New WikiTree App released: Ancestor Listmaker

Question

I just posted a new WikiTree app I developed: Ancestor Listmaker

The app allows you to:

• See a sortable list of all ancestors of a particular person for up to 20 generations back. (This is 5 generations more than Family List.)
• See a sortable list of all ancestors of a particular person who fall within a selected category up to 20 generations back, such as Mayflower Ancestors, Puritan Great Migration Ancestors or Notables ancestors.
• Download any of the lists to a .csv file, which can then be opened in a spreadsheet. This feature is particularly useful for creating tracking sheets for your ancestors' profiles, eg to keep track of which ones need what kind of work done on them.

Note that the app currently does not use login information, so it does not work for people with fully private profiles that do not allow others to see their ancestry. That is a to-do item.

Comments

Way cool! Or, alternatively, as I might have said circa 1970, FFO! Well, I would have said that in full.

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How cool! I love this.

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Ooh! I'm well chuffed! This is so helpful! Many thanks for this 

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Chase thank you for your development time, this is a 'nifty' piece of work. Question: If I have Magna Carta gateway ancestors why is there a 0 return of profiles when I run the Aristo/Royalty program? Am I looking at this category incorrectly?

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Thank you for your work on this, Chase!

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Great work! Thank you, Chase.

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Leigh - There are really 2 reasons for this: (1) European Royals and Aristocrats category of my app only includes those profiles that have the European Royals and Aristocrats template on their profiles. The profiles for the Magna Cara surety barons do not have the template, presumably because they instead have the Magna Carta Surety Baron template. (2) The Magna Carta surety barons are a bit more than 20 generations back - more like 23-25 generations back. I had originally tried to include a separate category for the Magna Carta Surety Barons but found that going back more than 20 generations was a problem because it increased the number of WikiTree API calls that the app was making to the point (1) the response time was quite slow and (2) more importantly, the Wikitree firewall was sometimes perceiving the number of calls in quick succession as an attack and rejecting them.

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Thanks so much for creating this App. Your hard work is much appreciated!

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This is excellent work!! Thank you so much!

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Thank you for developing this tool. Much appreciated!

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Leigh (and others) - One fun thing to do if one has Magna Carta Gateway ancestors (or others with noble ancestry) is to enter their WT ID in the descendant field of the app and then look at 20 generations of their ancestors. It takes you back to about 1050. For example, if you go back 20 generations on Frances Dighton (Dighton-45), you find that her ancestors included Louis VIII of France, Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II.

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Thanks, Chase. Perhaps your suggestion immediately above (picking an early ancestor and looking back 20 gens from them) will help spur some verification of many earlier lineages shown in WikiTree.

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This is very cool, thanks so much for your time and effort!

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Excellent, Chase!  This will be most helpful!

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Neat - with it had more categories.

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What do the colours mean?

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Roy - Feel free to suggest specific additional categories that you would want to see added.

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Wendy - I'm not sure exactly what colors you mean. The drop-down menus for Generations and Category highlight the selection you are hovering over in blue, while the tables of ancestors highlight the row you are hovering over in yellow. In both cases, that is simply to make it clear which item you are hovering over. The rows in the tables of ancestors alternate gray and white backgrounds to make it easier to distinguish adjacent lines.

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Very nice, Chase. Thank you!

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Chase, The colours I was referring to are the names - they are clickable links and some are in blue and some in a purplish colour. I've played with them a bit more, and as I click onto a blue one to open that profile, the name turns purple. But what I'm curious about now is what defined whether it was blue or purple in the first place, as I am sure I have opened the vast majority of the blue links at some time in the past (I created most of those profiles anyway.) Is it a time limited thing, that is, if I have opened those profiles in the last x days, they show as purple?

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Wendy - Yes, the links start off as blue and turn purple after you have clicked on them.

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Bravo,

Easy to use and was able to find a 2nd gateway ancestor right off. That connected to another Magna Carta Baron.

