The Ellis Family of Elk Park, North Carolina
The Ellis Family of Elk Park, North Carolina
Please let us know if you have needed help on something not covered in this section or in our Frequently Asked Questions
Welcome to our genealogy pages. This Help page will give you a short overview of how to get around and get the most out of our site. It will hopefully give you the basic navigation tools needed to make your visit both enjoyable and informative without a lot of difficulty. Please keep in mind that this section is in no way a complete how-to guide, and you may have to be a registered user and logged in to see/use some of these features. Also, if you find any errors or want to make suggestions, you can learn how (see Editing/Correcting below).Many of us use one genealogical program or another and nearly all of them have a very graphical look to them. You can see your family group sheets, display charts, etc. This website is much the same except that, instead of it being on your computer, it is on the internet. This walk-through will introduce you to the primary functions of the site. The bold, underlined brown links embedded on this page will open a second window (or tab); you can follow these steps in the new window/tab while referencing the steps here. In either case, the following link opens a new window (or tab) to our Home Page. Features of that page can be seen and the window/tab can also be used to explore the features discussed below.
On the home page you will see links to the various sections of the site, links to some of our Ellis ancestors, as well as information and stories that we think you'll find interesting. These features, stories, and links may change from time to time.
To begin, click on any link and you will notice that every page (like this one) contains a set of four icons, found directly under the page header. The function of each icon link is straightforward. This first, "My Page" is new and it is quite convenient. :
My Page - Takes you to your individual page. IF you're in the database!
Home - Takes you to the front page of the website.
Search - Takes you to the Advanced Search screen (see below).
Logout/Login - Logout of your session or Log back in.On the right hand side of the header, you will see four drop down menus: Find - Media - Info - More. These can be used to quickly access any area of the site. If you hover the mouse (not click) you will see drop-down menus that give you up to 24 options to help navigate this site.
The More button contains a few special links. The first is something called "Submit Family". This will open a spreadsheet of sorts where you can submit individuals, or entire family groups, that arent currently in the database. We encourage you to use this as a way to grow our database and to be sure we continue to link all our relatives. Also under the "More" menu you'll find stories on people or events that we want to highlight. They may change from time to time. And under this menu is also where you'll find an "FAQ" page, as well as this "Help" page that your reading right now.
The last link on the header is the "Print" icon. It is smaller and found on the right side of the header.
Print - Prints the page you are on to your printer without all the menu items.First things first. This site keeps all information on living individuals private by default. No other user can see any information about living people. Now, there two convenient ways to get to the Individual record. The first, and maybe the most convenient, is the "My Page" link we mentioned earlier. Clicking on this will always take you to your Individual page. Assuming you're in the database!. And even though data on all living people remains private, adding your information to the database IS NOT REQUIRED in order to use the site. All information will be avaialble whether your information is in the database or not. If you aren't in and you want to be, Click here Contact Us to send us a message and request to be added. We'll contact you to complete the process.
The other way to reach the Individual page is to do a Search. As an example, Click the Search icon and put "Joseph" (without the quotes) in for the First Name and "Ellis" (without the quotes) in for Last Name and press <Enter>.
This will give you a list of the results that were found to match. On this list, click on the name of the Joseph whose Person ID is "I379" (Born in 1762, Randolph County, North Carolina). You are now at his Individual Page, the header of which you see below.
Take a few minutes to orient yourself with the layout. This is the "core" display of the genealogy pages. The standard view shows all of the most pertinent 'Personal Information'; the other views listed in the brown bar limit information to a specific category. Note that the personal information is divided into three sections -- the Individual selected, his/her Parents, and his/her Spouse and Children (if any).
In the Parents and Spouse/Partner sections of the page,
if you hover the mouse pointer over the person's parent's or spouse's name you get a pop-up window previewing that person's parents, spouse and children; click on the name to go to that person's page.
To the left of the parent's name there may be an 'up-arrow' (
); hover over this to see a pop-up window detailing the person's father, mother, siblings and father's parents; click on the symbol to go to that parent's page.
