Find my Past

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Our Goals

The goal of this project is to discuss all aspects of the use of FindmyPast, which is a UK-based online genealogy service.

Both as a standalone platform for creating and storing your family tree, and the interaction with WikiTree via various WikiTree apps.

Team Members

Team member

Location

Photo

Allan Entwistle

London, UK

Vicki Blanco

Santiago, Chile

Anne (Champion de Crespigny) Young

Australia

Maggie Hooper

Rob Wilson

Membership Information

Will you join us? send me a private message.

Topics for consideration

Sharing family trees with others on FmP - this was very useful during the recent WikiGames event.

Looking for potential family members who already have a WikiTree profile.

Searching FmP for sources in particular the 1921 census of England and Wales.

The use of FmP with other genealogy software in particular MyHeritage Family Tree Builder, Legacy 9 Family Tree, and Gramps.

1921 Census for England and Wales

The 1921 census was carried out on 19 June 1921 ^[9]

The 1931 census was destroyed by fire in 1942 ^[10]

There was no 1941 census due to the Second World War.

The 1951 census was carried out on 8 April 1951 ^[11]
The census was conducted under the Census Act 1920 which prohibits disclosure for 100 years,
this means that the 1951 census will be made public in January 2052.

National Registration Act 1939 UK

On Friday 29 September 1939, householders were required to record details on a registration form. ^[12]
The 1939 register does not include the birthplace of the individual, but it should include the exact date of birth.
The register was meant to be a living document and can show that maiden surnames have been replaced by married surnames when registered persons later married and can also show early National Insurance numbers / NHS number.
The record of a living person is redacted.

Moving your family tree from one genealogy service to another

This can be easily achieved by downloading a file called a GEDCOM ^[13] from one service and then uploading it to the new service.
You can look at the GEDCOM with a text editor, i would suggest that you use Notepad ++ ^[7]

A GEDCOM file is made up of 3 main elements :-

individual people (INDI record)
a nuclear family (FAM record)
and sources of information (SOUR record)

Transferring your family tree from FmP to WikiTree

This can be accomplished by either uploading your GEDCOM to WikiTree or by using the app WikiTree Sourcer.

Uploading a GEDCOM to WikiTree

Use this link to upload your GEDCOM to Wikitree.
There is a help page for those using this process for the first time.
Once you have uploaded your GEDCOM to WikTree you will receive a report which contains suggested profiles which are already on WikiTree, this can be very useful if you wish to connect your tree to the 'outside world' of the global tree hosted by WikiTree.

GEDCOMpare

GEDCOMpare is the process of comparing the profiles in your GEDCOM upload with a selection of profiles which are already on WikiTree.
You will get a message similar to this :-
Compare: There are 24 suggested matches to consider
For each line which has the word 'suggested' hi-lighted in yellow, click on the associated COMPARE button, the new page will have the profile from your GEDCOM on the left portion of the screen and a suggested profile on the right hand side - you have to make a decision as to whether the profiles are for the same person or not.
If they are for the same person then click on the 'Match to' button, if they are not for the same person, then click on the 'Reject' button, if you are un-decided then it is best to click on the 'Reject' button, and if in the future they are for the same person then they can be merged together once you are certain.
When you have either dismissed comparisons or agreed with them the report will change format to one with either 'matched' or 'ADD' markers.
It is best then to go to the top of the list and click on 'WikiTree Profiles' tab so that the matched profiles are shown, check if there are any profiles which have 2 or more matches.
If this is the case, then check each profile and refer back to your family tree in FmP to ascertain which profile is properly matched, one of the main reasons for multiple matches is where children in the same family have the same name, presuming that one or more of the children died young. The other reason for duplicates is that you already have a profile on WikiTree and that another member has the same or a similar profile, you may need to arrange a merge if this is the case.
Occasionally, you may find that GEDCOMpare will finish before you have sorted all the suggestions available, if this is the case then continue to finish off all of the available suggestions.
You will then have a message similar to :-
Compare: There are -2 suggested matches to consider
Click twice on the 'Birth' tab at the top of the list, then click on 'REFRESH SUGGESTED MATCHES' - that will re-start the GEDCOMpare process, this may need to be done several times.
You can now go ahead and add those persons with the 'ADD' marker to your family tree on WikiTree.

