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Best Open Source Genealogy Software?
An anonymous reader writes "I'm looking to build a family tree for a holiday gift. Do the Slashdotters of the world have any recommendations on open source genealogy software? I did try a 14-day free trial of Ancestry.com. What a scam! I submitted the personal information for my parents, grandparents, and me. Then, I received a pop-up telling me that if I would like to get information on my family, I would have to upgrade my subscription for $29.95 US. So, I took the chance. Turns out that the only information they had was my previous addresses for the past 20 years." The venerable GRAMPS is still actively developed, and its site lists several other possibilities, too. Any favorites, or anti-favorites, out there?
GRAMPS is my favourite, though I haven't needed to go trying any of the other options as yet.
Cheers, Chris
If you want it online or even locally, webtrees is the most current open package. active development team and community based forums will assist you where required. www.webtrees.net.
does everything you need and more!
I've used GeneWeb and really liked it. Written in OCaml, but appears to be dormant. Nothing much has happened with it for a few years now. Still a pretty good program though.
"For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and Long Words Bother Me"
Geni.com is an online service, not open source software per se, but it's free to use, useful, and there's a lot of data there already. I found my ancestors going back to the 17th century after matching up my own tree back to my grandparents. http://www.geni.com/
davejenkins.com |
My grandma has givin me sooooo much skini on the family its not funny. Didn't cost me a dime other than my time. Trust me... they don't hold back and will give you info can not find anywhere. They are the source.. if they aren't available, talk with the gossip of the family. Each family has one. Find them, then prepare yourself for A LOT of bad news.
For basic usage, any program that supports GEDCOM (the de facto file format all good genealogy software support) will do, and your choice should be on your personal preference. So try them out first, of find your local genealogy association and ask around. Personally, I have good experience with Gramps (you already found that one) and ProGen (a dutch commercial program). The latter not being open source, it'll probably not be interesting to you.
For more advanced usage, you should know that some programs assigns a different meaning to some standard fields, and most programs have their own way of filling in custom fields. If you find yourself using such features, please consider who you'd be sharing your GEDCOM files with, and use the same. Note though, that it'll likely not be open source.
Ancestry.com is not by any means a scam. Like any thing else you have to know what your doing in order to research your family history. Genealogy research is time consuming and often leads to a dead end after years of research. However the fact that you paid to use Ancestry.com is amazing to me :-) Check out your local library and see if they have a subscription. Also take a look at familysearch.org or even the LDS Family search centers for more resources library.familysearch.org/ (to find your local center). Good luck at finding your roots.
not open source, but the mormon's offer a nice little program for free: http://www.familysearch.org/eng/paf/
I remember my parents doing some genealogy stuff, they used a program called PAF (Personal Ancestor File), I think it was free. There's also https://www.familysearch.org/, where you can look people up for free as well. These are both free even if you are not an LDS member. Not sure what exactly you need the software to do for you, but I remember with PAF my parents printed out a big ol' pedigree chart, found out we were related to some kings back in the dark ages, pretty crazy stuff.
And also, what OS?
When my uncle did our family tree a few years ago, he did it in PAF, which is free (as in beer), and seems to have every option that was needed.
It's a Windows program, but it does work under Wine. It can export to ceveral standard formats.
Some people may take issue with the fact that it was created by the Mormons, but they do make it freely available to anyone to download and use free of change.
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
I personally use PHPGEDview. If you need something web-based, this is a great piece of software. It lets my whole family, all around the country, work on the tree.
http://www.phpgedview.net/
You mean like FamilySearch's Personal Ancestry File software?
http://www.familysearch.org/eng/paf/
Ancestry.com is great if you know what you are doing. : ) I use it regularly.
Also try https://labs.familysearch.org/ which provides a lot of the same data but for free.
Also try Genweb which is free. http://www.usgenweb.org/
Maybe the poster wants to be able to freely distribute the software and resulting files to family members?
It sounds pretty reasonable to me, especially after being boned paying for something.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
http://www.ldsgenealogy.com/ "The LDS Church offers free genealogy software that you can use as you do your genealogy research. It is called Personal Ancestral File (PAF) and is one of the best software programs for genealogy. It helps users organize their family history records. It can produce, either on screen or on paper, family histories, pedigree charts, family group records, and other reports to help users in their search for missing ancestors."
http://www.ahnenblatt.com/ Ahnenblatt is free, but I don't recall it having the source available. My housemate has used this program solidly for 3 years and has found it good and easy to use.Hasn't been updated for about a year on the website, but I think a newer version on their forums is available.
For sites like Ancestry.com, you really need to have a good few generations (4-5, minimum) to start getting good results back, since quite a bit of it is crowd-sourced links from distant relatives. Even at that point, there are a few points in history where the records / links just suck, and it usually takes quite a bit of digging to find another link. Over the course of roughly a month, and with some good spots of luck, we were able to trace back several lines of my family through Ancestry.com, and other sources for several hundred years.
Fortunately, there's a standard file format for genealogy data, and Ancestry (and other sites) usually support exporting to it.
Unfortunately, my data yielded a genealogy chart that most of the current open source or free software couldn't render very well. I've been considering writing one myself, that at the very least could render out multiple pages at once for printing, rather than manually forcing the user to set things up correctly for each sub-branch...
PAF aka Personal Ancestral File.
Weirdly, this software, developed by a church, wins my award for the very BEST Macintosh software ever, in the category of Compatible With The Most Versions of Mac OS.
Originally, this program cost money, but not very much. I bought it for the Mac 512 or thereabouts. It came on floppy disk, probably about 1985. Years later, when Macs had color, low and behold, the PAF screens were in color. They had followed the compatibility guidelines, and put in simple color years before anyone could see color on a Mac. The SAME version of software continued to work for decades, through major system and processor revisions that broke almost everything else. I think it finally stopped working with System X, (about 5 computers later, for me) when it wouldn't work under Classic for some reason.
Pretty much everything else became incompatible once or more during that time, including Microsoft and Apple. Amazing!
Computers obey me.
Make directories with all the names and use `tree`
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
As far as research, Social Security Death Index, Ellis Island Records, US Censuses up until 1930 (1940 will be released on April 2, 2012), European censuses and so forth have all been useful. Ancestry.com has scanned ship manifests on it, with the names OCR'd, which was useful for me. It also had draft cards, passport applications and other things.
Records don't tell everything. I told my mother I found her mother's birth on a European census form, which said 1 month old or something. She told me that her mother's mother had a girl that died shortly after she was born, soon after which she became pregnant and had my grandmother, who got the same name as the baby who died. I had never heard about this before. If I hadn't been told that, I would assume a girl born in that year with that name would be my grandmother for sure. So family memory can often trump records. In the "Godfather Part II" the immigration officer is in a hurry and mixes up the last name and town of origin, in a few seconds with a stroke of the pen the family's name is changed. All kinds of things happen - birthdays are changed by purpose or accident, people flee Europe to avoid military draft, family memory often trumps official records.
https://wiki.familysearch.org/en/Windows_Genealogy_Software Most of the better genealogy programs (Legacy, Ancestral Quest, Roots Magic) have a free version that lets you do everything you need as a beginning genealogist.