To the right of the parent's name there may be an 'right-arrow' (
) and a number, indicating the parent had more than one marriage:
Children are listed in the Spouse/Partner section and can indicate if the person has descendants (+) or if only a spouse (
).
Clicking on either of these symbols to the left of the child's name will take you to their descendant chart.
If you hover the mouse pointer over the child's name you get a pop-up window previewing their parents, spouse and any children; click on the name to go to that child's page:
In the Parents and Spouse/Partner sections of the page,
if you hover the mouse pointer over the person's parent's or spouse's name you get a pop-up window previewing that person's parents, spouse and children; click on the name to go to that person's page.
To the left of the parent's name there may be an 'up-arrow' (); hover over this to see a pop-up window detailing the person's father, mother, siblings and father's parents; click on the symbol to go to that parent's page.
To the right of the parent's name there may be an 'right-arrow' () and a number, indicating the parent had more than one marriage:
Children are listed in the Spouse/Partner section and can indicate if the person has descendants (+) or if only a spouse (
).
Clicking on either of these symbols to the left of the child's name will take you to their descendant chart.
If you hover the mouse pointer over the child's name you get a pop-up window previewing their parents, spouse and any children; click on the name to go to that child's page:
An Event Map may be visible; click on 'Load the map' to display it if not. This shows the location of the main events in the life of the individual.
Now let's look at the 5 tabs next to the "Individual" tab: Ancestors, Descendants, Relationship, Timeline, GEDCOM, and Edit or Suggest.
NOTE: On the Individual, Ancestors and Descendants pages you have the option to create a report in 'pdf' format for the information you are viewing. To make use of this option you will need to have installed Adobe Reader in order to view the report. If you don't already have it, you can download the (free) Adobe Reader software by clicking this link.
1) Click on " Ancestors" and you will find a dynamic chart. The default view is Standard (4 generations). (Note that each generation is shown in a slightly different shade, getting progressively lighter with each older generation.) Clicking on any of the names on the chart will take you to the individual sheet for that person.
Notice that there are little orange arrows
pointing down beneath many of the boxes. If you hover your mouse over the arrow (not click!) a drop-down list for that person
will open. You can click on a name in that sheet to take you to their individual sheet.
Clicking on any 
icon will show the next generation above
(ancestors); clicking on the 
icon will
show the ancestry starting from the next generation below.
Wherever you see the pedigree icon 
,
you clan click to show the ancestry from that individual.
Also note that in the brown
bar just above the chart, you can specify the number of generations
you want to display (beware that the page will get increasingly wider and longer, requiring more scrolling,
as you increase the number of generations).
In the brown bar there are a number of other Ancestor chart views available by clicking on Compact, Box, Text, Ahnentafel, or Media.
The latter displays both lines of parentage for any individual --
and lists that person's grand-parents, great-grandparents, and so on -- as far back as is known,
based on the number of generations selected for the display.
The 
icon that may be shown alongside a name in the Media display
means that at least one photo, history, or other media item exists for that individual.
The Ahnentafel chart (also known as an ascendants table -
See Wikipedia article on Ahnentafel for details.)
lists all the generations in tabular form, complete with all children and birth, marriage, death, and burial details if known.
Try clicking on each of the Ancestor display options to see what they offer.
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2) The " Descendants" tab gives you a listing of all descendants of this individual.
The default view is the "Text" list, also known as a "descendant drop chart."
Notice that in many places there is a little white box with a minus sign in it.
Click this box and that branch of this tree will collapse to this position. Try it!
Also, once the descendants are displayed in this text format, you can show a graphic view (with photos)
of a specific branch of descendants from that ancestor by clicking the descendant icon
next to the descendant whose chart you wish to display.
This chart includes the siblings of each ancestor. Thus, the younger the individual, the greater the
number of generations in the chart; and the greater the number of siblings in a
family, the wider the chart becomes.
Try clicking on the other types of Descendant charts, listed on the brown bar: Standard - a traditional "tree" with photos (where available), Compact - without photos, and Register - a list of generations in tabular form, similar to Ahnentafel.
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3) The " Relationships" tab allows you to generate a box chart to show the relationship between this individual and any other person in your tree.
