Tuesday's Tip ~ Family Tree Maker Color-Coding

I'm late to the game in blogging about this feature of the new Family Tree Maker (which came out in the early summer for the Mac). I've been meaning to share the following find for several months.

As soon as I got my file opened in the new version of Family Tree Maker, I wanted to try out the new color coding feature, which I had read about from other bloggers.

At the Tree tab on the People workspace, select the person whose ancestors you want to highlight.

Click the color coding button above the editing panel. Click a single color (or a color group) for the type of individuals you want to apply color coding.

I selected each of my grandparents in order, and selected All Ancestors (1 color) and applied the one color that I have used for years for each of my grandparents' lines:
Pyle - blue
Adsit - pink
Copeland - green
Hunter - orange

When I scrolled through my index of names and got to the Tuttle surname, I was surprised to find the colors for three of my four grandparents appear. I already knew that my paternal grandparents, Charles Pyle and Elizabeth Adsit were related in several ways, including through the Tuttle surname. However, Abigail Tuttle, whose parents I hadn't found yet, had a green circle, indicating that she was an ancestor of my maternal grandfather. This 7th great-grandmother of mine was married to Philemon Warner, and I had only recently found her while researching the Warner line.

Following shows my direct-line Tuttle ancestors. (If I hadn't used the Filter feature to narrow down the indexed names to my direct ancestors, there would have been too many to capture in a screenshot.) I have since determined Abigail's parents and how she is related to the immigrant Tuttle ancestor.

Thomas Tuttle of Woodford, Northamptonshire, England, was the father of Richard Tuttle, who died in 1589. Richard was father of Simon Tuttle (1560-1630), ancestor to three of my grandparents, and whose sons, John (1596-1656) and William (1607-1673) emigrated to the colonies. They are both my 9th great-grandfathers. See the Surname Saturday post for the details of my ancestral lines.