Thank you so much,

David Leighr

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Thanks again for this Chase. FYI, we added a link to your app in the Magna Carta Project's June newsletter. It is a GREAT tool to connect folks to Gateway Ancestors.

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How can I put the birth and death dates to Melvin Willis?

He is my dad. He was born 19 May 1927; died 16 Mar 1992

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Melanie - Since your father's profile is a Yellow privacy profile, the data that the app is getting from WikiTree does not contain his birth or death date. Therefore, currently, the app cannot show those dates. I may in the future add the ability to enter your login information, in which case, I think the data that WikiTree sends to the app will include those dates.

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Thank you very much. Would it help to change the privacy level?

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Yes. I just tried it on my own dad's profile (which was also Yellow). If you change the privacy to Green or Open, the dates will show up in the app.

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Great tool. i love it, works great.I'm glad to find the orphans it gives me more people to work on. Thank You.

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Thanks, Chase, great app, appreciate your work on it. Hope all is well with you and your family.

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I like this app!!! I appreciate that you can access multiple persons very quickly which saves research time.

I didn't see where we can access the app from our profile page, hopefully that is a future add in!

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Thank so much for sharing this app.  Very interesting!

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Oh, my goodness, who are these people?!

ETA - 28 orphans. Not for long!

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Wow!!  Thank you!!  So helpful. Being able to put info in a spreadsheet will be wonderful.  Incredibly efficient!

 Frayer-47

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I was so impressed with your "Ancestor Listmaker" App.  Thank you for such a wonderful creation.  Ann Stribling Spiess   Stribling-86

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Such fun, and it helps one know about some additional information that needs to be added to certain profiles.  Thank you.

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Found two more Revolutionary War ancestors thanks to this great tool.  However, only ID's that already had been marked with either a 1776 sticker or 1776 Project Template will come up, so we still have work to do as members to be sure our ancestors who have been documented as Revolutionary War patriots by the DAR (for example) are given a sticker or Project Template

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That’s pretty cool!  Thanks for taking the time and effort!

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Thank you so much.  This is a very interesting, fun, and helpful app.

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@Nancy Lea - The app can only list ancestors who are directly or indirectly connected to your profile on WikiTree, and for the categories other than All, the app will only list those profiles that meet the criteria for the applicable category. The criteria for each category is provided in the category drop-down menu in the app. Many of the categories are currently dependent on the presence of a particular sticker or template on the profile.

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This app is amazing and can save so much time

idea! 30 Generations back

only thing I found was in the Category New England Witches

I know that John Alden had a son

Capt. John Alden that was Accused of Witchcraft, Salem 1692

but he did not come up in that Category

John Alden is my 10th great-grandfather

which did so up under the mayflower Category

thank you so much was this handy app

do have anymore plans for my Categorys to choose from?

Signers of the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution, Artist, Inventors

Scott wessel wessel-285

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Unable to collect ancestors. The Wikitree ID may be incorrect or the Descendant's family tree may be private. Kellum-438

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Thank you! I only tried going back 7 and 8 generations, but getting the lists in a spreadsheet is great. I will have to see if I can go back more generations. Great to have this aid now.

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@John Kellum - Kellum-438 is an unlisted (black privacy level) profile. The WikiTree ID used for the Descendant must be a profile that has a privacy level that is Private with Public Family Tree, Private with Public Biography and Family Tree, Public, or Open.

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Super cool. Fun to try to predict who will be on a list and then seeing the results! I agree with others, it helps list profiles that need more work. Thank you for creating this and sharing it!!

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I really enjoyed looking through the site. I am an amateur to doing genealogy. I am trying to find out how to add the Revolutionary & Civil War recognition. I know there are a few in each but don't know how to get them recognition.

I did pick up an orphan. Will look through more to see if they are close enough to pick up.

Thank you

Dan Deyo

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@Dan Deyo - To add Revolutionary War recognition to a profile, you can add the {{1776}} sticker. See https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Project:1776 To add US Civil War recognition to a profile, you can add the {{US Civil War}} sticker. See https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Project:US_Civil_War:_War_Between_the_States

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Thank you for this interesting "shortcut". Please continue improving this app!

