Relative Finder--a fun genealogy app!

I haven't blogged in well over a year; but decided to post occasionally when I think I have something of interest.  However, not sure who is out there to read it; but will give it a try.  Today I am going to talk about "Relative Finder".  I learned about it from a presentation that Amy Chidester gave at the San Diego Genealogical Society's German Interest Group meeting in July.  It is an application that is approved by Family Search and you must have a tree on Family Search in order to use the app.  It is very simple to use.  You go to www.relativefinder.org and click on "Log In with Family Search".  When you do that the app matches up your tree with their master tree which includes many branches with European Royalty, U.S. Presidents, Famous Americans, Military Explorers and many other groups of people.  The results of its search are then presented on the web page in four columns.  The name of the famous individual, your relationship to that person, which group they represent (i.e. Presidents, European Royalty, etc.) and View Chart.  Once you click on View Chart, you will see a lineage chart tracing you on the left and the famous person on the right up to your common ancestor.  It most cases this is about 10 or more generations for you.  Is it guaranteed that these relatives and the displayed lineages are 100% correct--NO; but I did trace one of the lines back using additional search information from Ancestry and Family Search and there appeared to be a probable link.  It is still a fun experience whether 100 accurate or not!

Your results are, obviously, going to be better if you have a large tree on Family Search.  There are several other fun features; one being that you can create you own Private Member Group, which we have done in the German Interest Group.  Ralative Finder will then tell you your relationship with other members in the group.  For instance Amy is my 12th cousin, 1 time removed.  The closest relation I have in the group is an 8th cousin.

It is with some reservations, however, that I tell you about this "genealogy toy".  Prior to giving her presentation to our group, Amy asked a couple of us to log into the Private German Interest Group on Relative Finder, so that she could demonstrate how the program works during her presentation.  Later that day I emailed Amy to tell her that I had logged in and thanked her for having ruined my well planned afternoon because I spent my whole afternoon "playing" with Generation Finder! So be forewarned--either have a strong will or a lot of spare time when you log onto this fun application.