My daughter is using Ancestry.com to create a great genealogy. Through it, she has accessed old immigration and census records and more recent death records. Although all her grandparents are dead, she has been able to extend the genealogy back to her great-great-great grandparents and include many 2nd, 3rd, and 4th cousins. By granting read-only access to cousins, my daughter has also been able to get details from them about current and past relatives.
Do it yourself. There is no substitute for creating your own database/worksheet. Why in the hell would you even trust what was given to you by a subscription fee? Just because you pay you trust it? In my experience, it is much more rewarding and valuable if you do the work yourself. We took a ton of time and effort, but our family has the real truth with real documents (copies) and contacts thousands of miles away.
If your ancestry is important to you, do it yourself. Don't take shortcuts. The risk of being misled/wrong are too great. Even doing this ourselves, we were taken down false leads. Imagine someone who does not have a stake doing something so important for you.
Moe
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
My interest in genealogy has gone from "cool trying to trace your ancestors" to mostly creepy genetic profiling possibilities, with the ever increasing trend of wanting DNA records to larger and more DNA registries, and every so often someone wants to do DNA records of everyone in a national database. With sufficiently many records and the family relations - which are a lot easier to get hold of - it might not matter that they don't have your DNA sample. You're pretty well defined by your family's lineage anyway. We have some family records but I actually prefer they'd stay family records.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Hey OP, if all you found was addresses on Ancestry.com, then you're not making any effort to find information. They do have metric boatloads of data of all sorts for your money, but you do have to have a clue about finding it, and make the effort.
That said, I do agree Ancestry.com is a pricey service. Check out MyHeritage.com. You can do a free 250-person tree, or add more with payment. The software is a free download and use, and is pretty thorough. The online piece includes the ability to match to other people's trees and import their data to your tree.
Little girls, like butterflies, need no excuse. -- L. Long
I'm looking to build a family tree for a holiday gift.
To be presented in what year?
#DeleteChrome
I've been deeply involved in my family genealogy for over 20 years. At one time or another I've used every software package that was available as well as a system that I designed myself. One of the biggest flaws with a lot of the software I've used is that are far too simple and don't take into consideration that not all the data you get is accurate. I ended up using a software package called The Master Genealogist (TMG for short), its available at http://www.whollygenes.com/ TMG is by far the best software package for tracking genealogy. It is fully GEDCOM compliant but is able to track much more information than is supported by GEDCOM. One of the most key features is the support for multiple tags such as, somebody says that Uncle Ted was born in July, 1940 but somebody else says he was born in July 1941. You are able to have both Birth tags with one flagged as primary and have surety flags (to indicate how sure you are that something is true, a birth certificate would have a pretty high surety rating.) The software is currently at version 7 but V 8 is due out. I would try to steer away from online repositories because you really have no idea what they are doing with your data and if they go belly up what happens to all your research.
There are some nice add on tools to TMG to generate web sites (Second Site is the best one). You really should check out TMG before you make any decisions.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law - Aleister Crowley
I don't work for ancestry.com, and they don't pay me. I recently signed up ancestry.com to research our family geneology. My biggest complaint is the search functionality often returns way too much data. Their search/matching algorithm is quite eager. The service isn't cheap, but then again how much would it cost to manually do the research yourself? How much time would you have to spent going through dusty census records? How much time do you have to spent tracking down the geneology going back up the tree? It took me a few days to understand how their search works, but once I got a hang of it, it was easier to find records for people in our family tree. It's not perfect, but it does quite a bit. If I had to search census records going back to 1910, it sure as heck would cost more than a monthly subscription.
GRAMPS is the best OSS piece of software I've found so far. You can also export it to PhpGedView (a very nice OSS web-based application)
Pro tip: *Always* record your sources, for every scrap of info (GRAMPS lets you do this), that way when (Not "If") you have conflicting pieces of information, you can figure out which one to trust. GRAMPS also lets you assign a 'reliability' to each piece of information.
The only problem is that exporting to GEDCOM format loses a lot of this kind of 'extra' data. (IE, exporting is a lossy process, so use GRAMPS as a master, and if you want to put your tree online, use that as a secondary source for family members to add to.)
As far as resources go, Ancestry.com has a bad habit of suggesting that they have a ton of matches in all these different databases, when in fact most of the matches returned don't have any relation to the names you entered. Don't base your decision to subscribe solely on that.
That being said, many public libraries offer free access to some, or many, census records and other public databases.
If you have Swedish ancestors, GenLine is EPIC: Digitized church records (Swedes often had data recorded annually instead of every 5 or 10 years, and also recorded moves into and out of parish districts.)
In addition to offering PAF, the Family History Library runs the web site www.familysearch.org. The library is in the process of digitizing their over 2 million microfilms and making the data available on-line and for free. There's a long way to go, but it's worth looking at. If you decide to use PAF, the add-on program PAF Companion produces nicer looking reports of your data that the built-in PAF functions, and the cost is quite low. And since PAF will export a gedcom (a genealogy data transfer protocol that all genealogy database programs recognize), if you decide later to try a different program, you can easily move your data.
Emacs
GRAMPS is an outstanding piece of software. When I first began using it a few years ago, it was a little rough and it was difficult to install on Windows. This made it great for me while running Ubuntu, but difficult for me to recommend to family members. It seems to have much better support now under Linux, Windows and Mac. It also uses an open XML-based file format that at least one working group is looking at as the basis for an updated standard to replace the aging GEDCOM format. I think this is definitely the candidate for best OSS Genealogy.
PHPGedView is another good, open-source, web-based genealogy package. This is a good one to use if you're planning to build your family tree collaboratively among several family members. My biggest complaint about it is that it's a little clunky looking and some family members seem a bit intimidated by it, so they don't make changes or additions when they could. I began building a new theme and layout for it, but I put it on hold when I felt like it was taking time from working on the family history itself. Of course, it also requires that you have a server to host it on.
A similar online family tree is Wikitree.com. It looks promising, but I haven't yet found a good way to sync changes between it and my local genealogy software. It's still in its infancy though.
All that said, my favorite genealogy software is the closed-source Legacy Family Tree. The standard edition is free and the full "deluxe" version is inexpensive. Unfortunately, it's Windows only (I've had mixed luck running it through WINE). It's advantage though is that it's very easy to install and use and has some powerful tools for sourcing and merging trees. It also creates some very impressive, customizable family tree charts that can be saved in a variety of formats or printed through their mail-order service. It also saves your genealogy database in several formats including GEDCOM.
Ancestry.com is the necessary evil of the genealogy world. They have many records on their site that aren't available elsewhere on line, but they have made quite a few business decisions over the years that don't sit well with many family historians. They also produce the "Family Tree Maker" software which I recommend avoiding.
