User Registration is now Open!
In an effort to give more control to users to share their family history, My Pomerania allows users to build their own family trees online. This login is completely separate to any other used for the website and grants users access to build their own family trees online from scratch or by importing a GEDCOM file. To create an account for building your own family tree, please click here. For existing users, log in here.
The rules for contributing to the Family Tree Search are as follows:
§1. No living persons may be added from the EU-Zone or other places where it illegal to do so. Living U.S. residents may be added where it is legal to do so and with permission from the living person. Tools within the family tree dashboard allow you to mark people as living or private.
§2. All place names must be verified for correct spelling (use www.meyersgaz.org). They should follow this format: Podewils, Belgard, Pommern. (Village, County/Kreis, Territory [Pommern, Neumark, Schlesien, Westpreußen, etc.]). Do not include anything after Pommern, such as Prussia or Germany. Places in the United States should follow this format: City/Town, County, State, USA. If umlauts are used in place names, they MUST be included. To make searching easier for all users, consistency between place names and formatting is essential.
§3. All names of people must be spelled correctly and as shown in documents. When possible, they should follow the German spelling provided in earlier records (Friederike vs. Fredericka, Carl vs. Charles, Emilie vs. Amalia). When multiple iterations of a surname exist, the predominant one should be used as the surname. All other variations should either be listed in fact notes or in the alias/AKA fields.
§4. Do not share your login or password with anyone. You may only edit your tree. When you wish to collaborate with someone else on the same tree, please send an email to [email protected] and specify which users and tree should have collaborative privileges.
§5. Please only include people which have been substantiated by documented evidence. Rumors and family legends should not be formally included. Please feel free to detail these in fact notes, but do not include these people on the actual tree for searching.
Your cooperation keeps us in compliance with international laws. Unfortunately, we cannot accept data on living people in the EU. Please understand that posting such information without the expressed written consent of the living person will lead to account probation or suspension.
We look forward to helping you share your family history and connecting each other with our Pomeranian ancestries.
Instructions for sending files for us to upload for you:
If you have a GEDCOM file or a spreadsheet with several individuals or more, you may submit your information using our family tree submission form. We prefer receiving GEDCOM files, as this allows us to easily import the information into our database. However, we are able to bring in smaller family trees from group sheets or hand-written forms. For your convenience, you may download our family tree group sheet to easily and quickly add as many individuals to the database as you would like. Just be sure to upload it using the submission form mentioned above!
Formatting a GEDCOM for Submission
Make a Copy of Your File
No one wants to make a mistake and lose years of research. Always work with a copy when editing your file for submissions. If you are using a GEDCOM, you will want to copy the file in its directory and paste it. That will give you a second copy to work with. The best practice is to rename it so you don’t confuse the two files.
Please notice the file above is not a GEDCOM. This creates a problem. If your file is any other type than GEDCOM, you will want to see the section below about exporting your tree as a GEDCOM. This includes files native to Family Tree Maker, Roots Magic, Legacy, and others–they must be converted to a GEDCOM before they can be uploaded to us.
Splitting Branches in a GEDCOM
Your GEDCOM file should only contain the branches of your Pomeranian family. To split off large sections of your tree, you can use GEDCOM Splitter to divide your tree into multiple segments. You may need to run it through the splitter several times to filter out subsequent descendant generations, as full branches of in-law families are retained. This tool typically helps narrow down the results to a more manageable level for weeding out a few stragglers within your family tree maker software. If you own Family Tree Maker, keep reading for detailed instructions.
If you have Family Tree Maker, this can be a lot easier. By using the “Publish” tab, you can manually remove people or whole branches from your tree.
The first step to this is unlinking an individual whose branch you want to trim. Right-click on the individual and choose “Detach Person.”
You will see a pop-up box that asks who you want to detach the person from. That is your decision, but this works best if you completely remove the connection from the rest of the tree for people you do not want to include in your submission.
That leaves the child on his own tree. From here, you can delete the whole branch using the steps below. However, you can also do the inverse, and keep this branch and delete the other. It’s your choice.
From there you need to click on the “Publish” tab at the top. Choose “Extended Family Chart.”
Make sure the box “Include All Individuals” is checked. Regenerate the chart if it doesn’t refresh itself automatically.
Select any person in the chart and right-click on him or her. You will click on the “Select Person and All Relations” option.
Notice that this selects all persons from the spliced tree but leaves the rest of your tree alone.
Right-click on any one of the selected individuals and choose “Delete From File” and then “Selected Persons.”
The next screen will prompt you to choose which individuals to delete. Click the “OK” button to delete all of them. Your file is now purged of people you did not want to include. Congratulations!
You can repeat this step as many times as necessary to remove disconnected branches from your tree.
Remove Irrelevant People
Fine tune the file by removing anyone who has no relevance to Pommern. Spouses are fine to include. However, including the spouse’s 5th great-grandparents is not the best idea.
You can manually remove them one at a time. For larger trees, if you are using Family Tree Maker, you can delete them from the “Extended Family Tree Chart.” By selecting an individual, you can delete the person from the tree by clicking “Delete from File” using the method described above.
For more advanced users, you can cull out irrelevant family members by querying a branch and deleting all people in the chart.
Mark Living and Other Individuals as Private
While we do not agree with the GDPR, we do take steps in respect to foreign privacy laws. Rather than marking them as “Private,” which can create a headache for larger trees, please remove them from your GEDCOM file completely. Please note that some software can mark all living individuals as private during a GEDCOM export. This will privatize people who died hundreds of years ago if no birth or death dates have been entered–you do not want to do this.
Resolve Place Names
Good golly, this one is a pain for us! Please make sure the places in your family tree are formatted correctly.
- They should be formatted as follows: City, County, State, Country/Region (Chicago, Cook, Illinois, USA)
- Places should leave “Kreis” out of the name (ex. Kreis Belgard should be “Belgard”)
- Use full state names, not abbreviations
- For places in Pomerania, please leave out “Germany” or “Prussia.” They should look like this: Lupow, Stolp, Pommern
Export the Family Tree
There are many different ways of doing this, as each family tree program handles this differently. When exporting, no matter what program you use, the file must be in GEDCOM format.
Submitting Your Pedigree
From the home page of the Family Tree Search: Ortsfamilienbuch, click on the “Submit Your Tree” tab. (That’s what brought you to this page.)
Locate the submission form for sending us your GEDCOM file. We use Google for uploading the family tree.
Fill out the form and upload your GEDCOM. This part is illustrated below:
Submitting Additions, Corrections, and Changes
The best way to submit any changes to your tree is to send a list of what is added or changed using the family tree spreadsheet to easily and quickly add as many individuals to the database as you would like. Just be sure to upload it using the submission form mentioned above!
If you are an advanced genealogist, please inquire about registering for an account to make these changes yourself.
Questions?
If you get stuck somewhere in the process, email us at [email protected]. We’ll do our best to field your inquiry.
