree.

So would I! I would like to be able to search the ancestry, or the descendancy, of any PID on Family Tree directly.

Currently, this type of search is available as a premium ($) feature on the FT partner site puzzilla.org.

Another option is the FT ancestry tree viewer, Fan Chart, with the Birthplace option: