Your Active Searches Tour: Entering An Ancestor

Here are step-by-step instructions for using Your Active Searches page. This page is the first of eight pages on the tour of the Your Active Searches section of this website. Links to the other pages can be found at the bottom of this page.

The Active Searches page is useful for:

• New Researchers. It provides an easy way to search the major sites that have family trees.
• Experienced Researchers. It allows you to save up to ten ancestors for repeated searching. This helps you check sites every so often to see if new information is available on family trees. You can do this type of checking quickly without having to re-enter ancestor information.

Entering an Ancestor

1. Go to the Active Searches page. If you have already opened that page, return to it.
2. Choose an ancestor.
3. Enter as much information about this ancestor as you can. The following items are required: first name, last name, gender, and either birth year or death year along with the accuracy of the birth year or death year. If you need to guess on the birth year or death year, you can indicate a range on your guess using the accuracy of the birth year or death year.

As a suggestion, choose an ancestor that is further back than a grandparent. The further back you go, the more likely you are to be searching for a person that someone else has searched before you. The best ancestor to choose is one where you know his or her father's name and spouse's name.

Note that when you use the Active Searches page, you do not need to be concerned about the best way to search. Simply enter everything you know. The best searches will automatically be generated for you.

Saving an Ancestor

When you have entered the information about an ancestor, press the brown "Save" button at the bottom of the form. See the example below. You can click anywhere on the example to see a larger version.