How You can Help Yourself to Taste Success!

[Alexander Bisset]

I do sometimes wonder if I shouldn't just add a report that says show me the census for a random surname report to FTAnalyzer. The idea would be instead of you looking up specific people or working through a long list, it chooses a random surname from the surnames of your direct ancestors. You can then check the colour census report for that branch, which it is quite likely is a branch you've not bothered with for a while.

We all tend to focus on particular names and let some branches of our tree wither a bit. Having a report prompt you to follow a random branch might breath new life into that branch, and indeed your research, as it would give you something different to focus on.

 

[Tim]

It's an interesting thought

However I'm finding the new Family Filter report on the Colour Reports tab to very useful. it lets you see just one family at a time and see if people have been missed off censuses, or the BMD report shows which Births, Marriages and deaths are missing. Another great report Alexander.

 

[Red Dragon]

Hi Everyone!

Here's a weekly update on how well people have been doing over at LostCousins.

• 38 new members joined the LostCousins site
• 2,005 new entries have been added and
• 310 relatives have been matched.

Bit of another slow week this week, but members up and matches up.

We haven't caught up with the 605 deficit yet but 310 new matches this week.

Good Luck everyone!!

Here's a graph showing the activity over at the Lost Cousins site.

 

[Red Dragon]

Hi Everyone!

Here's a weekly update on how well people have been doing over at LostCousins.

• 42 new members joined the LostCousins site
• 1,411 new entries have been added and
• 59 relatives have been matched.

Bit of another slow week this week, weather is brightening up, people are visiting families and having BBQ's.

Finally we have caught up with that deficit. Alexander has added the random family report to FTAnalyzer and updated the maps functionality, pretty amazing stuff.
I've been using FTA to tidy up my countries and regions, and now have some pretty spectacular maps.

I've added quite a few people recently, so I'll be using FTA to tell me which ones I need to add to LC.

Good Luck everyone!!

Here's a graph showing the activity over at the Lost Cousins site.

 

[Red Dragon]

Hi Everyone!

Here's a weekly update on how well people have been doing over at LostCousins.

• 55 new members joined the LostCousins site
• 1,631 new entries have been added and
• -6 relatives have been matched.

A slight pick up in the first 2 numbers, but it looks like another member has removed their relatives

I added lots of people using FTA but still have more to add.

Good Luck everyone!!

Here's a graph showing the activity over at the Lost Cousins site.

 

[peter]

it looks like another member has removed their relatives

There were no account closures that would have led to this, so it is more likely to be the result of someone deleting their spouse's relatives from their own account.

However it's also possible that a member manually deleted all their entries in disgust at something I wrote in my newsletter - someone who works for the GRO, perhaps?????

 

[Red Dragon]

Hi Everyone!

Here's a weekly update on how well people have been doing over at LostCousins.

• 41 new members joined the LostCousins site
• 1,757 new entries have been added and
• 58 relatives have been matched.

New entries and relatives matched are both up this week. And it's always good to see new members joining.

However it's also possible that a member manually deleted all their entries in disgust at something I wrote in my newsletter - someone who works for the GRO, perhaps?????

I don't believe anybody could get upset about what you write, its from the heart.

Peter, I can't remember now, but do you send a welcome email to people who join? If you do, maybe you could mention/recommend FTAnalyzer in it as a method to help these new members benefit from Lost Cousins? There are many great Lost Cousins related reports in FTAnalyzer now.

Good Luck everyone!!

Here's a graph showing the activity over at the Lost Cousins site.

 

[Red Dragon]

Hi Everyone!

Here's a weekly update on how well people have been doing over at LostCousins.

• 25 new members joined the LostCousins site
• 1,846 new entries have been added and
• 100 relatives have been matched.

An increase in new entries and relatives matched this week, giving a relatives matched to new entries ratio of 1 in 18.

I see an interesting debate has started on whether 1861 should be added to Lost Cousins, but in the meantime it's 1881 that's important to the vast majority of users as it's here that you are most likely to make your first matches. Add your relatives and their relatives for 1881, it's not difficult and it's very quick and easy to do, a whole household takes me under a minute to do. So give yourselves a target, at least 3 households added everyday.

If you need help in understanding who to add, then use FTAnalyzer. It has some great reports for identifying who to add.

Good Luck everyone!!

Here's a graph showing the activity over at the Lost Cousins site.

 

[Liberty]

I see an interesting debate has started on whether 1861 should be added to Lost Cousins, but in the meantime it's 1881 that's important to the vast majority of users as it's here that you are most likely to make your first matches. Add your relatives and their relatives for 1881, it's not difficult and it's very quick and easy to do, a whole household takes me under a minute to do. So give yourselves a target, at least 3 households added everyday.

Thanks for the statistics, Red Dragon
As to the urging to add 1881 records, you are probably preaching to the converted as far as Members go, so this must be aimed at Visitors....
If you are a Visitor, THIS MEANS YOU!!! get those 1881 census refs in, NOW!

