Improve relationship finding.

Ashby, Zachary John

As a frequent Family Tree user, I like to see my relationship with others, whether dead or alive. But the problem is that I can't see more ways that I'm related to someone and that I can't see how someone is related to another person.

First, my sister-in-law is my 8th cousin, my 8th cousin once removed, I think my 9th cousin, and (of course) my sister-in-law. But when I click on View Relationship, all it shows is The wife of my brother, which isn't very helpful at all because, I mean, of course I know that. But if it showed how I’m related through different lines, I could see more ways I’m related, instead of going to their parents and grandparents and seeing how I’m related to them and then finding out my true relationships to my sis-in-law from there (which was what I had to do). If this were a feature, I could just press View Relationship and choose which side of the family I want to look on, on my side and my sister-in-law’s side, and see many more ways I’m related to her.

Second, sure I like to see how I’m related to other people, but I also like to see how people are related to others. Now yes, I can just have people go to Relatives around me, but the problem with that is that you can’t do that with dead or added living people on your account. If I could see how my mom’s parents and my dad’s parents are related without getting them together in person, I could just see how they are related through my own account.

So, in summary, finding your relationship with someone is useful and just interesting to know, but with these features, you could do so much more.

Please take these ideas into consideration. :)

LAHS6

In addition to how a contributor is related to me, I like to see how other contributors are related to the PID that they have edited.

Bobbie Jane Glenn Gusnard

I would love this feature.

I noticed some of my husband's relitives came up in my family line. I had to delete our relationship to see and found we are actually My 10th cousin twice removed.

Now something strange shows. Since I reconnected my husband and I, when I do the how we are related it show My 10th cousin twice removed. But if I click on my daughter it says my daughter.

Gail Swihart Watson

I think people are related to other people in several ways more than we realize. I think we are descended from ancestor couples through several of their children more than we think. Finally, I think families who linked themselves with each other (ie married into each other's families) over the course of multiple generations happened more than we think. I suspect the programming for this feature would kill the system, especially since it would need to look at whether the preferred parents are the blood parents at every generation going in every direction. In short: I bet this cannot be done on a world tree. Ancestry can only do it because they have an algorithm looking at common ancestors in order to populate ThruLines, and can pick up the fact that there are multiple common ancestors for DNA matches when trees reflect that.

Paul W

Personally, I find this type of relationship identification quite meaningless. I would be completely underwhelmed to discover an in-law (or anyone I am acquainted with) is, say, a 10th cousin twice removed. What does this even mean?

I would far prefer FamilySearch to devote its limited resources to addresses the serious weaknesses within the Family Tree program - like sorting out the Couple Relationship area, for example. The programmers only have so much time to work on enhancing FamilySearch and FS / Family Tree features, so, as much I respect the right to make such a request (and others to upvote it), I would not want this to be treated as a priority.

Gordon Collett

That we are related to people in many ways is very common. My wife's parents are related to each other 19 different ways. If the desktop program I use can calculate these, I assume almost any desktop program can. But they are working with just a few thousand people, not the massive FamilySearch Family Tree.

FamilySearch will never be able to do everything. There will always be a need for other tools. For this particular function, Relative Finder https://www.relativefinder.org is the easiest to use since it works directly with Family Tree. Here I'll take a couple of relatives of my wife, plug them into Relative Finder's Connect Two Deceased People function:

to get a chart like this:

Generating this chart did take several minutes. This is going back sixteen generations from these people. There is a statement on the site that they used to go back twenty six generations but had to cut that back because their servers couldn't handle it.

I agree that since such a feature is already so easily available elsewhere, FamilySearch has better things to be working on. Also, we don't need a feature that slows website performance to a crawl whenever it is used.

Cheryl Viering

@Gordon Collett there is a word for someone being your ancestor in more than one way, but I can't remember it right now.

What I would find useful is being able to see how two random people are related. That can occasionally be helpful in determining if I have found the correct person, or to see the ties among a community.