One that I have used is called TNG. It is a PHP/MySQL web based site. It is very nice and fairly simple to use. It allows you to manage your own site.
http://lythgoes.net/genealogy/software.php
Lifelines
It's console based, but it's fairly powerful for that. Once you learn the navigation keys (and there's a help window at the bottom of the screen), then you can walk up and down your family tree with ease. It reads in GEDCOM, allows you to edit those records as GEDCOM (so you have a lot -- perhaps too much -- freedom in record structure and normalisation), and it exports in GEDCOM as well, as well as a scripting language which allows for all sorts of reports and outputs. You can even tell it to keep records in UTF8.
It is a record/database manipulation program: you will need to gather your data yourself, and enter it by hand. While the actual entry process is tedious (which, to be frank, will always be the case, flashy GUI or not), it is a good opportunity to go over the data and discover incongruities and patterns.)
"This is a Hollywood movie: when it comes to the Laws of Physics, they're lucky if they get Gravity!" --- my wife
Ancestry.com has a few good resources, but you have to go to your public library to get to them.
I use ancestry.com from time to time, it is best used for researching your ancestors, by which I mean those non living. The US census data is delayed by ~70 years so very little info on anything in the past 70 years will come up. I have been able to track back to 1500 AD on several ancestors on both sides of my family in ancestry. In my experience census data is key, and maiden names, you will notice that it will quickly become impossible to determine maternal ancestry past a certain point.
i dont get why americans are so obsessed with genealogy, ancestry and so on. maybe it is because it is a country of immigrants, and everyone is trying to have an identity extending to their past ?
where i live, in anatolia (turkey), history goes thousands of years past into 8-9000 BC. actually, it was discovered that, the villagers living near the site of a recently discovered mummy that is dated 6500 BC or so (8500 years ago) had 100% exact dna with the mummy. (western anatolia) basically, those people lived there since that time, seasoning all that has happened around those parts.
yet, ordinary people dont give 2 flying shizz about their past. people just live on.
Read radical news here
It's web-based and written in PHP, obviously, which doesn't suit everyone. It's also a latecomer to the ajax stuff and (while it does dynamically load content) still considers pop-up windows a valid part of a web UI. Not pretty. However, I've had great experiences managing a genealogy database with it, as well as printing some nice charts.
Have you tried http://www.myheritage.es/ here in mexico it doesnt find a lot of info about family related for me, but maybe in the us you can get a better approaching to a real crowd sourcing family tree
I've been researching my genealogy for almost a decade at this point. It's a lot of work, but I find it fun and enlightening.
Now, there are really two questions here. First, software. There are many different programs out there, the one that I have the most experience with is Legacy. The free version is quite powerful, even if it's closed source.
The second question that wasn't really asked though is regarding the data. You could have the best genealogy software in the world, but it's useless without the data. I'm afraid that simply adding you, your parents, and your grandparents isn't going to do much for you, no matter the website or software. Part of the problem is that the most useful source of information for ancestry, census records, isn't available for any census later than 1930 in the U.S. due to privacy concerns. Most likely, you'll have to find some great-grandparents (ask your parents or grandparents about them) and from there it's relatively easy to bootstrap your family tree back to the 1850s. Unfortunately, the most complete census records are found on Ancestry.com, which is a pay site of course, but there are so many other records that they have that it can be worth it to pay the monthly fee (I do). In addition to that, you can also piggyback on other peoples' research through their community.
If you don't feel like paying, there are plenty of other sites out there with free data and the number grows constantly. Familysearch.org is probably the best. Rootsweb (owned by Ancestry) is also free and has the World Connect function that will show you family trees (secondary sources). Be persistent. There are plenty of sources out there.
I started doing genealogy in the mid to late 90's. First it was with Famly TreeMaker, which served me well for many years. However, when I wanted to publish some of my data on the web I was left in a bind and had to manually do some indexes and the like. When I switch off of Windows to Linux, I tried Gramps and a VM version of PAF -- both fine desktop products. However, along the way I decided that i wanted others to contribute and the only way to do that was to move fully to the web. I dove into PhpGedView about two years ago and really liked it. I have now switched to WebTrees, another 100% eb based solution that draws it heritage from PhpGedView. A web based solution takes some getting use to. However, the security -- in Webtrees is great and its sophistication is top notch.
Don't forget Emacs with gedcom.el. I haven't used it but if it runs in GNU/Emacs it must be great.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
You are just lame.
Maybe he is running Linux? Maybe he doesn't want his computer loaded with crapware? WHO CARES?
He is asking for a legitimate question which deserves a legitimate answer.
PAF is obsolete, but still viable.
If research is what you need, don't overlook Family Search. It works best if you can start with someone long dead. If you want one-on-one assistance (for free), stop by an LDS Family History Center. Yeah, we're "Mormon's", but the family history advisers must not be overtly preachy (if they are, they're not following instructions). Just bring everything you've got.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Meds, dude, meds.
Sounds like you forgot to take 'em this morning ... and a chill pill while you're at it ...
Any software you find is likely just going to be a database entry/maintenance type software tool for storing your genealogical information, but itself will not give you any information; it just provides a place for you to keep track of information you do find from other sources.
If you are stuck on open-source, I'm not sure how to help you, but if all you really care about is that it is free, I can strongly recommend Personal Ancestral File from here. While it has some fields for Mormon ordinances, you don't have to use those features and it will do nicely to maintain your records.
As for doing the actual research, again I recommend looking into the Mormons - they maintain branches of their main family history library at various church buildings around the world. The volunteers who staff those branches are instructed to not proselyte, they simply are there to help you do the research. The only time you'll have to pay for something is for obvious things like using the copy machine, or if you want to have records shipped in from Salt Lake City you'll have to pay postage, but that's it.
Disclaimer: yes, I am a Mormon, so I may be biased on this matter, but as far as I've seen, the Mormons are the premier experts in the world when it comes to family history research.
Intelligent responses welcome, flames will be met with marshmallows.
Was his question not just as legitimate as OP's? Does he not deserve the same respect you expect of him? Is this how everyone that questions open-source gets treated?
If it rhymes it must be true.
simple family tree
http://jdmcox.com/
In God we trust,
everyone else we firewall!!
The question covers two things. Ancestry is both a genealogy database service and a genealogy program in the cloud. It is actually a pretty good database service, and the best single repository out there, but you have to get back to WW II for veterans or 1930 for people in the US to start getting good info. If you have younger grandparents you might ask to find out about their parents and search for them. This will be an issue whatever source you use, as 1930 is the most recent Census released.
As a cloud-based genealogy program Ancestry is just average, and not something you would normally use unless you want the service behind it.
The FIRST problem with your post (regarding the availability of your information) is that YOU ARE STILL ALIVE! The Ancestry database contains data on dead people - otherwise it would be a database to facilitate identity theft. The ancestry databases contain birth and death records, including Social Security Number. Census records do NOT include data for the most recent 70 years... so today you can search the census records from 1930 and prior.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
Just something to take into account, many programs don't allow for same-sex marriages (or partnerships) -- a child *has* to have a male parent who is partnered with a female parent. This is a problem for my wife, who has one parent in a male/female partnership and the other parent in a same-sex partnership, and makes finding appropriate family tree programs difficult. The most common "hack" is to make one or both partners of the same sex marriage unknown gender, but often you need to enforce the male/female parts of marriages.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
I have used several programs over the years, commercial and free and open source, and I will say that I find Gramps to be the best of what is out there. Personal Ancestral File is also really good, but the development seems to have stalled and it is Windoze only. I also used Lifelines for a while but find I prefer the GUI of Gramps.