One point to note here, you can get upto 8 possible comparisons for each profile in your original GEDCOM, it will to a large extent depend upon how common is the surname in your profiles. So it is best to have no more than 50 profiles in each GEDCOM that you upload.

You can easily split a GEDCOM into individual families by using one of the standalone family tree building programs such as the MyHeritage one. ^[4]

Adding Profiles

Assuming that you now have a GEDCOMpare report where all the suggestions have been taken care of, you should have a list of either ADD buttons or matched profiles.
Apart from where you start a completely new family tree it is always best to add profiles which have a link to an existing profile on WikiTree, so a parent to an existing child or a child to an existing parent or a spouse to an existing spouse. see note 1.
If you are adding a child then you should make certain that you are not adding the same child - as the GEDCOMpare process is not 100% accurate and can overlook some profiles which already exist. This is difficult where families have the same or similar named children, where maybe one or more children have died young.
You can force a comparison by clicking on the 'Compare with' button and then inserting the WikiTree ID of the profile you wish to compare to.
Remember that if you use several GEDCOMS to add members to the same family - you will need to refresh the GEDCOMpare process in order to update the matching process.

It is best to check If you already have an existing profile on WikiTree to link to - this can be verified by checking the GEDCOMpare report, if there are no matched profiles - then you do not have a profile to link to or it can mean that the 'comparison process' has missed the match, if this is the case then you can force a comparison and make the match yourself.
If you find that you do not have any matched profiles in your GEDCOM then it is best to manually add a person, usually the oldest or the youngest person in your GEDCOM, and then to link all of the other profiles to this person.
To aid this process it is best to click on the 'Birth' tab at the top of the list a few times to bring the youngest person (most recent birth year) to the top of the list.
Once you have done this it is best to go to the bottom of the list and check if you have any profiles which have neither a birth year nor a death year, it is best to ignore these profiles since WikiTree needs either a birth year or death year to add a profile.
Once you have added a profile you will notice that a tick will appear on the left hand side to acknowledge that the profile has been added. If you wish to ignore certain profiles you can add the tick yourself - it will reduce the intensity of the ADD button, but you can still override it if you wish.
When you have added all of the profiles that you wish it is best to REFRESH the GEDCOMpare process, you can then remove the blue ticks if you wish.
You may find that on subsequent Refreshes the comparison process will pick up duplicate profiles which it missed on a previous report.

CC7 Views app

This app can be found by a rather circuitous route, by clicking on the surname menu (sometimes called the person menu) in your profile or one that you have trusted list status, then click on 'Tree App' which is at the bottom of the menu. If necessary change the tree app to 'CC7 Views', select 6 degrees, and depending upon how many profiles you have on WikiTree either select 'Get CC6' or 'Get Degree 6 Only' (if you have a lot of profiles in your CC7). The tree will sway to show that it is working, once it is complete, type in 0 under the Par. tab. Then click on the 'Birth Date' tab a few times to bring the most recent birth year to the top of the list. This provides you with a list of profiles in your CC7 which have no parents identified and if you add one or other of their parents it will increase your CC7.

You now need to go back to your family tree in FmP and see if you either already have parent details for these profiles or by using the search facilities in FmP can produce profiles for them.
Once this has been done you can download the GEDCOM from FmP. However, as was mentioned above it is best to process the GEDCOM so that no more than 50 profiles are in the GEDCOM and preferably no more than 30. This still allows for plenty of additions of new family members onto WikiTree.
The ideal situation is to have just one family member in the GEDCOM whose profile already exists on WikiTree and all the other profiles are new, as long as those new family members are connected to the existing profile with a direct link, child to parent, or vice versa or spouse to spouse.

The other possibility is to add several families at the same time, each family have one linked profile already on WikiTree. In order to provide such a GEDCOM it will be necessary to split it up into family groups, this can be easily done with the use of the MyHeritage Family Tree Builder.

