BS: Family tree. organising

Subject: BS: Family tree. organising
From: Mo the caller
Date: 17 Mar 08 - 03:26 AM

I have been looking through my parents photo albums as a cousin wanted snaps for her fathers 90th birthday. This led to thoughts of the frailty of memory and how much is lost because I can't ask my parents any longer.
So I really ought to write down this family knowledge into some sort of a family tree.
Is there a recognised system of organising it, a way of numbering the different generations.
The trouble is, it seems to spread in all direction.
It might be simple to chart the descendants of one couple - a tree with branches and twigs increasing in a geometric progression.
The direct ancestors of one person would be the same, but upside down.
But my mother was one of 5, and her mother was from a big family, all shown in the albums. And I can only speculate on who half of them are.
And all the aunts and uncles had 2 or 3 children, and grand or great grand children now.
Lots of the photo's are weddings and I don't even know if they are Mum's family, Dad's family or friends from Church. My cousin identified one for me, Dad's sister. We didn't see them much, though we wrote 'thank you letters' to them every Christmas.

Maybe my children will never want to know.
Maybe I'll never get round to it.
But if I do, how shall I organise it?

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: mg
Date: 17 Mar 08 - 03:38 AM

I am just getting into this myself...and I have found an older version of Family Tree Maker to be wonderful..they say not to get the new one. I got one that gave a free subscription to Ancestry.com..USA version.

What I have found is that I can't string them all together. I just do lots of little trees and eventually me or the computer will link them....mg

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 17 Mar 08 - 04:39 AM

Family Tree Maker probably is the "most used" program for organizing everything, and it does a good job of making all the links. If you put in the person's name, parents' names, and a few other details the numbering (according to the program's method) and "tree generation" is all automatic. There are free versions floating around, and the "retail" version isn't too expensive. Recent versions (and maybe older ones) allow you to export to a CD with a "run-time reader" embedded in the export, so that you can send a CD to others in the family without them needing to get the full program. They can read - but not edit/change - the info on the CD without having the program.

If you sign up for a "free subscription" to Ancestry.com the recommendation would be to "pursue vigorously" as the freeby is a one-shot deal, and a regular subscription is somewhat expensive unless your interest is stimulated enough to justify it.

A difficulty with using other (free) web sources is that "all the links go to Ancestry," so you end up finding that something's available but are asked to pay to see it. A good library may have a subscription if that's a problem, so save the links for later access when you find them.

No matter what system(s) you decide to use, I would strongly recommend (voice of experience) that you make frequent complete backups of your work in progress, including both the data files and the program in use, in a secure place not on your only hard drive.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 17 Mar 08 - 05:30 AM

Back up, back up and back up again. Then make hard copies and back them up with photocopies stored somewhere else.

I'm a bit wary of 'Family Tree Maker', I don't know why, but I suspect it is the cost aspect of it. I know I can get information for free from other sources and I'm mean at heart.

When I first started putting my tree onto the computer 12 years ago, I used a programme supported by Windows 3.1. When the new computer did one of its annoying automatic cleanups and deleted every programme not used for more than 6 months or some such thing, I lost everything that I'd put onto that programme. Suddenly, all my trees, all the notes I'd put on each record, all the connections were gone. We've tried all manner of ways to restore them, but they are unobtainable. Because we run Windows 2003, the 3.1 programme used to open them is no longer supported. Even when I reloaded the software, they refused to open.

So...

I bought a copy of the BBC's 'Who do you think you are' Family History PC CDRom and have had some very good experiences with it. It takes a bit of getting used to and again, it tries to link you to sites where they want you to pay for information you can get for free elsewhere, but it is very good. I spent a week putting all my notes onto that programme and sorting through papers. I know there are some notes and comments that are gone forever, but the majority of the clues are in the papers so if I ever get a month at home alone with the computer (I'm thinking broken ankle or something that means I can't travel to work but can still function fairly normally from the waist up) and can stop the cats from sleeping on the boxfile, I'll get it all sorted into some proper order again.

I've been doing my tree for nearly 25 years now, mostly waiting for census returns to be published, and it was only in the last 12 years that I got it onto computer. Before then, everything was written on paper and those are the worst ones to try and keep in any order.

