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Friday, March 3, 2017

We're Related

We're Related is a smart phone app from Ancestry.com.

I think it's relatively new and, therefore, not enormously interesting since it requires that people related to you also have the app for it to be most effective.

The app uses the family trees in Ancestry to look for family connections with your family tree which you enter into the app, only a couple of generations.

It provides you with a list of possible connections, predominantly celebrities, with common ancestors.  As is widely known, since the family trees on Ancestry are provided by an enormous number of people with hugely varying expertise, from none to professional, the connections are mostly questionable.

Still, you never know.  I've seen a few celebrity trees that have interesting possibilities.

I have 2 or 3 actual family connections in the app, with people who I already knew are related.

Here's the latest thing I found:

Below each of the suggested celebrity connections, is a series of icons:  a tiny family chart, a heart and a variation on a menu link icon to share, etc.  If you click on the family chart icon, the app gives you what they suggest as a common ancestor with that celebrity.  Below that are connecting lines to each of you and at which generation each of you are from that common ancestor.

In most cases, this doesn't give you much because none of the connections seem are familiar.  But, here's one I found that I'll pursue.

The actress, Kate Upton, is listed as a possible 8th cousin, twice removed, to me.  Generally speaking, I'm not very interested in celebrities and that connection is very distant.  But, once I discovered the feature to see both family trees, I tried most of them and Kate Upton's showed some possibilities.

Our possible common ancestor is a Jannetje Roosa.  I'm very familiar with the surname since a Roosa had tanneries in southern NYS where many of my ancestors lived.  Clicking on Kate's link to Roosa, I find that her ancestors include Van Ettens, Cuddebacks and Swartwouts and all of those surnames are very familiar to me and I have relatives by marriage in at least 2 of those families.  So, it is very possible that the relationship between Kate Upton and I is correct and I will make some time to look into it.

So, while the app is very new and entertaining and not yet very useful, it does show some possibilities.

I'll describe some features more tomorrow.

Good family tracking.

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