Relative Finder – a New Website Developed by BYU Students

Students at BYU have built a website that has some great possibilities. However, it has some issues at the moment. I’m blogging about it though, as the idea is intriguing.

The following teaser is from KSL.com:

Relative-Finder-logo-200pw

PROVO — FamilySearch.org recently certified a locally developed Web application that may draw more people to do family history.

Under the direction of Professor Tom Sederberg, Brigham Young University students developed Relative Finder, a website that allows users to find out how closely related they are to their friends, coworkers and historical figures in under three minutes, according to Sederberg.

The free website requires a FamilySearch login. Once a user is connected, their family tree is downloaded.

“We can show how you’re related to a couple of thousand people like European royalty, U.S. presidents and LDS general authorities, living and dead, and several other people who we have genealogical information on,” Sederberg told KSL.com.

Read the full article.

They have been having issues with the downloading of the FamilySearch Family Trees. I tried it and I got the following message: Error 500 – Internal server error. Sorry for the inconvenience.

The European royalty data is currently shut off. This looks like a great project, and it’s worth keeping an eye on. I will try it again in a week or two.

About Leland Meitzler

Leland K. Meitzler founded Heritage Quest in 1985, and has worked as Managing Editor of both Heritage Quest Magazine and The Genealogical Helper. He currently operates Family Roots Publishing Company (www.FamilyRootsPublishing.com), writes daily at GenealogyBlog.com, writes the weekly Genealogy Newsline, conducts the annual Salt Lake Christmas Tour to the Family History Library, and speaks nationally, having given over 2000 lectures since 1983.

7 Replies to “Relative Finder – a New Website Developed by BYU Students”

  1. I am having the same issue (Error 500) while trying to download my family tree. Is there a fix?

  2. I tried it today and it is working without the European Royalty. It was really fun to see the connections! I will have to let people know about this site. Thanks to the developers!

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