Genealogy

“Other things may change us, but we start and end with family” - Anthony Brandt

Every few years I’m bitten by the genealogy bug and obsessively work on family records for a month or two. When I’ve exhausted the available online records, I set my family tree aside and wait for technology advancements and new records to appear. It is wonderful that people keep scanning state and church records so more and more data are accessible as time goes by. I’m also looking forward to the release of the 1940 census records on April 2 of 2012.

My ancestor hunt was resumed last week when my mother wanted some information on the family of a great-great grandparent. We have some really old family photos that my grandmother collected of her grandparents. Now my mother is scanning these photos and making new albums to pass on to her relatives.

Over the years I’ve used many online forums and genealogy programs. A great free program is Personal Ancestral File (PAF) that was last updated in 2002 but is still available. For $30 you can buy one of the top rated programs like Legacy Family Tree, Family Tree Maker, Roots Magic, and Ancestral Quest.

For ease of use, my favorite program is the online Ancestry.com. It works in a web browser and the data is stored via the Internet. I can access my tree from anywhere in the world and share it with the public or a few private friends. The online research material is amazing but not cheap: $20/month for US or $30/month for World data. Modest discounts are available if you buy 3 months or 1year of access. I typically pay for a few months then cancel. Fortunately I can still read and update my online Tree “for free” after I stop paying. I just cannot access the online historical records.

One very good thing about genealogy programs is that you can share historical data between them. Any decent family tree software will support GEDCOM, GEnealogical Data COMmunication, which was created by the Mormon Church as a genealogy standard. But keep in mind that GEDCOM is “Text Only”; designed for preserving who begat whom, who married whom, years of birth, death, etc. It does not transfer audio files, video, photographs and other new media that enhance the modern family trees.

Bottom Line

Online genealogy is blessing and a curse. There is a lot of BAD genealogy online with parents younger than children, individuals giving birth to themselves, the location Maine, France listed as Maine, USA, and so on. I imported a lot of junk ancestry years ago and am now pruning it back. I would hope by now for one definite source for British royal ancestry but I’m not aware of it. Some people get excited about tracing their line back to Adam and Eve. Frankly this is just as reliable as my British lines linked to the Normans linked to the Vikings which link back to the Norse God Frey.

According to Wikipedia, a bogus genealogy from Charlemagne to Adam & Eve was created for Carl Springer in the mid 19th century and continues to be used online today. But the errors also go further back to European royalty who wanted to show divine descent. Read about the Charte d'Alaon genealogy that is now discredited.

I'm thinking I may have to buy a Family Tree program to edit and correct my Ancestry.com data. I have over 7000 entries in my trees but it badly needs cleaning. Ancestry.com lacks data cleansing tools like duplicate finding/merging, orphan tracking, relationship calculator, etc.