A better question is "where are all the free online resources for researching?" Many sites have some info, but a great deal require some sort of payment and their data is usually not worth the price. The Mormons seem to have the largest repository BTW, and regardless of what you think of their beliefs or principles they are providing this service to everyone.
Helps you organize everything and put it on the web.
Nothing to see here but us trolls...move along...
I think it's an issue of OP not understanding the difference between free and open source.
Is this how everyone that questions open-source gets treated?
Wow, you must be new here.
A month ago, I found GenerationX, an open source Mac OS X GEDCOM editor. (GEDCOM is a standard genealogy file format.) Unfortunately, the version I found was very old. It was PowerPC-only and crashed on launch on Snow Leopard.
I took the source on SorceForge, fixed many of the compiler and static analyzer warnings and removed the expiry code.
You can find my fork on github:
https://github.com/paulschreiber/generationx
Be careful — this is still beta quality.
The right software depends on what you're really trying to track. One the one end of the spectrum you have parental lineage -- simply parents of parents with dates and places -- this would be referred to as genealogy. At the other end you get the stories, photos and other facts surrounding the ancestors, and that's family history.
Genealogy VS. Family History
If you're just going for genealogy, then PAF, GRAMPS, Geni, FamilySearch etc. will all do the job just fine. Some programs (eg. GRAMPS) lets you add photos and additional information, others (PAF) are more "just the facts". For my genealogy I really like the New FamilySearch, however it's only open to Mormons during the beta phase. It should be open to the public some time in 2011. I haven't currently found a solution I like for tracking my family history. I have photos, scanned books and documents, and lots of ripped VHS and 8mm home videos and no good solution for that yet.
Alone VS Collaborative
A question you have to ask now is how you want to work. If you use one of the online programs (New FamilySearch, Ancestry.com, Geni, etc.) your tree isn't just yours. If you're lucky you can tap into parts of your tree that someone else has already added. To collaborate using stand-alone programs you will have to export PAF files and exchange them with others.
The down side to collaborative genealogy is that it's collaborative. You end up trusting other people's work, which might be based off of secondary sources (serious genealogists will often only accept government or church records!), or which might be guess work ("I think grandpa said..."). It can lead to edit wars if one line of the family spells a name a certain way and you feel strongly about it being spelled another way. These collaboration issues are still being worked out. Still, I think collaboration is the future and recommend finding an online system you trust enough to share your data with!
"I'm looking to build a family tree for a holiday gift."
Real men wait until the 24th before tossing together mom's gift.
Word game?
... at least on a Mac. For one thing, the interface is a little difficult to figure out if you're not already familiar with it, and if you try to access the help... instant crash, every time. For starters, I was trying to figure out how to indicate that my parents were, you know, married to each other at the time of my birth, and that proved to be a lot more difficult than you'd think. And the auto-crashing help was no help at all. Also, there are lots of weird little problems: I found that when I tried to enter birthdays, various number keys would mysteriously become mapped to keyboard shortcuts - so, for example, when I tried to enter my brother's birthdate, which is in 1970, I could get as far as 197... but the "0" had become mapped to the "Go" menu item, so then the only choice was to use the combobox tool to scroll the year all the way from 197 AD to 1970 AD... which is tedious, to say the least. The problem would be temporarily cured by exiting and restarting the program, but then it would come back. I also had problems with the "1" key becoming mapped.
The bottom line is that I'm finding this to be all but unusable on the Mac. I do like the idea of an open source genealogy program, though, so I may give it a try on the Ubuntu box and see if it's any better.
I've used Open Source software for family tree stuff myself. I have tried a few commerical ones and the one I liked the most was iFamily for Leopard (www.ifamilyforleopard.com) . It's Mac only but it does everything you could need and it's not expensive at all including HTML output. Even better is that the database used in the program is sqlite so you can crack it open and pull out the data yourself.
Now on to sources. As other commenters have pointed out, your best start is talk to your family. You can choose to map out your family tree and you can layer in stories. The further you go back, the harder the stories become. For the first couple generations you can get it all (hopefully) from your family. As you go back you need to start layering in detail from census and BMD certificates. In my case, one of my ancestors was a worsted weaver. That meant research in to weaving industry in North England in order to build up a picture.
Ancestry.com is an excellent research tool for indexes. It won't give you nice print out of certificates but for finding birth/marriage/death, census and other info it's brilliant. Most libraries also have it available so you c get it that way. LDS at familysearch.org is free but not as useful but they're making huge strides with their indexing projects. Some places also have pay-per-view or purchase of credits for the casual user as well.
Good luck on your journey!
http://www.phpgedview.net/ Actively developed under GNU license and supports GEDCOM.
I'd be careful using the Mormon version, unless you want great grandpa to be baptized for the dead. That's what they use their vast database of genealogy for.
I've used Gramps almost exclusively for several years and really like it. The database is much improved. It is well thought out and quite flexible. Reporting could use a little window dressing, but is quite functional. GEDCOM output works well.
the 4-5 days you've got left ain't gonna cut it.
these things take considerable time, effort and commitment to put together.. ask any of the millions of people that make it their life's passion.
For those who only hear about Mormons through their detractors should understand that they believe that all people are sons and daughters of God. Which means that we are one big family. As such, family is a major part of the lifestyle. As such, they have one of the best resources, along with software, for finding genealogy information.
As one post above mine has stated, if the History Center advisors become preachy, they are not following instructions. I know that the local genealogy society (not LDS related) in my area (Louisville, KY) have donated to the LDS History Center because they have members of their society use the resources and material a lot.
Our local library has a subscription to Ancestry.com and the site is Extremely useful. I use it and sometimes only donate a few bucks here and there in support of my local library. I am certain to sign the visitor book to ensure they get more funding from the local gov. The site is worth every penny but this is only obvious after you spend some time understanding what to expect from it. This site is to help with researching data stored in specific archived sources transcribed by volunteers and other paid staff. They also house submitted family research done by your family embers or distant relatives. For someone to do research specifically for your close family, epxect to pay roughly 10-50 dollars and hour for some volunteers to look up specific information.You usually have to find the volunteers yourself in the county you suspect your relative was from. No software like Graps or Family Tree maker will just do research for you. It will help document your findings and it will help publish your findings neatly into various trees, books, charts, timelines... whatever. Family Tree Maker attempts to match your recorded data to what has already been submitted and rate the returns for you however that info is not always so easy for a beginner to determin the accuracy. Finally, I suggest asking your local hostorian or fellow family history center patron what they use, which local library has a subscription and what software they use. My local library even provides computers to access the site and Family Tree Maker to store you found data to a file you can take with you on a USB stick for later use.
