MAKING LISTS WITH ANCESTRY'S MYTREETAGS

Ancestry recently introduced a tagging feature to its family trees called MyTreeTags and I think it's a very useful feature. I've been messing around with it for a few weeks now and find it very helpful in making lists of things about my ancestors using the Custom Tags.

Ancestry already has four tag categories: DNA, Life Experience,  Research and Relationship tags. Each of them has several sub-categories. The one I use the most is Direct Ancestor in the Relationships category and I recommend using it on every one of your direct ancestors because it will be very helpful..

You can also create your own Custom Tags. I now have 27 of these, ranging from specific occupations like blacksmiths and farmers to tags for Mayflower ancestors, Revolutionary War soldiers  to accused witches

This is how the top of the page for my 4x great grandfather John Cutter West looks now with the tags:

I have a number of relatives who I know were blacksmiths and I've marked  some of them with a "Blacksmith" Custom Tag. I can now use that as a Filter when I do a Tree Search. When I click on that just above John Cutter West's name a Search column opens up on the right hand side of the screen.

Then I click on Filters and a list of my tags drops down. I click on Blacksmith, then click the green Done button.

Ancestry  then displays a list of  the five ancestors who I've tagged so far as blacksmiths:

Now it happens that all five of these are direct ancestors. But there are other occupations or experiences shared with collateral relatives. For example, it have several tags about the Salem Witch trials. including one for "Witch trial witness". This is where that Direct Ancestor tag comes into play.

Clicking on just the Witch trial witness custom tag  filter brings up a list of sixteen relatives.

Adding the Direct Relative tag narrows the list down to six.

 I'm still adding tags and custom tage to people. I hope this post is helpful to others.