Writing your family history can feel daunting, especially when you’re not done with your research on a particular individual or family. But writing it all out is one of the best ways to find gaps in your research, flaws in your logic, information without sources, and new questions to ask yourself and your records. Let’s make it easier.

How often do you go looking for something simple, like a birth record or a death date for your ancestor, only to realize later that you’ve been on Ancestry for three hours without finding what you came for, and now you’ve fallen down a proverbial rabbit hole looking at multiple census records trying to figure out the nationalities of your spouse’s grandfather’s first wife’s parents?

Most smartphone owners use apps like Google Maps and Apple Maps all the time for directions to any new place, estimating drive times, planning trips, looking for conveniently located restaurants or other businesses, etc. But have you ever used them for genealogy?