You mean like this? https://familysearch.org/
Mod parent up. It's a free service, frequently updated from various sources, goes back centuries, and even includes a series of online lessons on how to do your family history. Backed by Mormons, but that doesn't make it any less of an awesome service. (Disclaimer: I am a Mormon)
Although, I agree that TMG is better than most other software packages, it is still not the correct approach to really sound genealogy, because sound genealogy is all about documenting your sources. Every fact stored in your software package should have a source. Also, every assumption (such as that person A mentioned in birth certificate B is the same as person C mentioned in birth certificate D) should be entered as such with a source as well (even if it is you yourself). In that way, it is always possible to derive on which facts and assumptions a certain relationship between two persons is based. Actually, This approach is especially important when you exchange data with other genealogists. Just adding an author to a collection of facts, is not good enough, because you can never see if a fact from two sources isn't actually based on the same (possible incorrect) source or assumption. In such a system, it would also be possible to quickly fix errors, such as you discover that person A and person C are not the same.
They've got a freebie that works nicely on Windows and uses the standard GenCon file format. If you need to do more in depth research, then you can go to any LDS Church and access the family history branch for more information. Note that any links to the Middle East is going to require more effort such as heading to Utah and the main LDS Geneology Repository to investigate.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
If not, then why would you want it to be open source?
If I was going to be spending a reasonable amount of time inputting data that I want to access for an extended period of time I would want it to be an open source program. That way you can always get the data out of the program again (possibly with some effort) and you are not stuck with regular upgrade fees for the latest version with the bug fix neeed to make it work with the latest OS version.
While this is true that one of the main purposes of the Church's work in genealogy is to perform baptisms for the dead, the way you've said it ignores a key point. The LDS (Mormon) Church's policy is to only allow baptism to be performed for the dead when a family member specifically requests it. If you are not comfortable with this, then you don't have to allow it. And PAF itself doesn't upload to the Church's main databases. FamilySearch.org and its tools can be used to locate information about ancestors, and if you want, you can only take things, and not submit additional information. Speaking as a Mormon, we don't want, nor ever have wanted, to offend anyone, either of our faith or not. And as the Church has invested lots of time and effort, we'd like to share that with anyone that would like.
Clearly, the submitter wants to audit the code to make sure the software is not phoning home, allowing the software authors to steal his great-great-grandparents' identities.
I would not spend money on a subscription until you exhaust free resources. It should be noted, that while the amount of records being put online is growing rapidly, there are millions of records that will take decades to get online.
Rootsweb.com is a free site. It is owned by Ancestry, but they have committed to keeping it free.
Be careful of the Genealogy information that you find online. Of all the information that you find, there is no guarantee that it is accurate. It may be useful to point in the right direction, but whether an online source, or a book, one should always verify the information. My father sent information in to some company 25+ years ago that has since been found to be in error, and is on many CD collections and places online. I post a correction where ever I find this, but many have not gone back to check, so it keeps being perpetuated.
The best way to start in genealogy is to record everything you know, then ask your oldest living relatives. Then start finding the records and documents to back it up.
GRAMPS is good, they have a live CD with other offerings.
Lifelines is console based, but is very powerful, and is still under development, and is cross platform. The reporting engine is very powerful.
PHPGEDView is web-based and therefore cross platform.
Whichever program you choose, make sure it can support GEDCOM (GEnealogical Data COMmunication). GEDCOM is far from perfect, but it is the standard for sharing genealogy information.
Surname DNA studies are helpful if you run into a brick wall on the paternal line, but only if others who match your line also happen to participate. The same would go with a maternal line study. DNA leaves out all the ancestors that are not your father's direct paternal line or your mother's direct maternal line. Even if you find someone you are related to via DNA, you still have to find the documentation to figure out how. It is not as neat and clean as they make it sound, but it has it's place.
Baptisms for the dead don't happen unless a family member submits the name for that specific purpose.
I find it humorous that people get so put off by this. If our faith is false, then nothing happens. Absolutely nothing. If our faith is true, then we believe they are given an opportunity to accept it. Nobody is forcing dead people to be Mormon. It's just silly.
And as SuperSlacker64 points out, PAF doesn't upload. It was originally written pre-Internet. Church members use a special web portal to submit names of family members.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
murdered millions of armenians, while the entire eastern anatolia had at most 700,000 population, only a percentage of which were armenians.
morons. you americans are really easy to fool. all it takes is a private lobbying firm spending some money into fud, and you all buy whatever you are told.
do some research.
Read radical news here
Is Tony Kushner one of your detractors? I thought Angels in America gave a pretty sympathetic view of Mormons, and even some Mormons agree. http://www.unc.edu/~jcduffy/angels.pdf
Baptisms for the dead don't happen unless a family member submits the name for that specific purpose.
Not true. Historically the Mormon church does them for anyone they have genealogy details. They came under a lot of controversy in the recent past by doing baptisms for Jewish people killed in the Holocaust.
Given no argument was stated on why you shouldn't want open source genealogical software, no, the question was not legitimate.
Are you planning on modifying the code or examining the source somehow? If not, then why would you want it to be open source?
This betrays a lack of understanding of why, all other things being equal, open source is a superior choice (and for many, still the better choice given only a somewhat inferior enough piece of software). For that reason, the AC should not be responding to this topic, but doing their homework on why those of us who do use open source make that choice.
This 'baptism for the dead' thing annoys me for one reason: If I have an offspring who, long after I'm dead, adheres to the LDS and wants to baptise me, he can. And that something I do not want. Maybe there's a way to opt out while I'm still alive, but if I wanted to be a mormon, I would. And I don't.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
What about Personalbrain? It is a multi level mind-mapping software, which is flexible enough to be used for a graphical tree of the family. Doesn't have the genealogy stuff built in but makes it easier to do funny and interesting anecdotes if you are trying to put together a living memory family history. 'course in that case you could also just use freemind for purely in OSS. Genealogy is hard and lengthy. 4 days to do it? eep.
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
Mormons have a powerful religious incentive to discover the complete family trees of everyone, because, IIRC, Mormons believe in baptising the dead so they can also go to Heaven. Makes no difference to me (I'm not especially interested in either LDS or genealogy), but they have amassed a great deal of archival information, and also have some pretty fair software for free.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
i agree with those on the mormons option. PAF has been pretty easy to use.
for help with running under WINE - http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iVersionId=1706
The wrongful baptism of Jewish dead, which disparages the memory of a deceased person is a brazen act which will obscure the historical record for future generations... We will continue opposing this wrongful act which assimilates our dead to the point where it will not be possible to know who was Jewish in their lifetimes.
...
A commentator on this topic said that anti-Semites who desecrate Jewish cemeteries want to destroy even the memory of Jews by breaking their tombstones and other symbols whereby we honor and remember them. He concluded that baptism of the Jewish dead is just a more sophisticated form of breaking tombstones.
I'd call him an idiot, but I don't think he is. Though his argument lacks all merit, it skillfully manipulates emotion and fights to demonize his admitted adversary. No, I don't believe he's an idiot. I think he's a troll. It's either that, or he pays a lot of attention to them.
