Searching for a surname within your own lineage in Family Tree
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joe martel said: THis is frequently requested. THis is relatively easy for small tree, but with a tree over 1 billion it is compute intensive. Hoepfully once we are off of newFS this will become possible.0
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Scott Boyd Welch said: oh well
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Please let me resurrect this request. I just wasted 5 minutes on a support chat going in circles over this issue.
This is key for missionary work. I have a non-member I recently met who has a surname that I recognize from my heritage. I know one connection that is not a direct relationship (by marriage) to that surname, but I'm wondering if by chance there are other possibilities where that surname shows up in a direct line somehow that I just haven't uncovered.
I have had other scenarios that required only looking in my line.
Given that the promise was given that it would be more feasible after the 'new' system was up and that's going to be coming up on a decade next year, seems appropriate that we should get such a feature.
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For a situation such as @Paula Thornton describes I would not use a tree (aka connected network) search. Instead, I would try to identify an ancestor of the individual (if the individual is open to such inquiry) and then use the 2-person tool on RelativeFinder.
A shared surname does not equal a shared surname descendancy tree. Most surname studies involve hundreds of unconnected trees.
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@Andrew VK I'm not sure I understand what you're suggesting. All searches I know go across the entire database -- there is nothing specific to searching your own line.
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Well, this is an old topic, but the original poster wanted to be able to search for a surname within a certain ancestry tree. That is a very reasonable task to want to do.
@Andrew VK has given a practical method for doing this task using the Following list.
I am not able to use that method because most of my descendancy trees are far larger than 4000 persons. I use another method, as follows:
On the web interface I use View Tree: Descendancy to search descendancy trees for certain names. I expand the entire tree by clicking all the little arrows then I use my web browser search function to search in the descendancy tree. If I plan to search the same descendancy tree again, I use the browser print function to print the expanded tree to a PDF. I save the PDF and search it for names.
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@Paula Thornton, Andrew is talking about adding profiles to what used to be called your watchlist, and is now (stupidly and confusingly) called "Following". If you add all of your direct ancestors to that list (up to 4000 profiles), then you can use the filters and other tools in the "Following" section to sort through them.
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@Julia Szent-Györgyi Wow. So riddle me this, how do I follow someone I don't know exists? That's the whole point of a search.
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?? So how on Earth would you propose a "search through your lineage" to figure out what to search through, then? Magically?
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Again, you may find it helpful to use the descendancy tree method I suggested. The descendancy tree view has an option to include spouses.
Another method is to search historical records (use Search) and Family Tree (use Find) for all instances of surnames in your direct line and this surname that seems familiar.
I mostly do surname studies and these are two methods I use.
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Adding all direct ancestors to the Following list will fill the list at 12 generations: 2^12 = 4096. But who has all lines complete, and separate, to 12 generations? Not many here.
Using the Following list for trees other than a direct ancestry is not practical unless the tree is very small, say: a very rare surname, or some narrowly defined group.
I wish for better tools for working with surnames on Family Tree. Something like the Locations filter on historical record search results would be nice!
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