An interesting category would be horse-thieves, traitors, pirates, criminals, malefactors, derelicts, mobsters, mass murderers, and similar "dark side" people. They may make more interesting discussions within families than claims of being "uncertainly" distantly related to crowned heads -- this would be the case at least for me (e.g., Jesse James, Bonnie & Clyde, Machine-gun Kelly, (et al.) have appeared in my list).

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Thank you . I did not know I had 14 ancestors that immigrated to America. On my dads side that's amazing. In Europe.

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Very useful app. It motivated me to be sure to post stickers on several of my ancestors.

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Thank you.  Great app

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Thanks Chase - app works fine, and has given me a great list to send to other family members. Only the "all" was any use to me being in Australia, and that was very good.

Thanks again, and can you describe your app - language etc as I'm an old computer guy.

Richard R.

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@Richard Robinson - Javascript, using the ReactJS library for building the user interface. It uses the WikiTree API to get ancestor information and webscrapes the relevant WikiTree pages to get the lists of profiles that are in the relevant WikiTree categories or that use the relevant WikiTree templates. This is my first Javascript app. I've done some apps in the past using Python (a few years ago) and Visual Basic (back in the 90s).

Re categories relevant to people in Australia - Please feel free to suggest new categories/filters for the app that might be of interest to a large number of people in Australia.

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I like it thank you!    ' I find it strange that altho every listed Magna Surety is a great grandfather of mine none turned up in that list but they are all  22nd- to 26th great grandfathers still you'd think some of them descendants would be listed, and no civil war people listed, so those are places I m assuming I need to place tags?

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Again Thanks Chase - Interesting. And I'll check with Australia project on Categories, but none spring to mind for me.   

R2

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@Richard - How about an Australian immigrant category? I think I could do that pretty easily.

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Chase - slight puzzling problem - Dates in Excel loaded from CSV file are either yyyy-mm-dd or dd/mm/yyyy -  EG take Roberts-23038, in Excel  DOB 1870-03-19 & DOD 12/10/1924 but both appear identical in Wikitree and your extracted file. I can't see any difference in input but excel formats them differently ?? Any ideas?

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@Richard - I think this is a longstanding problem with Excel reading dates in .csv files.

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Very interesting - should be useful. Thank you!

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yep that figures. I'm using a very old Excel. I'll now try it in LibreOffice.

Chase, thanks again for the App and interest in the problem I have.

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Thanks very much for the nifty tool Chase.

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I'm happy to know I have no ancestors in the last 20 generations with orphaned profiles! I think looking for orphaned ancestors is one of the best uses of this app.

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Thank you.

I would like to see different signers of documents.

Also being an amateur here I need to find out how to add the credentials for the Revolutionary, Civil, French and Indian, Mexican Wars.

Dan Deyo

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Thank you chase. I thought I would have ancestors in the civil war. I was surprised when I had 3 ancestors in the revolutionary war instead.

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I'm at a loss. I can't get it to work for me.

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Ruth - Just start by entering Layne-640 in "Wikitree ID of Descendant", select say 10 in the "Number of ancestor generations back" dropdown menu, and select All in the "Category" dropdown menu. Then click Find Ancestors and you will see a list of all of your ancestors within 10 generations of you that you are currently connected to on WikiTree. Note that the app does not find ancestors that are not connected to you. Since you appear to be connected to only 18 ancestors on WikiTree, it is quite likely that app and categories will not be the interesting to you and you probably have no one in most of the categories. The criteria used to include any of your 18 ancestors in a particular categories are provided on the Category dropdown menu.

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Thank you. I'm going to add more ancestors and try it again.

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What fun!  Thank you!

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Thanks. I have to go look them up. I know there are several more in many categories.

I enjoy looking up the connections.

Would love to see signers of documents and colony founders.

Dan Deyo

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Thank you very much. It was interesting and informative.

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Darlena. You had alot of decendents in the 1700s. I was not surprised. Than civil war ancestors. Even back to Massachusetts.