The best way to organise generations is to keep each family of siblings on the same horizontal line. This is best achieved by using a roll of paper - a old fax roll is perfect for this. Rule it into lines running the length of the paper and each stripe becomes a generation. If you have large families like mine (11 is the greatest number so far), the roll can get quite long.

I worked up the direct line first - tradition states it should be the male line but mine went no further than my father, so I followed the three names I had. Each father was tracked back through Parish church records and census returns and when that was exhausted (it all breaks down around 1700 unless you are landed gentry or nobility), I followed the distaff lines (mothers). Each sibling was noted and eventually, their wives and children. Consequently, I have a roll of paper about 8ft long and proof that my mother was related to at least 32 of the children with the same surname, who went to her school in the 10 years she was there.

I colour coded my original paper files - I used the primaries for each grand parent (I only ever had 3 grandparents) and the direct line was filed in folders of that colour. Census information was divided into family groups and the whole excerpt so I could refer to each family individually. One day I'll get each sideline into its own folder within the main family.

Because my notes were targetted at the beginning, I missed a lot of information about those siblings.   I find that the 'scattergun' approach is better. Making a note of everyone with the same surname 24 years ago would have saved me several annoying months of trying to find cousins and siblings. I'm lucky that I can do this because my family names are not common - not a Smith, Jones, Brown or Clarke amongst them!

One other thing that you've already noticed: Don't assume that all the photos in your album are of family. I have several pictures of a blonde child aged about 5, whom no-one could identify. At a family party in January, I met the original, now aged 64. She was the girl that my uncle had proposed marriage to at the grand age of 6, and had remained friends ever since.

Good luck. It is a most rewarding and frustrating hobby, and if you let it, can take over your life.

Of course, you could employ someone like me to look it all up for you, but it's not as much fun - the high when you find a long lost relative is fantastic!

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: bfdk
Date: 17 Mar 08 - 06:12 AM

I used to use Brother's Keeper and have been very happy with it. Now I use a Swedish program called 'Min Slägt', which I'm even happier with, but I suspect that won't be of any use to you.

Take a look at Brother's Keeper, it's a very handy program, and you can download and try it for free.

Best of luck and have fun with your new and *very* addictive hobby!

Best wishes,

Bente

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: Michael
Date: 17 Mar 08 - 06:40 AM

Genes Reunited seems to work OK for us.

Mike

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 17 Mar 08 - 07:25 AM

I guess I "mispoke." The actual program that Lin has been using appears to be called "Family Tree Legends" (not Family Tree Maker). It is apparently the one that's widely used at sites she's been using. The "purchase" that I have records on indicates it was about $20 (US) for a "Deluxe" version about a year ago, although she may have updated since then.

Family Tree Legends is the one that she used to send the "playable" CDs to all her relatives (at least the few who are left).

She has compiled a pretty massive database on her family since most of them came to the US fairly recently and mostly went through Ellis Island, which has pretty good (and free) records that often include histories prior to arrivals in this country. She got a lot of good stuff from an "uncle" who had done a lot of work on his family, which "overlapped" (or at least were fellow-travellers) with hers for a few generations.

While I have one line that I can trace back to the mid to late 1600s in the US and thence for two generations in Europe with "credible" proofs, because they had lots of descendants who've done and published the research, all other lines terminate within about three or four generations. One g2-grandfather in particular doesn't appear in any records, with about a two-generation gap back to where I can pick up some who might be "related" in some unknown way. We have the deeds, census reports, etc from all the places where he "should have been" but he just "isn't there," except for the "spouse of ..." name on g2-granny's grave marker, and a name in the stories about great-granny (their daughter) that are in a couple of "county history" books published for Centennial Celebrations in the region, etc.

But I haven't worked on it nearly as hard as Lin has on hers.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: artbrooks
Date: 17 Mar 08 - 08:46 AM

The Mormon Church is heavily into geneology, and has some decent "how to get started" information here.

Some public libraries have subscriptions to sites like Ancestry.com...strangely enough, I find that I can get to one of them on my (Vista) laptop, but I get a "private site" message if I try with my (XP) desktop.