Just click on the "Find" button under "Person 2" and search for "Mary Ellis" (remember, last name on top). Select 'Mary Elizabeth Ellis' (ID-I792) and click "Calculate"
It is also possible to display the relationship of a default person to the one who's details are being displayed. The initial Default Person is assigned by the administrator for the Relationship Display which (when active) is located below the name/date on a person's page. If you are a registered member, just log in and then you will be assigned as the Default Person.
The Default Person can be changed to a different person by clicking 'Set As Default Person' in the icon menu
on that person's page.
Relationship results between the Default Person and the Current Subject are displayed after calculation.
A relationship chart (like that illustrated above) may be viewed by clicking on the 'Relationship Chart' link.
The relationship display may be turned off by clicking the 
icon at the left side of the display. The display can be turned on again by clicking 'Set As Default Person' in the icon menu.
Also you can click the blue information icon
for more help on using this feature.
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4) The " Timeline" tab allows you to view a list of important (and some not-so-important) events that occurred during his lifetime. Hovering over the timeline with your cursor will reveal that individual's personal events (birth, marriage, births of children, death).
Timelines for up to four other people can be added to the page to show the timeline relationship between this person and the others.
You can also populate a timeline by finding any 2-4 individuals manually and thereby compare them across the ages. This gives you a unique perspective to see what was going on in the world during the lives of our ancestors.
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5) The " GEDCOM" tab presents you a form whereby you can download a GEDCOM file to your computer. This allows you to save a file to your computer that can be used in other genealogy software programs that you might have. You may already have something like this. There are several. You can look on the internet for some suggestions. Click this link - Cyndi's List, to see a good list of options. By dowloading your Gedcom, you'll have a file of your genealogy, both ancestors and descendants, on your own computer for your use or for sharing with other family members.
You can choose to start with your Ancestors or Descendants and also choose how many generations you want. Choose the highest number of generations you think exist for you in the database.
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5) The Edit tab or the Suggest tab, depending on your user rights, allows you to either make edits or to suggest any changes or additions. The information contained here has been compiled by may different researchers over periods of time. While every effort has been made to ensure the information we have is correct, chances are you'll find things that need to be changed. Things like dates, name spellings, places, etc. might be wrong.
Some family members who have done extensive research, have been given " Edit " permissions to make changes to certain data. If you see the Edit tab, you can make changes and additions.
Other users will have information that also needs to be changed or added. If you see the " Suggest " tab, then the tab will open a form for this purpose. This allows you to suggest any changes or additions (corrections, updates, comments), or any other information about a specific individual or family record; Complete the form and it automatically sends the information to us, so that we can evaluate your suggestion and add it to the database. The identity of the individual you are referencing is automatically attached to the message when you make a suggestion using the Suggestion tab.
If you wish to tell or ask us something general, rather than related to a specific individual or family,
then use the '
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Where the people are ... There are three primary ways to get to the records of an individual:
in the upper left hand corner of every page.
There, you can specify several different criteria to search against, including birth and death information
as well as spousal information. You can even search by event or place.Photographs and other media can be linked to individual and family records. We have added some photographs but have a lot more yet to categorize and add to the database. We would very much like to hear from you if you are able to provide photos or other media showing or relevant to anyone in the database. Please let us know if you can offer anything.
There is much more functionality on the website, but this walk through should be a good intro to the system. Feel free to poke around; you can't break it. But if you find anything wrong, or page errors, please let us know so we can fix it!If you are a descendant or relative of anyone on this website, then don't forget to sign-up and then login to get the full benefits and to view information on living relatives in your branch of the tree! We also maintain a list of Frequently Asked Questions that you may find useful.
This entire website is made possible by the excellent TNG (The Next Generation) software from Darrin Lythgoe. Visit Darrin's website for more information.
Thanks and appreciation are due to Graham Chamberlain Jerry Liebowitz, Eddy Belew, Bret Rumsey, and Steve Winslow, whose TNG genealogy websites' Help pages inspired this page.
We make every effort to document our research. If you have something you'd like us to add, pleaseContact Us