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Thank you, I was able to find orphaned ancestors! Good work.

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Chase .... this did not work for me and I knew that I had ancestors going back to the Mayflower.

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Chuck - The app does not make new connections between your profile and those of your ancestors. It just makes lists of the ones that are connected. The app also will not work if the profile of the "Descendant" entered in the app is fully Unlisted (a black privacy level) or Private (a red privacy level)

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I have a question on the All Ahnentafel list. What does NaN-1 mean? About half my list had that instead of something like 1-2 for Gen-Ahnen.

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It means there is a bug I need to fix. In software, NaN means Not a Number. I'll check it out.

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Anna - I think the problem is that your mother's profile is Private. As a result, the app can't "find" her and never assigns her an ahnentafel number. That wouldn't be a problem, since she doesn't appear in the app's list of your ancestors. However, since your maternal grandparents do and since their ahnentafel numbers are calculated based on her's and she doesn't have one, the whole thing breaks down and your whole maternal line never gets assigned ahnentafel numbers. If you change the privacy level of your mother's profile to Private with Public Family Tree, that should fix the problem.

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I tried that and am told "A living non-member can only be unlisted." I can't even make her private again. As "unlisted" Ancestor Listmaker doesn't seen to know what to do if I try to go from her.

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Anna - Not ideal, but for the time being, you can of course run if for each of your maternal grandparents separately.

On my todo list is the option to enter your wikitree login name and password, which I believe would allow the app to get full info on your family tree.

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@ Anna - I fixed the ahnentafel problem without having to add a login requirement. It should work for you now.

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Thank you.

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Thanks Chase Ashley!!  Great app indeed.

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Keep up the good work, love it.

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Chase, Thanks for making such a great app.  It will help many of use.  Perhaps you could add a note on the app page saying that it won't work for Private Profiles.

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I've got something like that already built in. If someone with a private profile tries to use it, a message pops up that says that their ancestors couldn't be retrieved either because the Descendant number was wrong or because the Descendant profile is Private.

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Oh, maybe that was after I tried this afternoon. It just went 'round and 'round, never ending, with no message.

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No, you're right. It used to work as I described, but I apparently broke it when I made some changes a few days ago. I just fixed it.

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Did not work for me. Wiki previously told me that I am realted to 14 of the Barons Magna Carta and this program showed non of those.

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@Joyce - The app currently isn't designed to find a living person's Magna Carta Surety Baron ancestors, at least not directly. The Barons are about 23 generations back from people living today and the app only goes 20 generations back. If the person entered as Descendant has one or more Magna Carta Gateway Ancestors connected to them on WikiTree, the app will find those and then you can use the app to get a list of the ancestors of those Gateway ancestors, which should include the Barons they are descended from, but it won't single them out.

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Thank you Chase, That makes understanding the  app much more understandable. Now I understand better how to use it for the "nearer" descendents.

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Thanks so much!  This helped me to identify ancestors who fought in the American Revolutionary War.

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I love this!  The first day that I tried to use it, I got no results.  I thought it was because it had just been released and was too busy.  

Today I stumbled upon it and tried it.  It is superfast!  I love it.  I can see from the display to whom I need to add or clean up places of birth or death.

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Jessica. We are related on Tanner side and Roby. You also had Virginia ancestors. Keep in touch Darlena Roby.

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Jessica. We are related on Tanner side and Roby. You had Virginia ancestors Keep in touch. Darlena Roby.

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Thank you Darlena Roby for the information on Tanner and roby family. I had English ancestors. Jessica Mcguirk.

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I can't get it to open.

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Maybe it collapsed under the strain of too many of us trying to use it right now. 

Presumably it will be brought back soon.

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Problem was I uploaded a new version, which I thought was fine, but didn't work once uploaded. I have now uploaded a different version, which seems to be working. If it still doesn't work, you may need to clear the old version out of your browser's cache (ie, your browser may have save the old, nonworking version and keeps trying to use that one). To clear the cached copy, on a Mac, press Command and Shift and press R; on Windows, press Control and F5.

