Family Historian User Group

Is it possible to create a diagram similar to all relatives, that will include all individuals that have the same surname? I have a "collection" of 52 individuals all of the same surname, all with connections to one place. What I am trying to find is the common ancestor of all of them, which I know I don't yet have. However it would be helpful if I could view them all in a diagram where I could see at a glance who is of the same generation.

If you don't yet know their common ancestor, how can you know to which generation they all belong, relative to one another?

If the people in the "collection" are not already linked by a common ancestor in your file, they will probably fall into several different Pools. This is the term FH uses for a group of people who are connected to each other directly or indirectly. It is not possible to generate a diagram automatically to include people in different pools. You might be able to achieve what you want indirectly but it is not straightforward.

You can generate a diagram for one pool and then use the Diagram > Insert into Diagram to add another pool to the same Diagram. Some pools may contain only one or two people, so you may have to do this many times. Unfortunately some pools may also contain many other people who don’t have the surname you are interested in so you will have to hide them in the diagram afterwards to get them out of the way.

By the way, each Pool is assigned a Pool number by FH and this can be seen by using the Search for Orphans standard query. It can also be displayed in the Records window (Individuals tab) by right-clicking anywhere in the window other than on a name and selecting Columns. Then in the left hand column of the Configure Columns dialog scroll down to the bottom and select <other> and click the > symbol in the middle. Enter the heading 'Pool' and in the Expression field enter =RelationPool(). Then click OK. You can now sort on the Pool column to bring all people in each pool together. This will give you an idea of how many people there are in each pool and whether the above method for creating a diagram would be feasible.