I use Family Tree Maker, and have migrated it to two computers and three operating systems without trouble except the ones I created for myself.

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 17 Mar 08 - 09:32 AM

The Mormon databases are pretty good, with a lot of information; and their hints and suggestions on getting organized can be very helpful. They're also free - which is sometimes quite important.

There is some criticism, sometimes justified, that since anyone can submit what they think might be good information, and nobody really checks it except others who might be looking for similar names, sometimes the relationships may be a little shaky. The best data will cite a source that you can cross-check, or will tell you how they have checked their information; but lots of entries there are just "family recollections" from people who may or may not have taken good notes. Sometimes they tell you where it came from, so that you can guess how accurate it may be, and some just post a list of "facts," with no clues to how reliable it may be.

This is not to say that it's not a very useful place to look. Just like reading a newspaper, seeing what's said and believing what's said may be slightly disparate things. Sometimes even the old family Bible spells things wrong or gets the dates mixed up.

I know of one family, with three generations (that I knew of) having lived in the same county, in which the three sons were still arguing about how to spell the "family name" into the late 1950s, with each son doing it differently and pappy disagreeing with all three.

People are strange, and some of them are your ancestors (and mine).

John

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 17 Mar 08 - 10:29 AM

Ah yes... I had some snotty Emails from someone insisting my great great grandfather had moved from Dorset to Yorkshire and produced three more children in 2 years despite my having records to the contrary that were proven, just because they had the same fairly common names.

A lot of the information that is available on the Internet is, to be brutally honest, kack. If you can, always check with a reliable first source. I've had to correct several entries on The Genealogist
That particular website is fairly good, it costs though and I only joined in a moment of monied weakness. It's very confusing if you want to top up your credits but it does give you a week to look at them and you can copy PDFs to your computer. It's one of the better sites I've used, and worth a look.

Those sites that make use of the Mormon databases are based on transcripts of, or images of original parish records. Now, I nearly got a job scanning the parish records of Dorset, and was in the Records office when the person who did get the job was microfilming them. The training was minimal, the job tedious and boring so consequently it was not done with the care and attention you would hope. I've seen the results of this slap-dash attitude this past January, when I was taking another look, 20 years on, at a particular record. The microfiche image taken for the LDS was copied to each records office. The microfiche image I looked at in January was one I'd part transcribed in 1984, and had been filmed in 1988. The resulting image was so difficult to read, had bent and cut pages, whole fingers showing up on screen and repeated pages on the film, that I had to request the original document to find the entry I was missing. As a result, double checking with the LDS and 'The Genealogist' sites, I found the same mistakes in both. Names had been wrongly spelled, dates muddled and sexes swapped. So always double check your work against another source if possible, and remember, it's always better to check against the original.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: Bee
Date: 17 Mar 08 - 11:39 AM

Beware of using the Mormon database if you live outside the US. The information they present with regard to my lineage is mostly garbage, and seems to have been gleaned from generic 'family name' book 'histories' which hardly ever relate to reality, except possibly to some specific lineage. They had one of my grandfathers, who never lived off the property he, his father, and his father's father farmed, let alone in the US, fathering about ten children in Wisconsin and Nevada.

One useful strategy, I found, was to search for online published genealogies made by persons whose lineage intersects one's own. So, if a woman of your family is recorded as married to so and so, if you can find information on her husband's genealogy, you can often then trace her children.

I was lucky, in that my family, both sides, mostly came to Canada from the same area in Scotland, and had lived there for many generations (inbred? What's that?), and that other people kept records long before the internet came along.

Sometime in the eighties we had an interesting correspondence (and a visit) with a lady whose father's family descended from our one stray great-great uncle who'd moved to Michigan and had never been heard of after. So we were able to add that information (and the genealogy she had prepared) to our family records, of his children and grandchildren. She was utterly thrilled to find the original family home and property still in the hands of a family member.

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: katlaughing
Date: 17 Mar 08 - 11:40 AM

John, the Mormon databases are only free if one can get to one of their library centers...at least if I am reading what you said correctly. Otherwise it is a high price, imo, to subscribe to ancestry.com.

I have used Legacy Family Tree for years and it is free. They are also good about helping with any problems with the program, though I've only needed to write them for that once.