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Great app - thanks for contributing. One note: the app appears to identify some profiles as orphan that have profile managers. For example, using Stafford-1203 as the starting point, it identifies Day-265 as an orphan profile, even though that profile shows a manager.

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Rob - The false positives on the Orphans is a problem with the data the WikiTree API provides. It happens sometimes when a profile is managed by a Project or one of the manager's privacy settings are set to Private. WikiTree has noted the problem and added it to their "bugs" list, but no assurance as to when or if it will get fixed.

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I tried it on my PC to generate a list and it just kept processing (this was just for 13 generations of accused "witches".  Will try it again later.

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Bret - There was a bug that affected some lists for people with private parents or grandparents. An updated version of the app (with the bug fixed) has now been uploaded to https://apps.wikitree.com/apps/ashley1950/listmaker/ and is also available through a link on your Family Tree & Tools page. (Going to the old address at https://apps.wikitree.com/apps/ashley1950/index.html should now redirect you to https://apps.wikitree.com/apps/ashley1950/listmaker/ but you might need to do a hard refresh to remove the old page from your browser cache.)

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what would help it when downloading that a column with the profile number of each ancestor could be included please

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Jackie - To date, I haven't included a profile number column because I am not sure it has added value. I assume that people use the download in a spreadsheet app. If you are looking at the download in a spreadsheet app (eg Excel or Numbers), the names in the Name column of the download are hyperlinked to the persons' WikiTree profiles (just like they are in the app itself), so you shouldn't need the profile numbers to find their profiles. If you do want to see the profile numbers, they are visible in the hyperlinks, which are viewable in the formula bar of the spreadsheet app.

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thanks , but the names were not hyperlinked in the spreadsheet , once downloaded
 they are in the app

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no hyper link in spreadsheet download to profiles.
 only hyperlink is in the app result
I take it I cannot post an image/ of screenshot here ,
showing no hyperlinks on my spreadsheet ?

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What spreadsheet program are you using? Also, Mac or Windows?

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xcell

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I noticed the same thing, Microsoft Excel, Windows.

Other than that, it's a great app: very useful for organizing and identifying profiles that may need attention.

Great job!

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glad its not just me !

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Hi Chase,

I tried the app and it works very well. I did have a problem downloading the information relevant to GEDCOM and it does not save or print very well. Just a comment. It would be helpful to just have a listing with Wiki ID numbers to go through and clean them.

One other request. Is it possible in future to go to 30 generations? Some royalty (e.g. Wm the Conqueror, Henry II) on trees  don't show up to until the 26th - 30th generations. Thanks for the great app! You take care!

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Carol - Re WikiTree ID's and links - Sorry you're having problems with the links. I used the app to download your ancestors for 10 generations, and the links worked properly in Excel on my Windows laptop and Notes on my MacBook and also appear in the formula bar. (They don't appear as links, but clicking them opened up the profiles in my browser.) So I'm pretty sure it a problem on your end. That said, if others are having the same problem, I may consider adding a WikiTree ID column to the downloads in the next version.

Re 30 generations - I had initially tried to go back that far, but (1) the way WikiTree's API and servers are set up, I encountered problems with doing so that I couldn't figure out how to get around and (2) depending on how may ongoing lines one has, even going back 20 generations takes a long time and can result in a table with 5,000+ rows.

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Hi Chase,

Thanks much for the feedback and help. It could be my computer. I got a new(ish) laptop that came with Windows 10 and have had some issues even with zoom and skype for business. I end up doing conference calls by phone. Because of the pandemic, my travel to ASU in Phoenix is limited and really need to get together with our IT guys to work the 'bugs' our (or work the bugs out of me). I understand about 30 generations; however, eventually there will be a way. Oh...and I don't use Mac so that might be another issue! Again, thanks sooooo much!

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AWESOME WORK Mr. Chase Ashley!  This is the best application I’ve seen in quite sometime!  By the way, It looks like you’re my 7th cousin!  

I hope that in the near future we can trace our ancestry 30 generations back!

