A bit earlier on in the year, around spring/early summer, Ancestry released “
MyTreeTags” which can be added to your ancestors in your tree. Hyperlinked above, you will find how to set up the tags and the different types that exist already. Another feature of the tags is that you can create your own “custom tags” which you can make and define to your liking. In this post I want to highlight some of the different ways I’ve used the MyTreeTags in order to build out specific aspects related to Puerto Rican genealogy. Definitely feel free to play around with the tags and create your own that may fit the specific needs of your tree.
Ancestry’s MyTreeTags
When this feature was initially released, I was a bit hesitant in its use. I knew my family pretty well as I work on genealogy basically everyday and so I wondered how it could help me. So I decided to explore some of the pre-designed tags (some pictures below). The tags are broken down to various categories, for example: DNA, Life Experience, Research, and Relationships.
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| MyTreeTags – Research [Ancestry] |
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| MyTreeTags – DNA [Ancestry] |
Right away “actively researching”, “brick wall”, and “immigrant” stood out to me. These were tags that I could easily attach to some of my ancestors. My Correa ancestors were definitely under the list of actively researching and brick wall while my Guadeloupean, Martinican, and Mallorcan ancestors fell under immigrant. Here’s an example of how the tags look on an ancestor’s profile, below I’ve marked my ancestor with two preset tags created by Ancestry.
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| My 5th Great-grandfather, a brick wall I’m actively researching [Personal Ancestry Tree] |
However, these were facts that I knew pretty well – so I thought, how can I make these tags work for me personally? I tried to think of tags that would make sense for my family and aspects that were important when it came to genealogy when suddenly it clicked (hint above). Why don’t I create tags that track race and social statuses in Puerto Rico?
Creating My Own Personal Tags
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| MyTreeTags – Custom Tags [Ancestry] |
As you can see above I’ve created the tags: Blanco, Español, Pardo, Slave, Slave Owner, and Twin. Forgive my Spanglish creations, at some point I’ll probably switch them all to Spanish as most of my notes on my tree are in Spanish to match documents. The “race” tags reflect what was written on the documents, for example blanco or pardo seem to be the main two I’ve found so far through my tree. “Negro” hasn’t really appeared in my documents besides my ancestors that came from the French islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe but I’ve categorized them as “slave” since I know both had served as slaves on their respective islands. Below is another example of a custom tag and a preset tag, my 4th great-grandmother Julienne Lautin was an immigrant from Martinique who had previously been enslaved until 1848, she would have been four years old when she received her freedom.
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| My 4th Great-Grandmother from Martinique [Personal Ancestry Tree] |
On the other hand, my 7th great-grandfather Manuel Ruiz had been a slave on the island of Puerto Rico but was listed as ‘pardo’ on his documents. Linked above is the post about how I traced his enslavement on the island. Below you can see an example of two custom tags on his profile.
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| Manuel Ruiz, Pardo slave in Puerto Rico [Personal Ancestry Tree] |
What’s cool about the tags is that you can search in your tree for everyone you’ve tagged with that specific phrase/word. So for example, if I wanted to see who was enslaved in my family, I could search ‘slave’ and retrieve a list. Below, you can see a few of my direct ancestors who were slaves at some point of their life. 5 of these 6 ancestors were from outside of Puerto Rico while Manuel Ruiz is currently the only slave I’ve traced in Puerto Rico. I know there are probably more slave ancestors hidden somewhere in the mid-early 1600s in Puerto Rico but I have yet to identify them.
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| MyTreeTag – Slave [Personal Ancestry Tree] |
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| 6th Great-grandfather, Spanish Immigrant [Personal Ancestry Tree] |
Finally, another interesting tag I’ve created is “Slave owner”. I don’t have many of these in my tree but it is important to know who owned slaves as it influences the narrative and story of my ancestors. One specific ancestor is my
4th great-grandmother who owned slaves in Adjuntas, Puerto Rico. Discovering this information allowed me to better understand her life in the late 1800s in Puerto Rico and how her own mother (my 5th great-grandmother) also owned slaves thus
leading me to find her last will and testament.
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| 4th Great-Grandmother, Slave Owner [Personal Ancestry Tree] |
What’s next?
As I continue to learn more about my family, my goal is to continue creating tags that will allow me to quickly identify facts about them that might not be obvious from their biographical information. Some of the tags I’ve recently added include, for example: “twin” and “triplet” as I’ve had a couple cases of twins and one case of triplets in my family. There are some pre-created tags for DNA such as “common DNA Ancestor”, “DNA Match”, and “DNA Connection” but I’m not sure if I want to use those yet. We’ll see how these keep developing and how I can seamlessly incorporate them into my tree.
Do you have any special tree tags you’ve created?
