A friend introduced me to a tool that has become a bit of an obsession for me lately. It is called Geo Hints, and is a creation of the BYU Family History Technology Lab (BYU FHTL). Brigham Young University has an outstanding Family History department and library. If you have not explored the BYU Library Family History website before, it is worth a visit. Along with the many links to online resources, they offer free classes and webinars and have a virtual family history help desk.

But this post is about the BYU Family History Technology Lab and some of their fun offerings. They have created a collection of apps and games that use the FamilySearch Family Tree to help you see your ancestors and research in a whole new way.

One of my favorites is “Wheel of Family Fortune.” The description says, “It pays to know your family history. Wheel of Family Fortune is the classic party game that tests how well you know your ancestor’s names. Play alone, or add other players to create a fun game for the whole family!” I also love the Pedigree Pie which lets me visualize my international heritage. Tree Sweeper helps to identify errors in my family tree so I can fix them, and Tree Find is an easy way for me to search my tree for ancestors who meet certain criteria such as locality. That would have come in handy on a recent vacation I took, had I known about it. Family Calendar lets me add important events from my family history to my Google or Apple calendars. And then there’s Geneopardy, a game that will test my knowledge of my family tree. I’ll have to try that one when I’m alone, so I don’t embarrass myself.

But my new favorite is Geo Hints, formerly known as Map-App. It can be accessed directly through this link, or you can find it still as Map-App on the BYU FHTL site.

Geo Hints connects to the FamilySearch family tree and brings up indexed records that need to be attached to the tree. I can search by surname, location, or project to find these records. I enjoy searching by my maiden name, Gooch, because it is so satisfying to see Gooch records and attach them to all the Gooches in the tree. Here’s what the search and results looked like when I tried it today.

Each green marker represents a record, and the markers disappear after you attach the record to the tree. My obsession stems from my attempts to clear all the markers from the map. Clicking on one of the Kansas markers I was shown this screen:

Expanding the view to include Guy’s siblings I could easily see this 1915 State Census entry was for the family on the right, and I was able to attach it. Even though it is not my Gooch family, I hope that attaching this record will help some other researcher and will result in good genealogy karma. And it’s something that is easy to do while watching a football game or Jeopardy on television. Family Search recently sent me a summary of my contributions to the worldwide family tree this year and I was shocked to see I have added 1,528 individuals and 11,593 sources! Do I really watch that much television? This makes it guilt-free in my book. Hooray! And hooray for the BYU FHTL and their creations. Yes, genealogy IS fun!