Keep up your great work!

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@ Jackie and @ Fann - I just uploaded a new version of the app that includes a WikiTree ID column in the downloaded file. The new version has a new url: https://apps.wikitree.com/apps/ashley1950/ancestorexplorer/ The big addition in the new version is a mapping feature. In light of the new feature, I have rebranded the app as Ancestor Explorer.

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Hello Chase,

What does it mean when my grandpa’s says he has 12 duplicates?

Weaver-12550 (Earl Weaver) has 501 unique ancestors and 12 duplicate ancestors (additional lines of descent from a unique ancestor) within 20 generations.

Thanks 

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Terri: It means that some of your ancestors married relatives (typically cousins), so the same individual person appears more than once in your ancestral lines. This is very common -- and the farther back we go in our ancestry, the more often we see it. These weren't necessarily first-cousin marriages; in my own ancestry there are more than a few 2nd-cousin marriages, as well as situations where fairly distant cousins married.

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Hi Terri, I am just adding some information that supports what Ellen Smith has just written to you. These 'cousin marriages' have sometimes been referred to as 'endogamy' although this latter term is more relevant to certain ethnic groups (e.g. Jews, Polynesians, Low German Mennonites, the Amish, Acadians or Cajuns), 

There is a good description of 'Cousin Marriages' in wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage) that includes tables and figures to see how this comes about through grandparents great grandparents, etc. Every now and again as I work on Wikitree, I'll come across a husband and wife with the same last name at birth (LNAB) and I generally do a bit of searching only to find that, sure enough, they have a shared grandparent or GGP. I then add a Research Note to these profiles indicating the 'cousin marriage' and how they are related. As Ellen mentioned, it occurs more often than we realized, especially in very early ancestry and among early royal ancestry. 

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Thanks for your explanation Ellen.

Yes, even my grandparents both my grandma and my grandpa who were married , married each other’s siblings. My grandpa Weaver and his brother both married two Snell sisters. That’s just one I know of. Ha

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Hello Carol,

Thanks for the link.

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Thanks Ellen Smith. We are actually 10th cousins.

Great to connect.

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Hi Terri, we are 16th cousins 3xr...gotta love WikiTree!

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Great and thank you.

Answer 1

Thank you, Chase, I think. I tried your app and it works fine. Just fine. Now I feel guilty that I have 150 ancestors (going back 20 generations) who are orphans. But then again, there are probably 150 members who are also descended from those same orphans.

Comments

Great work Chase! Very nicely done! Lucy, I too have many orphans, even more I’m afraid.  I suspect we’re not alone in that.

Chase, I love the ability to select ancestors from a specific group. The group I’d like to see would be Filles du Roi. Do you have to program each group separately, or can you just add to the drop down list?

Kudos again. Love the clean look of the app.

Greg

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Currently, I do have to do each group separately. But it's not a ton of work to add one. I'll check out Filles du Roi.

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Greg - I added the Filles du Roi category in the version on my computer and it works fine. I can see why you are interested. According to the app, 59 of your ancestors have the Filles du Roi template on their profiles. I'll let you know when I post the updated version. I may wait a few days to see if people come up with other things that I want to add.

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Thanks Chase!  That's amazing!  Take care,

 - Greg

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Here are some additional template-based categories related to defined ancestral populations (similar to Filles du Roi) that I think should be included in this nifty new feature:

• New Netherland Settlers (based on a template)
• Palatine Migrants (based on a template)
• New Jersey Founders (no template, but it has a clear definition)

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Greg/Ellen - I uploaded a new version that has Filles du Roi, New Netherland Settlers and Palatine Migrants as categories

Answer 2

Thanks Chase, I'll have to give it a try!

Answer 3

Thanks, Chase! It works beautifully.

Answer 4

Chase, this is so cool! It's right up there with one of Greg Clarke's apps. Nicely done. Playing around with this now. =D

Answer 5

Nice application. Not sure why, but when I tried the Orphan ancestors list, it finds some of mine that has PMs. If you get ancestors of McCallum-175 with the Orphan option, there is a John McCallum (McCallum-123) who has PMs. Elizabeth Willams (Williams-8431) and her husband (Robertson-1456) also show up.

