How To…

If you spend any amount of time here on Leonard Family Legends & Legacies, you’ll soon discover there are at least six ways to go about finding anything. It can be a little confusing, but we all find our favorite ways of doing things eventually. Let’s look at some examples, shall we?

Q. How do I find someone I’m looking for?

A. The most obvious way is to use the Search function over there on the left. Type in the Last Name first, and the First Name last, and click Search. Wanna look for an entire family? Just type in the Last Name and leave the First Name blank.

Note: It’s important to remember, when you’re looking for women, they’re are always listed by their maiden names… their married names won’t turn up in Search.

Q. What if I just want to browse?

Ah! That’s easy. Everything you’ll ever want to know is over there in the left-hand column of every page.

• Click the Surnames… to see the top 25 surnames on Legends & Legacies.
• Click What’s New… to see what’s been added in the past 30 days.
• Click Photos… to browse all the photos on the site.
• Click Histories… to read about the life and times of selected individuals.
• Click Documents… to see some of the original source material for the site.
• Click Albums… to see photos grouped by family or subject. (Not a lot there, just yet.)
• Click All Media… to browse ALL the photos, regardless of subject matter. (Really more than I’d care to tackle).
• Click Cemeteries… to see where our dearly departed are buried, complete with GoogleMap, in most cases.
• Click Headstones… to see, well, headstones. For some people, it’s the only photo we have.
• Click Places… to browse the locations where our ancestors lived and died… guided by GoogleMaps.
• Click Dates and Anniversaries to search for specific events on specific dates.
• Click Reports… to see examples of what the database can do!
• Click Sources… to browse a few of the sources used to assemble this mess.
• Click Statistics… for some interesting insight on the ol’ family tree.
• Click Access Log… for a peek at who’s coming around and what they’re looking for. (OK, now we’re getting bored.)
• Change Language doesn’t do anything at the moment, but if you’d like this site translated into something other than English, lef me know.
• Bookmarks are a wonderful way to keep track of individuals or information you find useful!
• Contact Us uses a form to send e-mail directly to yours truly.
• Register for a User Account is something I may implement later to reveal otherwise private information to people I trust. It’s not operational at the moment.
• Log In is where you’ll log in for special permissions, if I ever decide to use them.

Q. How do I find an individual’s ancestors?

A. Once you locate an individual, the easiest method is to press the Ancestors tab. This will show you a graphical display of both the paternal and maternal ancestors.

Once you have the ancestor chart displayed, you can click on the arrows located at the far right ancestor if you need to see additional ancestors. There are a number of formats for you to choose from (Standard, Compact, Box, Text, Ahnentafel, and Photos & History) to display ancestors. Try clicking on the various options and see which one works best for you.

Q. What if I want to see an individual’s descendants?

A. The tab marked Descendants can be used to display the descendants of an individual. There are a couple of different formats that descendants can be displayed. You can switch between the Standard and Register format to display the information the way that works best for you.

Q. Is there a way to tell if two individuals are related?

A. Yes, the Relationship tab will show a graphic display of all the people between two relatives. To use this function, locate the first individual and then press the Relationship tab. Then use the find button to locate the second person to be displayed. Once you have the two people selected click the calculate button to display their relationship.

Q. The Timeline function looks interesting, what is it?

A. A timeline is displayed for an individual when the Timeline tab is clicked. The time line shows important events in history that occurred during the life of an individual or a group of individuals. It gives you a unique perspective to see what was going on in the world during the lives of our ancestors.

Q. If I see a mistake in the information presented can I correct it?

A. The suggestion tab allows you to send corrections, updates, comments or any other information to the database administrator. Information on which individual you are referencing is automatically attached to the message when you make a suggestion using the Suggestion tab. The database administrator will take your suggestion and add it to the database in the next web update cycle.

Q. Is there a way to print the display without all the headers and icons?

Yes, just click on the Print link locate above the control tabs. A format that is simplified for printing is presented and you can use the print function of you browser to print the page.

Q. What are the three dropdown boxes for that are located on the upper right of the page?

A. These let you access additional information that is contained in the database. You can hover your mouse pointer over each to see the types of detailed information that is available on the site. Note, the site is still expanding and some of the items may take you to areas where we are still working.

Try out what you’ve learned >> Surnames