MyHeritage Family Tree Builder

You can easily split a GEDCOM into individual families by using one of the standalone family tree building programs such as the MyHeritage one. ^[4] After downloading and installing the program click on the 'New' project tab and then click on 'Import GEDCOM'. Click on 'Browse' and select the GEDCOM from your files. Click on 'Next' several times until the GEDCOM is uploading.
Once uploaded you will then 'Export' (download) the GEDCOM but only specific parts of it. This task is accomplished by naming persons in the family tree and either asking for their ancestors or their descendants or both to be exported.
Several persons can be chosen, so you can end up with a very specific part of your family tree in the final GEDCOM which you are then going to upload to WikiTree. When choosing to add the descendants of a particular person you may wish to end the selection at a particular person, this can be done by selecting that person and deleting them from the family tree, remember this is only a temporary location for your family tree and deleting them in no way will affect your tree on FmP.

To start the 'Export' procedure, click on the 'File' tab and select 'Export GEDCOM', click on 'save as', and choose a name to call your GEDCOM, click 'Next' and then again click 'Next', then click the button 'Include only selected people', a new page will open up, type in the name of the person you, click 'Select'. you can then Edit and Add a new person, when finished click on 'OK' and then 'Next', the GEDCOM will now be exported.

The GEDCOM can now be uploaded to WikItree, you will be told the number of individuals and the year earliest person was born. Once the GEDCOMpare report is finished you will be told of the number of suggested matches.

Adding sources to an Existing profile

You can use the CC7 views app to suggest profiles where there may not be a source, and then use the WikiTree Sourcer app to add a source from FmP to an existing profile on WikiTree.
There are two methods to achieve a result :-
method 1. - go to the profile in your FmP family tree and click on either the 'View Hints' tab or click on the 'Search records' tab to locate a suitable source, or
method 2. - from the profile in WikiTree click on the [1] tab to activate the WikiTree browser extension, and then search the suggested sources for a correct one for the profile.

Reducing the File size of your GEDCOM

If you have several thousand profiles on FmP you will find that it takes longer to download a GEDCOM. It is always advisable to download a GEDCOM as backup to save the changes once you have added several new families to your tree. As was mentioned above a GEDCOM is made up of information about individuals, families and sources.
If you have transferred the majority of the profiles over to WikiTree it is possible to completely remove the sources part of a GEDCOM and keep the information about individual persons and their families. By using Notepad++ you can delete the sources part, save the resulting GEDCOM and upload it back to FmP under a new name, do not delete your old one.

Problems when Exporting a GEDCOM

The main reason for a problem when exporting (downloading) a GEDCOM is that the file is corrupted. As was mentioned above a GEDCOM contains information about individuals and their relationships in families both as a child in one family and then possibly as a spouse in one or more families. Problems can occur when an individual profile is either deleted and then recreated or relationships within families are changed, particularly where a spouse remarries.
FmP uses the GEDCOM tags 'FAMC' to describe an individual as a child in a family and uses the tag 'FAMS' to describe an individual as a spouse in a family,
so we could have the following for John Lowe :-
0 @I23@ INDI
1 NAME John /Lowe/
1 FAMS @F425@
1 FAMC @F136@ where John is a child in family 'F136' and a spouse in family 'F425'
or
0 @I23@ INDI
1 NAME John /Lowe/
1 FAMS @F425@
1 FAMS @F426@
1 FAMC @F136@ where John is a child in family 'F136' and a spouse in family 'F425' and family 'F426'
but not
0 @I23@ INDI
1 NAME John /Lowe/
1 FAMS @F425@
1 FAMC @F136@
1 FAMC @F283@ John can not be a child in more than one family
in other words John can be a spouse in more than one family, but not a child in more than one family.
This situation would probably cause a failure when the GEDCOM is exported particularly when using MyHeritage Family Tree Builder.

The various tags used in a GEDCOM are described here. ^[8]

Members Page

There is a Members Page

Notes

Note 1

It is not possible to link one sibling directly to another sibling, without first having one existing parent profile, therefore if the names of both parents are unknown then an Unknown name profile must be created first for one of the parents with an estimated birth year.

References

Images: 1

Find my Past 1921 Census

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