If you use the free family tree maker at ancestry.com, keep in mind your family tree will be available to anyone and everyone. Most people don't mind, but it is worth noting.

If you go to THIS PAGE it will explain the different "views" which means the different ways in which family lines are displayed.

Good luck and have fun. If you need onine resources, check Cyndi's List and ask here.:-)

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Mar 08 - 06:34 PM

The free software on the LDS site is pretty good, though I stopped about three releases ago as it did what I wanted it to at that level.

As for the IGI, the controlled extraction programme is fairly good. Whenever I've gone to look at the source documents I've never found any discrepancy between them and the LDS index.

However the notorious "Patron submissions" are often no more than wishful thinking.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: katlaughing
Date: 17 Mar 08 - 07:34 PM

The thing that bothers me about the LDS's ancestry dot com site is they will not correct things which patrons submit which have been proven, through documentation, to be wrong. The wrong info shows up in all kinds of databases throughout the site.

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 17 Mar 08 - 10:08 PM

kat -

I think you've found the clarification on the Mormon databases.

The stuff at the LDS site is free, or was the last time I looked, but mostly needs to be read cautiously, or with independent verification, before being considered reliable.

That same information, and possibly more from some other "official Mormon" databases, is included at Ancestrydotcom, where you pay to get access to it, but where there's a slightly better chance that someone has verified some of it.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: GUEST,LTS pretending to work
Date: 18 Mar 08 - 05:06 AM

That's why I like 'The Genealogist' that I set a link for earlier in the thread. They may cost a bit (subscription and credit system for viewing actual documents) but they do accept corrections and amend their transcripts.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: Lin in Kansas
Date: 18 Mar 08 - 06:37 AM

The major thing in genealogy study is to ASK THE RELATIVES WHO ARE STILL ALIVE--NOW!!!!!

I didn't really get interested in this addiction until after my mother died a few years back, and boy! do I wish she was around to still ask questions. To make things worse, my oldest brother was the "memory" of the family, and he has also passed away. You may not think you're at all interested in your ancestors, but trust me, someone will be--you, your child, a niece, nephew or grandchild--and they'll thank you for every bit of family lore you record, however you might do it.

My cousin Jack was an invaluable source for a lot of my family information. I would reiterate Liz the Squeak's comments about recording your sources, and double-checking anything you possibly can with primary records. Some of my earlier info is a bit shaky because I didn't do that; I'm now in process of confirming a lot of it.

As John said above, I use Family Tree Legends and back up to at least two different drives as well as to two different machines. My hard drive went tits-up not too long ago, and I was very, very glad to have done so. Liz, losing all your info is a nightmare. It would be next to impossible to recapture all the notes I've entered even though I have hard copy of a lot of it.

Addicting yes. A lot of fun too. And the rush is great when you find a new "cousin." Good luck to Mo, and remember you're doing this for the future kids who want to know--use archival quality paper, inks, and photo paper.

Oh, yeah--about family photos: I was lucky enough to inherit about 10 albums worth from my Mom. I think we've finally gotten them all scanned, labeled, and semi-organized. The originals are stored for safekeeping elsewhere. LOVE that Photoshop Elements!

Gotta go look up some surnames,

Lin

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: Mo the caller
Date: 18 Mar 08 - 09:33 AM

Thanks for all of that, I'll start looking up the links.
I did a bit of the 'ask the relatives' stuff for my husbands side of the family while caring for his mother, she was chair-bound with arthritis and Parkinsons so could do little else, so I sat and made notes for the photos in the albums.
My cousin has filled in a few gaps (reminded me of things I knew but had forgotten). We found that we both had the same memory lapse, we both thought one aunt was a Tomlinson, but the newspaper cutting of my parents wedding has, 'bridesmaid Ann Tomlin' and she has a photo of a cousin called Adele Tomlin.

Are your family albums as higgledy piggledy as mine. Photos from 50 years apart on the same page, and nothing labelled?

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: artbrooks
Date: 18 Mar 08 - 12:36 PM

Family albums? Say rather family shoe boxes!

