Rootsmapper.com

Last week, my husband and I signed up for Google+.  Google+ is a social media website like Facebook and Twitter.  I had actually signed up quite awhile ago but found it was not user-friendly and couldn't see many of my family members going to this site.  But my husband had to sign up for a class he was taking.  I decided to give it a second chance and see if I could figure it out.

I did manage to work out the basics and will continue to become more adept at it.  My goal in using this new site is to connect with other people in the genealogy world.  If you would like to follow me, or be my friend or in Google+ talk be in "my circle" please shoot me an invite or whatever the new terminology is regarding Google+. 

This morning I got on Google+ to see if I could find some genealogy posts.  Not sure how it works or why I was able to see the post but I think it has to do with the fact that my posts are about genealogy.  Like I said, I am still learning.

But no matter how I came across it, there was a post for a new website called, www.rootsmapper.com.  The post said "If you have a familysearch.org account, checkout our new site that allows you to map the birth locations of your ancestors!"  Well heck, that looked interesting.  I decided that I would check this out.  And I have to say it was pretty cool. 

To see my family lines moving across the United States really brought out my "American Pride".  In my family, I have yet to "cross the pond" and leave the U.S.  A couple lines I have traced back to the Revolutionary War.  I am a pure American...long line of American history.  Love it! I know that eventually I move out of the U.S. but I am still working on finding those ancestors. I think I have a good idea of which lines I would need to spend more time on to really find my way out of the U.S. but I don't want to get ahead of myself.  I will get there eventually.

Here is my Roots Map, I am 0 and then it works backwards from me.

The only problem I had with the website is that there is no way to download your map or save it as a file.  I use Mozilla Firefox for my internet browser and it does not offer a screenshot option.  So I switched over to Google Chrome and did a quick screenshot.  Which for me wasn't a big deal, but if you are someone that is not computer savvy you might find it intimidating and just look at the pretty map but then move on.

My opinion is it is a pretty cool website but it does need to work on adding a feature for downloading your map from the webpage. 

My favorite feature of the whole site though is....IT'S FREE! :) Those are my favorite websites.