Somewhat Quick Genealogy Tip: Uploading Photos from iPhone to Ancestry.com

For the past 7 years, I have been working on my family tree on Ancestry.com. I am always excited to make new discoveries about my ancestors and relatives, such as finding their passenger lists and naturalization documents.  I also find it very exciting when I see a picture of an ancestor for the very first time. I always study the photographs carefully.  Usually, I can immediately see a resemblance with other family members. In creating an online tree, it is very important to upload photographs to the tree. Not only does it make the tree come to life, photographs help other researchers identify unknown relatives. Also, if you are like me and share your tree with many of your relatives (or if your tree is a public tree), then anyone who is able to view your tree will also be able to view your photographs (or at least view the photos of deceased relatives).

One of the ways that I often upload my photos is by going into my Photos app on my iPhone and directly uploading them to Ancestry. It is a great way to pass your time if you are a passenger on a long car or train ride or even while watching TV.

Accessing Photos on iPhone

Before you can even consider uploading photos to Ancestry, you need to have access to them on your iPhone. Of course, if you are uploading photos that you took with your iPhone, they will already be saved in your Photos app. If you are uploading old photographs, you could scan these photos and make sure they are saved in your iCloud. However, I often just take a photo of the old photographs with my iPhone. They will then show up in your Photos app on your iPhone.

My Photo

To demonstrate the steps, I have selected a photo of my grandmother Harriet and her beloved parents, Fannie and Max.

They are standing on the boardwalk in Atlantic City in approximately 1945. Notice how dressed up they were! This photo does not have the greatest picture quality, but this photo is really special to me. I love any photo that is of my grandmother, who was like a second mother to me.  Further, this photo was most likely one of my grandmother’s last photos with her father, who passed away at a very young age shortly thereafter.

STEPS FOR UPLOADING PHOTOS TO ANCESTRY FROM iPHONE:

1. Open up photos by tapping the Photos app on the Home screen. Locate the photo that you would like to save on Ancestry. 
2. Tap the action icon, which is on the lower-left corner of the screen (indicated by the red arrow below).
   
3. SKIP STEPS 3-5 IF YOU HAVE AN ANCESTRY ICON SET UP BELOW YOUR PHOTOS, AND GO DIRECTLY TO STEP 6. If you do not have an Ancestry icon set up below your photos, then scroll to the right, and tap the More icon.
4. You will see a list of Activities, under which Ancestry will appear. Toggle the switch next to Ancestry to the ON position. Note: once the Ancestry icon is set up on your iPhone in your Photos app, it will remain unless you toggle the switch next to Ancestry to the OFF position.
   
5. Tap Done.
   
6. With the Ancestry icon in your Photos app on your iPhone, you can now upload your photos to Ancestry. As seen in the image below, tap the Ancestry icon.
   
7. Tap “Tag a Person” to tag each person in the photo. It is important to tag each person (or as many as possible) so that the photo attaches to each person’s file within your family tree.
   
   
8. Enter “Title,” “Date,” etc. Try to enter as much information as possible.
   
9. After entering information in Step 8, tap Add.
   

To make sure your photo was uploaded, open your tree in Ancestry.com, and go to any one of the individuals in the photo to see if the photo is in their photo galleries.

I hope you find this helpful, and I will be back soon with another Somewhat Quick Genealogy Tip.