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: katlaughing
Date: 18 Mar 08 - 01:16 PM

Before my dad passed, I scanned and printed paper copies of the photos in the two albums that were his mom's, as well as a lot of loose ones. I numbered each one, then printed out a list of the numbers with lines for writing. Sent them to dad and he wrote on the corresponding line who he thought or knew each one was. It worked to a degree...some he just couldn't remember.

John, I am not sure what you mean. It is the PAID site, ancestry.com which had the incorrect info on my granddad and which they refused to do anything about when I wrote to them because it was submitted by a patron. I was a patron at the time and all they could suggest was to write to the other one, which I did. He insisted his was right, even though he had no direct relation as I did and no docu. which I also had. He had it from some old book which also had it wrong and by gawd, as far as he was concerned it was published and therefore accurate.

Oh, boy. I hadn't had this bug in quite awhile. I just opted for the 14 day free subscription at ancestry.com to see if the erroneous info was still there. I am pleased to say it is not, BUT there's a bunch of new info now, so I am outta here for the count!**bg** Singing...click by click, link by link, gonna watch the ancestors grow, gonna find all to know, about where they all have been!... LOL!

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: GUEST,rock chick
Date: 18 Mar 08 - 07:23 PM

Well my dads family, rich they were, totally cut contact with my mum when my dad died at age 49, never heard a word from them until…. About a year ago got an email from Genes reunited asking if I was the daughter of E Hobbs etc etc, well you could have knocked me down with a feather because it was the daughter of one of my dads sisters, she had all the papers from when my dad left his family aged about 19 to go to war, all his prisoner of war letters to home, everything from the day he left home up till he was discovered in the POW camp, she had been searching for our family for just over 6 years and wanted to return them back to his family.

I was so pleased. Since then I have also received a wooden plaque he kept as a prisoner, he was on Death railway, I have only just discovered his war history, he listed all the POW camps he was in, 14 in total. My partner, bless him, spent till very late one evening searching the maps and history on the internet, and both of us deciphering what he had carved on this plaque, by the way he use a jack knife and broken razor blade to carve whilst a prisoner.

Anyway to cut the story short, my family have been asked to meet us with the surviving aunts and uncles and their children. Since the first email I have discovered my father's parents did the same with another daughter of theirs also cutting contact.

I am really looking forward to meeting my lost aunts and uncles, even if they are now in their late 80 +, also my children are now discovering all their cousins.

We have now been added to the family tree, and being one of 8 its quite a lot of extra information, my mum has 24 grand children and 11 great grand children so the family tree has grown considerably now, and all because of Genes reunited. To date it goes back as far as 1852, which is when my dad parents married 10th January 1852, which strangely enough is my birthday 10th January 1952! There are lots of other similarities also!! Great things family trees.

rc

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: open mike
Date: 18 Mar 08 - 09:38 PM

get those photos labelled now if possible..
maybe bring the whole kit and kaboodle to the
birthday -- and the photo copy and list method
mentioned bewfore sounds good.

i use 3 family tree programs.
Family Tree Maker,
Personal Ancestral File
and another.
all have the ability to print out generations..

and most have a link to search for family trees
made by others...to link to..
this may be only by paid subscription.
but it is worth it..

Laurel

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: Bee
Date: 18 Mar 08 - 10:03 PM

Rock Chick, that's a great story.

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: Bill D
Date: 18 Mar 08 - 10:11 PM

and modern scanners can do wonders with old photos...and software which 'cleans' speckles can do even more.

This was a tiny, barely identifiable pic until I scanned it at high resolution and lightened a quite dark image.

my grandfather & family in Oklahoma in 1912 That's my dad at far right.

My mother's sister did serious work on her side of the family, so I have quite a bit there, and I found a bit of Dad's side online. I have many, many old pics to scan.

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: katlaughing
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 12:48 AM

rock chick, how neat!

BillD, yeah, I had a lot of fun lightening up, zooming in, etc. when I scanned in all those photos. Some, sadly, just didn't have good resolution, no matter. I now have all of my brother's slides, from the 60s when he was in Europe and here in Colorado when we were kids, to scan in. He is the oldest, so I got him to do a sort of trip down memory lane a few years ago as a christmas present for each of us. I should ask him to do another.