Comments

I noticed that, Doug. The WikiTree data that I get shows a PM whose profile is fully private as having an WikitTree ID of 0, which is also the code for a profile that has no PM. I plan on looking into it further to see if there is a way to distinguish the two.

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In these cases, there are two PMs. One is private but the other is not. Still, it is very useful even with this problem.

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"In these cases, there are two PMs. One is private but the other is not" - Good point. That I could definitely work around.

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I have adopted 'now' all the ones that it was showing in the 'orphan' group, but I have several that had PM, also.  Some had Project Accounts as PM, but not all of them.

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Doug - Unfortunately, there does not appear to be a workaround. Even if a profile has multiple managers, the WikiTree API only returns the WikiTree ID for one of the managers, so if that is a PM with a fully private profile, the value returned is identical to the value returned for a profile with no PMs.

Also, it appears that a profile whose only PM is a project also comes back with a value of 0, so will appear to be orphaned. No current workaround for that either.

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I don't think that is too big of a deal. It works great. Thanks again.

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Thanks for the update Chase. Definitely sounds like a deficiency in the API and well beyond your control. It is still a very useful option.

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Chase: Tell Jamie Nelson about your discovery regarding profiles with profile managers that turn up as orphans. This is something that has been reported multiple times in G2G as a bug.

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Thanks, Ellen. Jamie said she'd put it on the bugs list. But no promises as to if or when it would get fixed.

Answer 6

That's absolutely beautiful in its simplicity! Really loving it. 

Would it be possible to match for an arbitrary category? i.e. Could you add a box (as an alternative to teh drop-down menu) and where a user could input any WikiTree category name to match from? That could really be a multipurpose tool. Right now it feels rather US-centric. 

Comments

JN - I acknowledge the current US centric aspect. Happy to try to add other categories that would be of interest to a significant number of WT users.

Re any category - Barrier to a generic solution include (1) it would require the user to type in the category name and the app to somehow check that against all category names (I am not aware of a way to do this that would be fast enough to be viable) and (2) profiles contained in a subcategory are generally not listed in the higher level category, so in order to find all the profiles in a higher level category it is necessary to check not only that category but every subcategory (and sub-subcategory) of that category, which I think would be too slow to be viable. That's why most of the "categories" in the app actually work off of the presence of a "template". I found that there is a single WT page for each general template (such as {{1776}} for Rev War profiles), which lists all the profiles that contain that template.

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That makes a lot of sense, Chase! Again, I really appreciate this app. It's great. 

Answer 7

Very nice. Good layout, nice and clean. Very quick!

Answer 8

Looks great, very easy to use.  I would have 2 requests, if possible.  

1. Have the download list with a 'csv' extension so that it could easily be opened by a spreadsheet program.  At least for me, it downloaded with no extension.

2. Could the wikitree IDs be added to each record?  That would be extremely helpful for keeping track of things without us having to search to find them.  

Thanks for the effort and keep up the good work.

Comments

1) You can just add ".csv" before you download the file.

2) The name is a link. In Excel you click once to follow the link. Also, it shows the full id (part of the link) when you mouse-over.

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I know I can set the extension manually, but I wasn't given an option when it was downloaded and if it was done, no one would have to do it.  There are plenty of people that are not computer savvy to know how to do that.

Also, I didn't realize the name was a link, so that is good to know.

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Linda - re csv - I'm a bit confused by your comment, as my downloads do show up in Finder with a .csv extension. Are you using Windows or a Mac? It's possible that my Mac is automatically adding the extension.

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I am in Windows.  When I clicked on the downloaded file, it said I didn't have a program associated with it.  When I looked in the folder where it was downloaded to, there was no extension on it.

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Thanks for the info, Linda. I'll expressly add the .csv extension in my next update.

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Chase, when I downloaded it, I also had the same experience as Linda. I had to export it into Excel.