Have mistakes been made?* Sure. The only side effects are some accidentally bruised egos and extra ammunition for Mormon haters. Has history been revised? That's ridiculous to the extreme. Nobody's going to claim holocaust victims were Mormon because of vicarious work. Are we going to claim 15th century nobility were Mormon because their work has been done? How about signers of the American Declaration of Independence? What about census records? Do they think that we'll eventually revise history to say that the entire US was Mormon in the 1900's? Will we ever be able to say that every immigrant through Ellis Island was Mormon?
There is no way to look at this that doesn't quickly devolve into the absurd.
*(From published records which shouldn't have been used in the first place. PAF doesn't phone-home or any such.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
GenoPro is not open source, but it's the best I've found.
Do you believe that death is the end of existence?
Here's the dilemma: If death is truly the end, you won't be uncomfortable with it in the least. You'll be dead and gone. If your consciousness persists, then maybe you'll decide to change your mind at some point. That is what vicarious work is all about, after all. We don't believe that such baptisms are binding, or that most dead accept them. Until they're accepted on the other side, they remain null and void.
If you believe you're already heaven bound (and I won't dispute the point), then you'll just need to become a guardian angel to protect your progeny from those dastardly Mormons. ;)
(Such opt-out programs might conceivably exist in the future, but I doubt it.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Are you mainly looking for software to catalog your family history or software to search out your ancestry?
My wife is a long-time user of Family Tree Maker (which is sold by Ancestry.com) to compile her mother's voluminous genealogical research. From what I've seen of the Family Tree Maker software it seems pretty robust. I know it can generate Word docs and interact with other software. Sorry to hear that Ancestry.com's research feature seems like a ripoff, but I don't think you should judge Family Tree Maker by that. The idea of most genealogy software is to organize and display your family history, not to discover it for you. That kind of research tends to involve using a wide variety of resources that haven't been digitized yet.
(I haven't seen the movie. I have no reason nor desire to.)
Is Tony Kushner one of your detractors?
From that write-up, it sounds like it. Maybe he see's himself as teasing the church on a principle where he disagrees? It's still a rebuke, and one that comes across as unfriendly.
Frankly, it sounds like a play/film about Mormon characters in a decidedly non-mormon universe. Based on this second-hand report, it doesn't even attempt a farcical interpretation of Mormon views. (God, Angels, Devil, Heaven, and Hell all sound more Protestant than Mormon.)
Angels in America—first the play and now the film—is going to be a significant source for how non-Mormons visualize Mormons (much as Fiddler on the Roof is a significant source for how Mormons visualize Jews)... The fact that Kushner finds much about Mormon beliefs and politics abhorrent makes it all the more striking that he found Mormon motifs worthy to be woven into his postmodern mythology.
"Like it or not..." Not. That's going to be clear, and probably close to unanimous. Frankly, I have no desire to be "visualized" by a vast, vast majority of Mormon produced films. "Abhorrent"? Why would I want people judging me by a film produced by this kind of person?
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
And if you have offspring who, long after you're dead, offer sacrifices and prayers to Moloch in your name, they can. Welcome to America! We have freedom of speech and religion here.
All the genealogy programs are basically hypertext databases, and some of them allow arbitrary text to be added, but most of them are very constraining to some extent or another. Why not just sidestep it and and use a wiki stored in a git repository. That way, you can share it with your geekier relatives, and you're not limited to what kind of documents or structure you use. You could indicate the strength of evidence for different possible connections between two people for example.
BTW the wife which is a most serious genealogist ( 55000 people in her tree ) and has documents and photos or paintings for most of them received a lot of help from the LDS centers.Whether you share their ideals and ideas is besides the point.Their research units are fantastic we have been to 2. They welcome genealogists from all over and from all confessions. And before you ask i'm a an atheist without ties to LDS.
Why can't any discussion here happen without people talking about their invisible friends.
It's exhausting for us people without delusions.
You're forgetting that there are concepts of afterlife which are not in any way related to the Christian/Mormon concept of the afterlife.
Your point does stand, in that if I were to believe that the soul would float around for 42 days before it finds another host and I am reincarnated, then it really doesn't matter if 100 years from now my great-grandchildren decide to hold a baptism for me. Buddhism may be a bad example, here, but there are faiths which believe that you only get one go at this world, then your soul/spirit moves on to the next world where it continues to do the work it needs to do... and some of those faiths are wholly incompatible with the notion of going to heaven, and would probably be offended by the idea that my kids were performing a baptism for me.
(and no, I'm not here to start an argument. my personal take on the question is simple: believe whatever sits well with your conscience, and as long as you're not harming anybody (including animals/the natural world around us), I don't really care. It won't affect me, or the practice of my beliefs.. though I would point out that I consider evangelism to be harming somebody... if a person wants to learn about your faith, they're quite capable of approaching you to do so. in trying to teach somebody who doesn't want to, or isn't ready to learn, you're doing them a great harm)
The best software to organize tree structured documents I know is Emacs' Org-mode. Neither bells nor whistles just pure usability. http://orgmode.org/
You could try aldfaer.nl. The program is free and development is open to anyone. No commercial shit which you find a lot on American websites. Languages are available.
I deployed PhpGedView to a LAMP server, and have been extremely pleased with it. I'm an old MS admin, who has to Google a lot to get anything running in Linux, yet I was able to get it up and running fairly quickly.
Pros: A lot of features, not terribly buggy, easy install, and - most importantly - since it's a site, it's multi-user.
Cons: There are a few quirks to the interface, but once you get a feel for it, I think it's fine.
Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. - John 14:6 NLT
Clearly, the submitter wants to audit the code to make sure the software is not phoning home, allowing the software authors to steal his great-great-grandparents' identities.
Mothers maiden name is a common security question.
Trojaned Genealogy software could help with that aspect of identity theft.
Work bio at MMWD
1). GRAMPS is the only real OpenSource genealogy software, everything else is out-of-date and crap. If you used any other software like FamilyTreeMaker before it takes a little getting used to but great software. 2). TribalPages.com is a good site that for $20 will create reports/family tress that you can download as a *.pdf. All the work on Ancestry should not be in vain. Export your family tree as a *.GEDCOM file and can be imported into GRAMPS or other sites. Bit of advice stay away from GENI.com as once someone connects their tree to yours you NO LONGER CONTROL THE DATA and cannot delete the tree.
Gramps, mentioned above, is now also available as a portable app. So if you're using Windows you can take this with you on a USB drive.
"...Gramps Portable 3.2.5 has been released. Gramps is a genealogy program that is both intuitive for hobbyists and feature-complete for professional genealogists... It's packaged in PortableApps.com Format so it can easily integrate with the PortableApps.com Suite. And it's open source and completely free." (http://portableapps.com/news/2010-12-10_-_gramps_portable_3.2.5)
That author's not biased. Not at all. No sir, not one bit...
LOL - neither are you. ;-)
GenealogyJ can be found at: http://genj.sourceforge.net/ This free software works on Linux, Windows, Mac. It supports the Gedcom standard.
That AC sounds like a bastard love-child of unity100 and Khyber who was touched in a no-no place by commodore64_love
Baptism for the dead? I've never heard of this, it sounds silly. So, do they offer communion for the dead, too?