I just found out today that our paternal grandfather, the cow man, had a draft card for WWI. I asked my brother if he ever mentioned it. He said he never spoke of either the Civil war or WWI. He wrote prayers for the boys in WWII and worked hard. My brother also said he was very upset about the Korean war and spoke often about the loss of young men being so tragic, but he never let on that he was in line to possibly fight in WWI; he was 33 at the time, so maybe low on the list as he never did go.

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: Lin in Kansas
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 04:45 AM

Hey all--

To give everyone some great ideas for finding new places to look, tools for researching state records, censuses, counties, cities, towns, cemeteries and almost anything connected to family history, check out the Family Tree Magazine at this URL. I'm a subscriber, but the Website has lots of goodies, too, and is well worth a run through. I like the Photo Detective section, and the areas on how to search a particular state's records is very helpful, IMHO. They've just announced a new CD of all their state Research Guides for a very reasonable price.

They also give a link to a seminar in Washington State the 22nd of this month on "Emigration: Leaving the Homeland." See here. Skagit Valley Historical Society, I believe.

Fun stuff. Can take up hours and hours and hours and...

Lin

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: selby
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 04:57 AM

Mo if you PM me you E mail address I will send you a copy of a form I made up and use which I like
That also goes to anyone who is intrested
Keith

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: Gulliver
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 03:43 PM

I'm still using a version of Family Tree Maker that I got several years ago. It might take a little while to learn all its functions but it's worth taking the time to do this. And, as Liz wrote, make frequent back-ups. My old computer crashed last year and most data was lost, but I had back-ups of all family files and genealogy reports on CDs, and all associated old pictures and documents, so retrieved it all.

I found LDS useful to a degree--I found my great-great-grandfather and all his family there, at a time I had reached a dead-end in my Dublin searches.

I borrowed a copy of a book on tracing Irish ancestors from the library--I think the author's name was Graham. It contained lots of useful information on doing family trees and sources for research.

Through doing my own family I discovered "tricks" to obtain information from all kinds of sources and now do Irish family research and charts for anyone for a small fee. This modest income has payed for my hardware/software many times over!

Don

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: katlaughing
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 04:36 PM

I am well aware of that, guest. As you know, IF you've read above, the error has been removed, so there goes your theory.

Lin, thanks for the time-consuming wonderful(!) links!!:-)

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: Lin in Kansas
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 10:15 PM

You're most welcome, Kat!

I think the bottom line on Web searches, the LDS and Ancestry.com stuff included, is that it IS the Web, folks, NOBODY polices it, so take what you find with a grain of salt always, and prove it to your own comfort level with primary sources as much as possible. Kat, I share your frustration with trying to straighten things out and meeting opposition to changing it. About all you can do in that case is make sure your OWN information is as correct as you can, and go on from there. Sigh. It's rare that you actually convince anyone to change bad info, so I congratulate you on your success! Way to go, and power to your pen!

Everyone, keep growing those branches, twigs, and roots.

Lin (buried hip-deep in charts and print-outs AGAIN!)

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: Joybell
Date: 20 Mar 08 - 08:34 PM

I've been working on my family tree -- with branches for about 20 years now. I use "Legacy" -- mentioned by Kat up there a way. I've tried others but I come back to this one. It's a good easy way to begin.
Charting the family usually is just the beginning. I'm now writing the family stories -- and re-writing them as I get more information. The stories are the part that make it all so interesting.

My advice is to talk to everyone you can find who might be in any way connected. Distribute questionaires, with a return address, to anyone you talk to. There are templates in many family tree programs -- or they're free on-line. I often give people a stamped addressed envelope as well. Keep all the addresses, phone numbers of people you talk to. I have boxes where I can just put information under various family names. I sort it all from time to time.

I came across a cousin I never knew I had and we had a wonderful friendship for 7 years until she died last year. She had come upon boxes of old family photographs and diaries -- all sorts of things. Through this connection I went on to meet, and learn about, more and more family.

