Family History and Your Computer

Family History and your Computer

Brian J. Edwards

Family History research comprises two main activities:

Seeking out the information

Sorting, storing and presenting the data

 Until the last few years, it was generally necessary to visit such places as the Family Records Centre, County Record Offices, Libraries, etc On-line information was mostly confined to sites compiled by individuals publishing the results of their research

 Now, most preliminary work can be carried out on-line with both free and commercial sites providing a wide range of information

 Research back to the mid 1800’s generally requires the purchase of the appropriate birth, marriage & death certificates.

 In order to make a purchase it is necessary to consult the official B.M.D. indexes to obtain the reference number.

 There are now a couple of sites giving access to the G.R.O. Births, Marriages & Deaths Indexes

 Once the reference number is known, certificates can be ordered on-line.

 Two main sources  Start with “Free BMD”  Advantages:  Its Free  Reasonably complete from 1837 to about 1900  It’s a database  Disadvantages:  It’s a transcription  Still being compiled  Missing entries  Poor coverage after about 1910

 The other on-line source for the indexes is www.1837online.com

 Provides scanned images of the GRO indexes

 Is complete

 Currently makes a charge of 15p per page

 Late News. Ancestry.co.uk are now offering the same info, apparently free of charge.

 A census was taken every ten years from 1841 onwards.

 Those from 1841 to 1901 are available for viewing by the public.

 They will all soon be available on-line.

 The 1881 census transcription is available on CD- ROM

 You can generally view the on-line indexes free of charge, but need to pay to view the actual census page.

Problems:

 Finding an individual depends on the accuracy of the indexes, which are not all of very high quality.

 You cannot “scroll” through an area looking for an individual as you could with microfilm or fiche. Advantages:

 If an individual has been correctly indexed, it is very quick compared with an manual search.

 Cost is reasonable

 Traditionally done using a card index  One card per person  One card per family  Research information stored in box files.

 These days the data is kept in a similar manner on a home computer.

 Any software must be able to:  Uniquely identify each individual and each family  Allow the storing of at least the basic minimum information about each person and family (i.e. dates & places of birth, marriage & death)  Define the links between persons / families  Be capable of exporting the data for use by other programs

 Programs are essentially Specialist Databases

 Data is normally transferred in GEDCOM format GEnealogical Data COMmunication  Developed by the Mormons  Tagged text based format  Not all programs recognise all tags

 Good for the basic data, but can be problematic with non-standard information

 Designed initially to work with the Mormon PAF program

0 @I1@ INDI 1 REFN P1 1 NAME Henry /WATTS/ 1 SEX M 1 BIRT 2 DATE 12 Mar 1867 2 PLAC Cat Street, Wantage, Berks 1 DEAT 2 DATE 3 Nov 1940 2 PLAC Paddington, Middx 1 OCCU Carman 1 FAMC @F24@ 1 FAMS @F2@ 1 _UDF1 Carman 1 _BLOB 7747 14507 1 NOTE My maternal grandfather 1 NOTE 1 NOTE Died 3rd December 1940 as a result of being knocked down by a private motor car 2 CONT in the street. There was a coroner's inquest held on 8th & 15th November 1940 1 NOTE Prior to death was living at 118 Great Western Road, Paddington

Brothers Keeper (Shareware - £39.95) Cumberland Family Tree (Shareware - £27.50) Family Historian (£36.40) Family Origins (£7.95) Family Tree Maker (£23.95) Genbox (£27.45) Generations Kith & Kin / TreeDraw (Shareware - £33.00 & £25.85) Legacy v6 (£38.50) Master Genealogist (about $80) Pedigree Personal Ancestral File (Mormons) – Free Reunion RootsMagic (Basic Edition costs £18.40, Platinum Edition £49.95) (prices from S&N Genealogy - http://www.genealogysupplies.com/)

 Currently the most popular programs seem to be  RootsMagic  Family Historian  Kith & Kin  The Master Genealogist  Generations  Family Tree Maker

 Try them out ! (Earlier or demo versions are generally available)

 Select one with the particular facilities you need  Ease of use  Type of Tree - Vertical or Horizontal, Ancestral or Descendant. Ease of manipulation  Types of reports and lists  Graphics / Pictures / Source details, etc  Output to HTML for web pages

 Possibly avoid  American programs (states, ZIP codes etc)  All eggs in one basket – Do you want photos & documents wrapped in a single program or do you prefer to keep them in their native format?  “De-Luxe” or “Special Versions” with extra data discs – The data is invariably American  Programs which cannot accept “free-form” data, e.g. born “circa 1846”  Overcomplicated programs

 I use Kith & Kin  Meets my needs  Not overcomplicated  Photos, document scans, etc are kept as .jpg files  Transcriptions of documents, are kept as Word files  Lists, etc are kept in Excel  If I needed to choose another program, it would probably be either  Family Historian or  The Master Genealogist

 Kith & Kin does not have a tree-drawing facility, but uses a linked program TreeDraw  When used with Kith & Kin, the tree file is automatically updated

 TreeDraw is generally accepted as being one of the best tree-drawing programs

 It accepts GEDCOM input, and is often used in conjunction with other programs (but without the auto-update.

 Trees can be either ancestor or descendant trees

 Trees can be Horizontal or Vertical – can also produce wheel charts

 They can include graphics or photos

 Names or families can be boxed

 Multiple colours can be used

 Can be exported as .pdf file

 There are a number of other programs for the genealogist

 Two of interest are  British date Calculator  Parish Locator

 Required to find dates shown as Festival / Saints Days or as Regnal years

 Useful to see if a place exists

“Genealogy is a thing of the past”