When you click on one, you see the persona from the historical record on the left, along with their one-hop relatives (parents above, spouse just below, children below that, and siblings below that). Anyone who isn't one of those kinds of relatives (as far as the record specifies) is listed as "other" at the bottom.
On the right is the corresponding person from Family Tree, along with their one-hop relatives, all lined up with the corresponding people from the historical record (as far as the matching algorithms and data structure can determine).
When you decide that these really are the same person, click "Attach" and the two corresponding people turn green, indicating that they are linked up. At that point, corresponding relatives now have an "Attach" link between them, indicating that they can be attached, too.
If some of the relatives aren't aligned right, you can drag the record persons up and down to align them with the right person in the tree. This can happen if the match algorithm makes a mistake, or if the data in the record or the tree is a bit off, or, most commonly, if the original record didn't contain relationship information. For example, the 1850-1870 U.S. Census collections don't have a "relationship to head" column, so everyone except for the focus person are all listed down in "Other on Record" until you drag them up where you believe they go.
For each relative, you can click "attach", click to copy any new data from the record into the person, click the blue "Attach" button to confirm, and then both people turn green to indicate that they are linked up.
If a person in the record does not appear in Family Tree, then you can click "add" to create a corresponding person in Family Tree, including relationships to the "main" person being dealt with. (You will then have to click "Attach" to finish attaching the persona in the record to the newly-created person in the tree. That should probably happen automatically, so maybe that will get fixed.).
When everyone in the record is green, you know that all of the people in the record are accounted for in Family Tree. And because you have linked them up, the system knows this, too.
(One gal I was helping with family history was an avid board game player, and her eyes lit up when I told her, "For each person you turn green, you get one victory point!")
First full-blown source-centric feature
It may not be obvious to everyone what a big deal these features are. They represent the first major foray of Family Tree into the world of source-centric genealogy. Now, not only can users know what the sources say about their ancestors, but the system can understand that, too. Because persons in Family Tree are linked to personas in the records, the system knows who is who, and thus what information each historical record contains about each person in the Family Tree. It also knows which personas in the record are not yet linked into the tree, and it often knows how those personas are related to people who are in the tree.Family history seems to have at least 3 main stages:
- Living memory. Research your first four generations (up to your great-grandparents) by talking to living people and asking what they remember; looking at personal artifacts lying around your house or the home of a living relative, and so on. You and your living relatives (and the stuff you have in your homes) are the main sources of information.
- Recent records: direct evidence. Beyond that, you start into the world of recent records often back to around 1800 or so (depending on where you're researching). There are often quite a few records available, including juicy ones like census records that list entire households. These often provide direct evidence of people and their relationships to other people.
- Old records: indirect evidence. Beyond that, things get murkier. There are fewer records, often with less information, and it is less common to find any single record that lists both people in a relationship. You end up having to make larger leaps of logic ("This was the only Mr. Turner in the area, so he must have been the father of Henry...") based on incomplete records.
These new features take great advantage of the recent records. They help users find sources that mention people they already know about, link them up so the system now understands what those sources say about those people, and then add any new information or relatives to the tree. This is the primary way in which many users will grow the tree and discover new relatives. These features have unlocked solid genealogical research for the masses.