I've been involved in one family re-union and plan on attending more -- they are a great way to make connections.
Good luck and happy travels Mo.
Cheers, Joy

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: Lin in Kansas
Date: 21 Mar 08 - 01:45 AM

Joybell, I think the questionnaire/envelope idea is a terrific one! I too am trying to write family stories, and was wanting to involve the younger generations in the project--maybe get their memories of their grandmother/great-grandma (my mom) to include in the familiy history. This sounds like it might just work. Do you have a Blue Clicky where I might find a template/questionnaire? Or a suggestion as to what to Google for?

Thanks!

Lin

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: open mike
Date: 21 Mar 08 - 06:56 PM

idea: my father used to participate in a photo "club" (stereo photos)
they would send around to each other their photos for critique, and
it was arranged as a "round robin" such that you would add your comments, and forward it on to the next person on the list, who
would do the same. eventually, all the photos would circulate among all the members...perhaps a family story letter could do the same...each
add their point of view,,and sent along...so that additional info can
be add3ed by each recipient. Seeing the others' stories might jog the memory of subsequent readers...this could be done with photos, too, asking folks to identify people in the image.

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: Lin in Kansas
Date: 21 Mar 08 - 10:37 PM

Open Mike, that's a great idea. The only drawback I can see with my family is that there would have to be a time deadline--otherwise, it would stall at my brother's house and never get any further on. I love him, but he's a worse procrastinator than I am, even.

Lin

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: katlaughing
Date: 22 Mar 08 - 12:09 AM

That is a wonderful idea, Laurel!

Joybell, I'd be interested in a link to templates, too. Great idea!

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: Lin in Kansas
Date: 22 Mar 08 - 11:39 PM

Kat, I did a Google on "family histories, how to" and got these and a bunch more.
General questions
and here

This one has a downloadable journal:
Click

This one advertises "Memorygrabber" software--interesting:
Memorygrabber

This one is for "personal Historian":
Personal Historian

This one shows a pretty detailed video for Personal Historian:
Tutorial

That should get us both started, anyway. Good luck!

Lin

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: katlaughing
Date: 23 Mar 08 - 12:36 AM

Thanks, Lin! *shakes head and mutters while shuffling off* I''ll never get any other work done...my dad was right, I AM an ancestor-worshipper! Mutter, mutter...

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 23 Mar 08 - 02:56 AM

Ah, the family stories....

I was able to put a few stories to rest at my last family party - the scandal of a cousin getting a girl pregnant and running away to get married... the family thought he'd deserted her after that baby was born, but I could tell them that they had 3 more children before she left him - and that he had two more with a second wife.

The contact I got that information from - the result of the illicit pregnancy - I found through 'Friends Reunited' of all places! I took a chance and Emailed a person with the family name who went to my primary school about 10 years before I did. It turned out that he WAS related and provided lots of information about various missing family members of my parents' generation - the ones I'm having most difficulty tracking down, because church records and census returns have not yet been released to the public.

I was hoping to get some sorted this long weekend, but it seems making chocolate rolls has greater appeal than shuffling papers around...

Ho hum.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Family tree. organising
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 23 Mar 08 - 06:58 PM

Don..I am going to PM you about your Irish searches. I am not going to have the time or energy to pursue mine very far. Do you only do Ireland or Irish who came to America?

One thing I am starting to do, but it doesn't help my own family tree much if at all..is doing the Irish families in the town in Iowa all four great-grandparents on my father's side ended up in ...Clermont...a fair number seem to have traveled together. I also know Dingle families (only my father's father's father's side are from Dingle but ggm is from Tralee nearby) tended to end up int he horrible Five POints in New York..also in Chicopee MA..and some unfortuantes seem to have come through Gross Isle..I have little bits of databases and no grand plan but I want to combine things..there are about 20 family names I just grab data on here and there..it would be great if people in Ireland did what they could from there too...to see where the people left from, where they landed..where people on a partiuclar ship might have been from...

It is one of the great untalked about horrors of the world....we can think of many more...some are going on right now of course..girls in Africa getting their arms cut off when they go to fetch water..awful atrocities and starvation etc. all over...

One thing that I think will help Obama's quest for dialogue and that is to have people write up their family stories and make them availalbe for others to read...accounts of slavery, Trail of Tears, work in the coal mines, the great depression etc. It will help things along I think. mg