Family Tree Tips

Tips for Using Our Family Trees

Navigating the Family Trees is easy. Every page – including this one – has a Family Tree Menu Bar that includes the following pull-down menus: 1) Search [People], 2) Find [Names/Dates/Places], 3) Media [Photos, Documents, Etc.], and 4) [Research] Info. After you have navigated to the page that has the type of information that you want, select the Tree that interests you.

“People” pages have the following tabs: 1) Individual, 2) Family, 3) Ancestors (Chart), 4) Descendants (Chart), 5) Relationship (Calculator), and 6) Timeline (of U.S. History).

Guests may suggest changes by using the Contact Us form (Info>>Contact Us).

Member Access

Members – if they choose to log in – have additional access.

– Download GEDCOM files

– Suggest changes to People, Families, and Sources, from within a Tree.

– Add Media files to an Individual’s record.

– Print 1) pages (as tables), 2) group sheets and many types of charts (as pdf files), and reports (as sortable CSV files). They also may request custom reports, to aid their research.

New Members have immediate, read-only access to the Trees, as “Guests”. They will be provided with temporary login credentials to the Family Trees – which need to be created manually by a volunteer Administrator – within a few days.

Feature 1 – Verify Your Doty Lineage!

PEDS Members – Please verify your Doty lineage! The best way to do this is as follows.

1. Search and select the Doty ancestor whose descendants you want to check. DO NOT select Edward1 Doty. If you do, after a l-o-n-g time, you will get a useless Register of over 90,000+ names! PEDS knows all about the first Five Generations, so select your ancestor who comes next in line.

2. Select the “Descendants” tab, then the “Register” tab. The default setting is FOUR generations. Change this in the menu box to 16 generations. This ensures that you capture the most recent generations, too. After a few moments, a Register of all of your selected ancestor’s descendants in the Family Tree will be generated. These descendants are numbered, so this Register gives you a headcount, too.

3. Print the Register, if desired, to mark it up.

4. The easiest way to request changes is to complete our online Member Lineage Form. It is available on our main Website, under Membership. Even if you have no changes, please notify our Historian directly at historian@edwarddoty.org that you have completed a review.

Although we hope that you will check your collateral relatives as well, let’s all start with Edward Doty’s descendants. On behalf of your cousins, thanks!

Feature 2 – Your Sources, Please . . .

The purpose of citing the sources of your genealogical information is to enable other research to re-trace and evaluate your work. Only in this way can we preserve the most accurate information about our family histories. So, cite your sources – for names, dates, and places – as best as you can. We do not require you to submit formal citations. For example, “Firsthand Knowledge of Submitter” or “Interview with Aunt Sally Doty on ____ 2007” are acceptable. We particularly value unique family documents. Did you inherit the family Bible? Will you scan and share the family tree page with your cousins? How about hard-to-find civil birth / marriage / death or church baptism / confirmation / wedding / burial records?

If you want your citations to be more professional, then consult Evidence!, by Elizabeth Shown Mills (1997), still the most-widely used stylebook for genealogical citations.

Feature 3 – Do You Have a “Most Wanted”?

Have you hit a “brick wall” in your Doty lineage research? Maybe one of your cousins can help. Members may request that their research question(s) be posted on the “Most Wanted” page (Info>>Most Wanted). Use the Contact Us form (Info>>Contact Us) to submit your request. Include your name and e-address, so that others may contact you regarding your question.

Feature 4 – Custom Reports

Our Family Tree software enables us to design and generate simple custom reports. Members are welcome to request a custom report that might aid their research. For example, would a list of everybody in our database with the first name “George” who was born “after 1799” and “before 1900” help you? Custom reports that are of general interest are posted on the Reports page (Info>>Reports), for all Members to see. Use the Contact Us form (Info>>Contact Us) to submit your request.