Jim Panttaja’s Genealogy Research

One of the tools that I use for my genealogy research is Gensmarts. I got a copy of it when I purchased Family Tree Maker 16. I have used Family Tree Maker for many years - but decided to buy a new copy (rather than upgrade), partially because Gensmarts was bundled with it.

Gensmarts looks at your data file (for Family Tree Maker, as well as a number of competitive products), and identifies possible errors, as well as items for research. I use it with my Ancestry.com account to look up data that it suggests. I have about 8000 people in my Family Tree Maker database. When I first pointed Gensmarts at my database, the To Do list showed over 32,000 items to research. Fortunately, you can use radio buttons to limit the list. I started by only looking at information tied to my direct ancestors, that are available on Ancestry.com. I then moved on to items that fill missing data, and that are available to me on Ancestry.com.

Gensmarts uses the information in my database to project what records might be available. It suggests which states the person might be found in for a given census year, and also suggests things like birth and death records if it knows these are available for actual (or likely) years of birth or death.

I work my way down the list of suggestions - using Ancestry.com to look for the records.

Gensmarts hasn’t yet provided mappings to all Ancestry.com data. But I have found its suggestions on Census records, California birth and death records, and marriage records in a number of states to be very useful. I also look at the full search results from Ancestry.com for other records that might be useful. I tend to work through the list of suggestions from Gensmarts alphabetically by surname. This let’s me focus on a related family, and often find additional records.

There are a couple of other capabilities in Gensmarts that are useful. It’s Data Cleanup tab shows locations that probably aren’t correct (in my case, typos, or sometimes cities without states), or it suggests the appropriate county, given a city. I wish that it would let me choose some of its suggestions, and have it apply the changes to my Family Tree Maker file, rather than make me do it with find and replace - but the information is very helpful.

I am sure as I finish the 1100 remaining suggestions, I will find other ways to use Gensmarts to help me add to my research.