Evil-X just converted to Mormonism. Sheesh, sounds like the perfect religion for her.
*shakes head*
Free Martian Whores!
Open source protects one's time investment. If you are going to spend your valuable time learning to use some software, do you really want the organization that developed it to have the power to say "now you must pay us money to continue using your own skills, or to get newer features, or to use it on a new platform, or to integrate with some service, etc."? Long ago, I helped to develop the software that eventually became PAF, and I will tell you not to use it. Why? Because it has been abandoned. I have the source code, but I cannot legally distribute it, nor can I add new features or fix all the problems that bother me with it. I've tried to persuade them to let me, but there is way too much red tape. Any time spent learning to use PAF or any other proprietary software is time spent chaining yourself to the whims of an organization that will certainly have different priorities than you. No, don't use some polished-up proprietary piece of software. Spend your time learning an open source product. Even if you learn software of lesser quality, at least you develop a talent that fully belongs to you.
Bearing in mind that religions usually prefer their own version of events and therefore debunk all other religions, it doesn't matter if a non-Mormon is baptised in death as the baptism literally has no effect. If it did have an effect, it would mean that Mormonism is the right religion, as was said in South Park - The Movie, and the person who was baptised would be redeemed.
However, as it's all rubbish, it is fair to say that people can do what they like with no effect whatsoever. If someone tells you to "go to hell" do you take it literally? If so, perhaps a reality check is in order.
Slightly off-topic, I always wondered why some religions insist upon sending people around to spread the word of the Lord. If the Lord is omnipotent and people receive a 'calling' why is it that this cannot always be delivered directly? I find myself faced with such ‘postal workers’ who deliver the message of the Lord to me – how do I qualify for direct delivery – a firmware upgrade perhaps? Or is it a bandwidth issue?
If you are paying for Ancestry and it does not have any information on your family except previous addresses for the past 20 years, then you're not doing your research properly (or you don't live in the US, UK, or a couple other countries).
At a minimum, they have basically every birth record in the US for who knows how long. You should have at least been able to find that. Then, if you're including anyone who lived in the United States in 1930 or prior to that, then you can also find all federal census records showing siblings, ages, race, frequently the type of job the person had, parents or parents' nation/state of birth, etc.
I could go on about it (Ancestry has been so helpful to me and others I know), but the long and short of it is, if you're doing a family tree, you paid Ancestry, and can only find residence locations, then you're either (1) not in the US; (2) the first immigrant to the US from your family; or (3) not doing it right. Considering Ancestry had your residence locations, it's most likely (3).
Well, I suppose there's a fourth: you've already got an encyclopedic knowledge of your family history, so no amount of research would turn up anything new.
In fact, I'll go so far as to say that if you want my help during your 14-day trial, OP (or anyone else w/Ancestry), respond to this message or email me at ancestrymasterman@gmail.com (new semi-throwaway email addy).
Oh, don't delude yourself in believing that you have no delusions...
but i didn't like their interface's or they had issues with the database size i needed....
i settled on Legacy for a while, and now use FTM.
i've been a member of Ancestry.com for about 4-5 years now and haven't found any other site which allows access to so many resources.
my parents divorces when i was 3 and i hardly knew anything about my father's family's history....
through Ancestry.com i was able to track back to ireland in the 1800's, found my 3rd great-grandfather's naturalization papers, and found distant cousins living a few miles away i'd never known about.
i am not a mormon, but i have found them (as a rule) to be generous, helpful and not at all preachy, no one has tried to convert me to "the dark side" (which was a concern when i first got involved in my searching...)
i'm a recovering cathoholic, my family has all already been baptised in the catholic church, if the mormons want to do any baptising, eh... let 'em, it's not my belief, it's not my family's belief, so it doesn't matter what they believe *shrug* and it shouldn't matter to anyone else.
*also*
the mormon church sent missionaries out to pretty much every country on the planet to gather historical records, and they were doing this a hundred years ago.... and continue today, they are probably the single greatest resource for genealogical information out there.
you have to take what you find on ancestry.com with a grain of salt (if posted by other members) and you have to be careful searching the records and documents, but if you're smart and careful, you can find an immense amount of history.
Nobody is without bias, if they claim to be they are lying!
familysearch.org is definitely a solid resource, and you should be able to download and use the latest version of the Personal Ancestry File (PAF) software free of charge.
It's a little late in the year to be putting a tree together. It sounds like you're underestimating the time required to do the work. Also, the software you're using has nothing to do with it. The best software for you to use right now is a plain old text editor. Genealogy software isn't going to make things any easier when you're just starting out. When you *do* start putting the data together, just make sure you can export to GEDCOM. It's far from perfect as a file format, but it's universally used and will serve your needs until you start getting over 100 names. Only then start thinking about committing to a piece of software. It's hard to switch later.
Like others have said, go find a FamilySearch center https://library.familysearch.org/ and get some help. They're very nice.
And if you didn't get information from ancestry.com, you're doing it wrong. It's a very good site. You should think twice before you disparage a website you had very little time with.
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
I'm an atheist (= "without religion," not "anti-religion") and you're more than welcome to baptize me when I'm dead. In fact, I'd prefer that to having your missionaries knocking on my door. I'm also quite happy for the Navajos to make sand paintings for me when I'm dead, and for fire departments to erect crossed ladders.
I piss off bigots.
This is one of the best packages I've ever used.
http://genj.sourceforge.net/
I would check out life lines. If I remember correctly it has a slightly steep learning curve, but it's very powerful. It saves the info in an open format called GEDCOM and can generate some really nice output with family trees and family histories. I used it a while ago and have always wanted to go back and really flesh out my family tree.
We always knew Comcast was corrupt, here's the proof: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1909890&cid=34545432
I've been using PHPGedView for years. Slick interface. GEDCOM export. Unfortunately, the script keeps getting flagged as a trojan.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Forget the holiday gift. You can't do genealogy quickly. (or do it for next year, or 20 years after that). Ancestry is very useful, but it's not genealogy software - they're much more useful for the information in their databases. But the info in their databases will cover your great grandfather, not your recent relatives.. If you want open source, then GRAMPS is pretty good, but falls flat on large files. It's rather complicated, too. If you want free, then PAF from familysearch.com is OK, but legacy free version is better. If you want to do genealogy seriously, then pay some money. Rootsmagic is way better than all the above, and only costs 30 dollars, worth every cent. Legacy paid version is pretty good too.
Hi there
When looking at tools to build a family tree as a holiday gift, there are two types of tools you need. One is a resource for finding genealogy information (the good stuff that fills in the tree), and the other is a resource for printing out your tree and displaying it nicely.
In terms of online resources for genealogy, my favorites have always been www.rootsweb.com and www.cyndislist.com. I did Ancestry.com for awhile but that was because there were some deep collections that they have that I don't. But for a beginner, I would try rootsweb or cyndislist.
Other posters are correct that the best starting point is your family. They can give you names of people, even an estimate of dates is better than searching blindly. I didn't do that as often as I should have, so I wound up searching more than I needed to. If your ancestors are immigrants through Ellis Island, tracking down that information is a great treat to share with the family.