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Michelle - Yes, on a Windows machine, it appears you need the .csv extension. I'll add the .csv extension in the next update.

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Linda/Michelle - I uploaded a new version that should add the .csv extension to the downloaded files. Let me know if it works (or not).

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It works great!! Download created a csv file which Excel opened up with no problems!!  Thanks.

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Save the file to a folder, right-click the file name and select ‘Rename’ from the context menu. Then add .csv to the file name and press Enter. The file should now open.

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It is now creating a csv extension.  Previously, it didn't have an extension.

Answer 9

This is awesome, thanks for putting this together!

Answer 10

Fantastic! I love it already (even after only my second search).

Answer 11

Thank you for developing something that will be useful to so many people.

Answer 12

Thank you so very much for this wonderful app!  After running it, I see where I need to add data on some of my ancestor's profiles!

Answer 13

Thank you, Chase.  This is so helpful.  For some reason it didn't pick up one of my ancestors who does seem to have the 1776 template??

https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=St_Ores-3&public=1

Comments

M - To see if a profile has the template, the app does not actually pull and search the profile bio. Instead, it checks to see if the profile is listed on these pages: https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:1776&limit=5000&from=0  For some reason, St_Ore-3 isn't listed on those pages as containing the template. I have no idea why. 

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The St_Ores-3 profile is not on the first page of the "Whatlinkshere" list. It's on the 2nd page. Could it be that the app is only checking the first 5,000 profiles on the list?

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I figured out what the problem was. The Wikitree API was returning the WikiTree ID of "St_Ores-3" as "St Ores-3", without the underline, while the page of links had the underline. I have now adjusted the apps code to check both with and without the underline, so it is now properly finding St_Ores-3. I haven't uploaded the new version yet, however, as I am still working on an additional enhancement.

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I have now uploaded a version that corrects the problem.

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Thanks, Chase!!!

Answer 14

Fantastic !  

I was searching Mayflower ancestors one at a time.

Answer 15

Well done. I love it. Do you have this on GitHub?

Comments

Not yet. But I'll try to post it this weekend.

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Perfect. Excellent tool.

Answer 16

I was just thinking that it would be cool to be able to search ancestors by category.  Awesome work!

Any chance of expanding the list to one or two generations of descent from each ancestor as well?  I feel like this is generally where most of the interesting characters in my family lie.

Comments

I'll think about it, but not currently in the plans.

Answer 17

You absolutely solved my issue....

https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1043457/how-find-ancestors-that-died-during-the-spanish-flu-pandemic

Thank YOU!

Comments

Glad you found useful :-)

Answer 18

Very cool app!  I've already used it to update info on my own profile regarding my heritage!

A question about the Huguenot search terms:

Was the goal to only search for Ancestors who are Huguenot Emigrants?  If so, shouldn't the Huguenot search template be {{Huguenot Emigrant}} rather than {{Huguenot Ancestor}}?

The {{Huguenot Ancestor}} template is not currently shown on the Huguenot Migration Project page.  I'm not sure, but I think it is being phased out.  (That was before my time!)

Either way, thank you for a great tool!

Comments

Good point, Bartley. It appears that the {{Huguenot Ancestor}} template has been retired. However, there are currently still more profiles with the {{Huguenot Ancestor}} template than the newer {{Huguenot Emigrant}} template, so in the next update I am going to have my app's Huguenot category include profiles that have either template.

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Thank you!

And until your next update, this tool can help us find the retired templates that need to be converted!

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Bartley - I updated the app. The Huguenot category not returns profiles that have either the Huguenot Ancestor template or the Huguenot Emigrant template.

In case someone wants to update all of the profiles with the Huguenot Ancestor template, the list can be found at: https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Huguenot_Ancestor

Answer 19

Great job, Chase. I found some ancestors I wasn’t aware of.

Answer 20

This is an awesome app Chase! Thanks!! (Although my watchlist doesn't thank you... it's creeping up toward 2000 again - discovered a bunch of "new-to-me" ancestors whose profiles had been orphaned).

Cheers, Liz