Two Valuable Research Tools on FamilySearch: The Family Tree Map and The FamilySearch Places Tool

 

https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/places-tool-family-tree-map/

There are a number of helpful tools on the FamilySearch.org website that you may never have used or even seen. The Family Tree Map is one of those relatively obscure tools. You can find it by clicking on the link to the Time Line on the detail page of each person on the Family Tree. Here is a screenshot showing the link.

Once you are viewing the timeline, the map is pretty obvious. 

What is not obvious is what the map can do for you. The reason for this is that this map is not the map for the FamilySearch Places Tool. Where is the FamilySearch Places Tool? The answer is "You can't get there from here." Astoundingly, there are no links from the FamilySearch.org website to the Places Tool. You get there by entering this link: https://www.familysearch.org/research/places. By the way, there are a number of other such tools and pages that are not linked from the main website. The only link I have found so far is in the site map located at the bottom of the startup page and a few other pages. Here is a screenshot of the bottom of the startup page showing the link to the site map.

Once you are looking at the site map, you might notice an entry named "Places." That is the link. Here is another screenshot of the site map page with an arrow to the Places link. 

Now, read the article linked at the beginning of this post to see how to use the Places Tool. It really is useful. By the way, you might want to click on some of the other links on the site map to see what other surprises await you on the FamilySearch website.