A decade ago, my father got interested in our family history. He started with what he could learn from elderly relatives. He leafed through old photos, some identified and some not. Then he hired professional genealogists to locate more relations from the Midwest to Europe.
The initial result was a decent family tree and some additional photo identifications. But there are a lot of holes in that family tree. Some as simple as names we don’t know.
I want to know. And I’m using my computer and the Internet to learn.
There are programs that help you organize what you already know about your family history, drawing family trees on paper or presenting multimedia slide shows on the screen, complete with photos, scanned documents, recorded voices and video clips. The latest versions of some programs even let you publish your collected information as a Web page.
If you’re looking to start a genealogy project, make sure the software you buy saves files as GEDCOM (Genealogical Data Communications), the latest standard computer file format. That way, if you switch to another program, you’ll be able to move most of the stored information.
There are also programs and Internet sites that help you discover more, with databases of names, plus links to professional genealogists.
– Family Tree Maker (Broderbund, 800-474-8696, www.familytreemaker.com) was the first tool I tried. It turned out to be the most powerful program, both for looking up the past and for presenting it on paper or on screen.
The $30 Family Tree Maker version 3.02, a CD-ROM for Windows 3.1 or Windows 95, will print 12 different styles of trees and create reports, including the Register, NGS Quarterly and Ahnentafel reports popular with professional genealogists.
Family Tree Maker will also print details on medical histories, calendars and the paraphernalia for family reunions: mailing labels, name tags and stickers.
I had looked forward to putting multimedia in the family records, and it handles photos, sound and video. And it lets you publish your tree to the Web. It doesn’t come with research information, but works with optional Family Archive CD-ROMs that Broderbund sells for $10 to $30 each.
The $60 Family Tree Maker Standard Edition III starts with the same printing and reporting foundation, but adds four FamilyFinder CD-ROMs for research. These include a FamilyFinder index of 150 million names from census, Social Security and marriage records, as well as published family trees. These point you to the particular extra-price Family Archive CD-ROM you might want. The index is also at the Web site, for free use. Standard also has a spell checker and other improvements, as well as more on-line and Web abilities than its basic sibling. And it has a how-to book on genealogical research.
The Deluxe Edition III, for $85, adds five more FamilyFinder CD-ROMs, with worldwide family trees.
Incidentally, there’s a $100 Macintosh Deluxe Edition II, only a little behind the Windows Deluxe III in features, such as having only 10 family tree styles instead of 12.
– Family Heritage (Mindscape; 617-761-3000; www.mind
scape.com; CD-ROM for Windows 95 or NT; $50) was my next stop. This program offers even better print features than Family Tree Maker, with backgrounds, borders and fonts to dress up your trees. It even lets you enter details right on the tree, instead of typing details within forms and then see the forms converted into a tree. It handles photos, and if you ante up $100 for the deluxe version, also takes in sounds and video. The Deluxe version even has a photo editor program and Web publishing abilities. Both versions have research details such as the Social Security Death Index. There’s a range of useful genealogical links at Mindscape’s Web site.
– Ultimate Family Tree Deluxe (Palladium; 800-910-2696; www.uftree.com; CD-ROM for Windows 3.1, Windows 95 or Macintosh) works hard to be easy to use. The $20 basic version has a half-hour tutorial to show you how to find information, enter it and then print and report it. And you can chose between either a basic set of commands or the more extensive advanced commands. Plus, it can print many kinds of trees and reports.
The $40 deluxe version lets you enter and edit photos, documents, and video and has clip images for decorating your results. Uniquely, it can hold French, German and English in its stored journals about your family.
The Mac version is a few features shy of the Windows, such as not handling multiple languages, and costs $20 more. And a new $60 Premier version for Windows adds research information on CD-ROM: the familiar Social Security Death Index.
There’s a downloadable free trial version at the Web site.
– Personal Roots (Expert Software; 800-772-5706; www.expertsoftware.com; CD-ROM for Windows 3.1 or 95; $15) is the least expensive of the bunch, even when you compare its official list price to the discounted street prices of the others. When you realize that Expert’s programs can be found for as little as $11 in office-supply warehouse stores, I’m often tempted to start with them before any competing titles. And this isn’t a bare-bones program. It’s not into extensive multimedia, but it will handle photos, build ancestor and descendant trees with millions of relatives, handle GEDCOM files and print 19 different reports.
– Create Family Trees Quick & Easy (Individual Software; 800-822-3522; www.individualsoftware.com; CD-ROM for Windows 95; $20) is another inexpensive option. It handles photos, but again is out of the multimedia game. You can’t even see the photos in the on-screen tree; they only show when printed on paper.
– Legacy 2.0 (Millennia; 800-753-3453; www.legacyfamily
tree.com; CD-ROM for Windows 3.1 or 95; $50) offers compatibility with file standards and prints dozens of reports, plus it has a unique merge feature that helps you handle conflicting information from different sources.
I haven’t tried either Create Family Trees or Legacy 2.0 yet, because on paper they don’t have any research tools and can’t match the multimedia of some of the other software.
My favorite overall remains Family Tree Maker, mainly for its extensive research materials. On a tight budget, or if I just weren’t sure how much I’d like playing with genealogy, I’d start with Personal Roots and hit all of those free Web sites.
If I were less focused on multimedia, I’d be tempted by Family Heritage. If the publishers would just add more research abilities, the easy operation of Ultimate Family Tree could make it the best.