In terms of apps for genealogy, my favorite is Reunion. They have a beautiful iPad app, and their print out options are very nice. Also consider just doing your own design for the family tree -- I still have some handwritten family charts from my ancestors, they are very nice to keep.
Genealogy is slow going, don't get your hopes too high.
I'm not an Anonymous Coward, just tired of registering everywhere.... :)
I wouldn't say it's *all* rubbish, just that it's an assertion which, by definition, can't be proven. At least, not to the satisfaction of the sceptics.
If somebody tells you to go to Hell, you could always take them literally and ask if they're willing to pay for your trip to Norway
As for the upgrades so he can talk to you directly? Maybe you need to plant a bush in your front yard, so he can set it on fire?
Yes, seriously. Most vital records have a privacy policy where they can't be searched for a certain period of time. The U.S. Census isn't available for 72 years for example. The 1940 census will be available in 2012. Vital records (births, deaths, marriages) have similar periods. I mean, you can go to the vital records department of any state and get your own but you can't get other people's. What Ancestry.com has is what is PUBLICALLY available. So you wouldn't find much for yourself or even your parents. Grandparents is even a stretch unless they are sufficiently old (80+ years). Great-grandparents and back, you should have much better luck. I've been using Ancestry for years and it's a great service. Like most computer systems, you have to know HOW to use it. It's not going to blink neon letters on the screen and tell you everything you wanted to know. :-)
Think as baptisms for the dead as more like opening a door. You still have the choice, in the next life, to step through it.
I've used TNG as my primary source for working on my family tree for years. It's not open source; there is a cost, but it is worth the MINIMAL cost and is an incredible tool. http://lythgoes.net/genealogy/software.php
One of the things that most interests me in this type of discussion is the fear that people have of Mormon baptism for the dead. Let's look at this for a second. If the Mormons are right (God exists and accepts that baptism for entrance into "heaven"), then the baptism might be helpful (if the dead person accepts the baptism). If the Mormons are wrong, then what harm did it do the dead person? It certainly can't condemn them (since they weren't involved). So the fact is - it is either valuable, or inconsequential. There is NO other possibility. So I ask, why all the fuss? Really!!
This isn't open-source, but it is free (standard version): Legacy Family Tree. I used that and eventually upgraded to the deluxe since it's only about $30 USD. Yes, it's from LDS. You get a lot of choice to customize things to your taste--a really serious amount of options. One thing I really like is it will warn you if you put in a county that didn't exist during the year in question (and will tell if what year it came into existence.) Also has some nice defaults, like marking someone as deceased if say, they were born in 1830, if you forget. You can turn these on and off. But what's really nice is the reporting features (may be in the deluxe only) that nicely put the information together in a story-styled book. You can also make wall charts (although they usually get too complicated in large families so it's easier to do the book.) The deluxe version also gives you access to the databases which makes it easy to research straight from the program, although from what I can see, most are available anyway from your browser.
Check out what's online for free before you jump in and pay. You can also get a lot of free access to Ancestry.com and other paid sites from the library. I did end up joining Ancestry because, while you can add your tree for free and you can get access to documents via the library, the one thing you can't do is contact a member (which you may want to do if you have questions or find a second cousin.) Libraries are a great source of free access to sites you'd otherwise have to pay for. I second FamilySearch.org. They have a beautiful search engine and often it links to actual scanned files, not just transcribed. RootsWeb is owned by Ancestry, but provides free access to other family trees and FreeSurnameSearch is a good starting place.
One caution--do your own research and go with scanned documents over transcriptions. You'll be amazed at how many transcriptions are wrong and how many people are sloppy and just copy what someone else has. We've got an issue in one branch where someone made statements about one ancestor being a full-blooded Indian who was adopted. All nonsense with no facts to support it, but you wouldn't believe how many people are jumping on this and adding it to their trees.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
I'm not going to speak to the open source applications. Instead, I'll point out a couple of resources.
First of all, ancestry.com is definitely costly, but at the same time, it can be free. Go to your local library and they will likely have a subscription to ancestry.com that you can use. My local library also has HeritageQuest ( ) available on their website.
Dick Eastman ( ) has a fantastic blog about Genealogy and technology. He is technically literate and is constantly reviewing various genealogy programs.
You may not believe it, but Google Books is also another great genealogy site. I've found several books there that specifically address family lines of mine and gave me context of the area where my family lived.
Plenty of people have already mentioned the Mormons. Definitely make use of them.
One thing you should know about genealogy. While a ton of information is on the web now, it is only a drop in the bucket. To really understand your history, be ready to spend time in libraries, county courthouses, and talking to family. The reason groups like Ancestry charge money is to help defray the costs of continuing to digitize paper records as well as to further application development.
Final tips - cite your sources, keep tons of notes about where you found information, and spend time with family.
If you're going to use the free Personal Ancestral File, don't forget PAF Companion for neat charts & reports.
Slashdot entertains. Windows pays the mortgage.
My wife is doing my family history as well as hers... All of my history is in europe and most of hers is.. She's been able to find some helpful information through ancestry but in my opinion, not enough to justify the cost. Fortunately, the local public library has Ancestry.com accounts so if you go to the library and use their computers, you can camp on ancestry all day long... The librarian has to come over and log you in but one day the librarian was busy and recognized my wife, so wrote the username/password on a sticky note and handed it to my wife. My wife logged in with it and used it. Later that day she tried the username/password at home and it didn't work... Next time she went to the library, she brought her laptop and tried the username/password there and it worked... So they've got some sort of IP block or something associated with the library... So now she drags her laptop down there, uses Ancestry, print's info to PDF files and brings them home to print them out...
Just a thought.
I'm an atheist (= "without religion," not "anti-religion")
I get the distinction. I wish you didn't need to preface your remarks as such, but there are bigots on both sides of the issue (unfortunately).
In fact, I'd prefer that to having your missionaries knocking on my door.
Sorry for the inconvenience. It should be suitably rare, at reasonable hours, and they should leave promptly when you tell them: "not interested". Otherwise, you should feel free to tell them they're doing more harm than good.
I'm also quite happy for the Navajos to make sand paintings for me when I'm dead, and for fire departments to erect crossed ladders.
Me too. Sounds like fun... On second thought, I'd rather not die in such a way that gets the fire department's undivided attention like that!
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Some people might perform a ritual for my relatives that makes them feel better and doesn't hurt anyone? That must be stopped! Seriously, how is that any different from christian relatives praying that I will go return to the church, or the Navajo folks performing a traditional blessing to protect our school group from harm when we went out of town? It is harmless.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints provides a very well done software package. It also provides a massive store of records which can allow you to cover all of your genealogical ancestry needs.
It's free to any one to use.
They have hundreds of thousands of individuals indexing birth, death, christening, records from all over the world. You won't find a finer offering. It is part of the requirements for their members to create a full ancestry for all of their posterity.
http://new.familysearch.org/
http://indexing.familysearch.org./
Go get GRAMPS -- http://gramps-project.org/
Builds for a bunch of common distros and Windows builds too.
- pascal