 

[Tim]

Hi Visitors, I echo what Liberty said. You can join Lost Cousins here, its simple and easy. Enter the basic details of your 1881 census relatives and search for other members who share your ancestors. Once you're a member of Lost Cousins, the next step will be membership to this useful and informative forum.

You have nothing to lose, and everything to gain!!!

 

[Grapes]

Although I have only just started using this forum I have been a member of Lost Cousins for much longer. I have entered all the ancestors I can find in all the censuses (allowing for some historical family anomalies which have not helped this endeavour) and yet have not matched once. I wondered whether there are any stats on matching and if so whether my case is an unusual one?

 

[Alexander Bisset]

I wondered whether there are any stats on matching and if so whether my case is an unusual one?

This very thread has over a year's worth of stats on matching, basics but may be what you are looking for. Peter has also provided a "match potential" figure on your My Summary page which is a statistic based on the number of entries you have entered in various census. This number will vary according to how much data other people have entered as well as you.

Bear in mind that the England and Wales 1881 census has got far more entries than any of the others so depending on where your relatives lived you may or may not be able to concentrate on this census. For example most of mine are NE Scotland so I've only one census to choose from when entering Lost Cousins data. Yet I've got over 400 entries however because they are mostly Scotland 1881 my match potential is currently only 1.4194.

I have however made 4 matches although one was a referral, so only 3 new matches in 10 years I do also know that from FTAnalyzer that I've still got 36 census entries to enter and I really must get round to doing that.

 

[peter]

It probably won't be a surprise if I say that most of have a hundred or more living relatives who are 3rd cousins or closer - in a competition I ran some years ago to find the member who could name the most 3rd cousins the winner had almost 800!!!

But what might surprise you is that our late Victorian ancestors would have had a similar number of cousins. Of course, ancestors from the same line would have shared the same cousins, but when you consider how many different lines there were in 1881 the total number of cousins could be in the thousands.

I've only entered 800 of my relatives from 1881, but some members have entered 2,000 or more!

When you look at statistics like that it underlines why it is that increasing the number of censuses can be counter-productive - nobody has the time to enter that many relatives from every census.

 

[Grapes]

Thank you Alexander and Peter. My match potential is 0.59 based on 152 entries from England. However I've not been a member for anything like 10 years. Sadly a lot of my paternal family lived close together in an area of Northamptonshire where the 1841 census papers were lost so they are all missing from my LC entries for that year, including my oldest known paternal ancestor. I think that I've entered all my ancestors and blood relatives from the 1881 and 1911 censuses apart from my paternal great grandfather and his oldest son and their respective families in the 1881 census and the first of them on the 1891 census because in each case they used false names. Makes life difficult when you've got missing censuses and dodgy ancestors! I won't give up yet but possibly my match odds are always likely to be poor given the above circumstances.

 

[Alexander Bisset]

Grapes if you have recorded your census entries in a family tree program as census facts then my FREE program FTAnalyzer will analyse your tree and list for you everyone you could find on the 1881 census, and will list everyone you have found on the 1881 that should be entered onto Lost Cousins. This then takes it from guess work to knowledge. ie: from thinking you have entered everyone to knowing if you have or not.

PS. It does a lot more besides.

 

[Grapes]

Thanks but I thought that your program only works on Windows based computers and I have a Mac.

 

[Red Dragon]

Hi Everyone!

Here's a weekly update on how well people have been doing over at LostCousins.

• 28 new members joined the LostCousins site
• 2,208 new entries have been added and
• 111 relatives have been matched.

An increase in all numbers this week! And I was lucky to have one match myself.

I took advantage of the free US Ancestry last week and found details from the US 1940 Census, which I have now added to LC thanks to the reports in FTAnalyzer.
Australian Ancestry is free this weekend so I intend to review all my Australian cousins, thanks to another report in FTAnalyzer.

Good Luck everyone!!

Here's a graph showing the activity over at the Lost Cousins site.

 

[Alexander Bisset]

Thanks but I thought that your program only works on Windows based computers and I have a Mac.

It runs under Boot Camp or Parallels on a Mac, or similar such PC emulator.

 

[Grapes]

Alexander
I've never felt the need to go back to Windows having made the break to Mac nearly 4 years ago, albeit it would have been nice to have continued using Family Historian which only comes in Windows flavour. My Mac obviously has Boot Camp on board but not Windows or Parallels. So when you say that your program works under Boot Camp .....etc. do you mean "if you've also got Windows" ? or do you mean "even without Windows on board"?.

 

[Tim]

Alexander
I've never felt the need to go back to Windows having made the break to Mac nearly 4 years ago, albeit it would have been nice to have continued using Family Historian which only comes in Windows flavour. My Mac obviously has Boot Camp on board but not Windows or Parallels. So when you say that your program works under Boot Camp .....etc. do you mean "if you've also got Windows" ? or do you mean "even without Windows on board"?.

Boot Camp lets you run Microsoft Windows on your Mac. I think there are other users on the Forum who use FTAnalyzer on a Mac.
Alexander also posted this in another post, which I think allows you to run Windows programs without installing Windows.