Brain Candy #102 - The Reluctant Genealogist

Years ago, I had bought a copy of a program called Family Tree Maker for her because she expressed an interest in genealogy. Over the years, she's worked on our family tree some, but not so much lately. Since she often mentions genealogy, I knew she hadn't lost interest in it. As we've upgraded the computer, the software has continued to work, but I got the impression that she wasn't finding it friendly anymore.

While we shopped for food for Christmas Eve, I noticed that the local Sam's Club had Family Tree Maker 2006 for sale. It wasn't too expensive and there was some chance that it would be more useful to her than the old program. I bought it, went home and installed it on her machine, and, at least to me, it seemed like a good buy. It read her old datafile readily and there didn't seem to be any snags at all to the upgrade.

I think I did good. We watched part of the training DVD that afternoon. It looked pretty easy to use. I guess it suited her too - she had insomnia that night, and told me the next morning that she had fired up the program and put some more data into it while I slept.

The previous version of the software provided a number of CDs that contained commonly useful genealogy data. In the new version, this data is available online. A free year of access to a genealogy website, ancestry.com, comes with the program. She was reticent to use the online facility and wanted to wait to tackle that, so we didn't activate it. The program read her old CD data disks readily, so I think she'll be able to spend some time with them looking for more info.

That wasn't all I had planned. I made a copy of her database and when I got back, I bought a copy of Family Tree Maker for our computer. Catherine is a pretty avid genealogist, but she's too busy with work and school to do anything now. I, on the other hand, have some spare time. What I don't have is much interest in genealogy. Still, I thought I'd be able to do some digging to help Mom out - as part of her Christmas present. I'm not afraid to access on-line databases, looking for info.

What I found is that Mom had actually done a pretty complete job herself. Before I left, she provided me with some hardcopy of part of the family tree that she had not yet put into the program. I put some of it in, but there were things that didn't look right, so I activated ancestry.com and found that Mom already pretty much knew everything that it knew. She was occasionally off on the dates, but I didn't find much new at all. I guess this was to be expected. My dad is from Eastern European stock - tracking them into the old countries isn't easy. My mom is of Pennsylvania Dutch descent - the records aren't as difficult to come by, but in that part of the country, there were a handful of first names and a handful of surnames in common use, and they all lived close together, so it's tough to identify just exactly what relative is the one I'm looking for. Which "Sarah Hyde" in central Pennsylvania is my great-great-grandmother? What are her parents' names? I didn't make much progress on my mom's side of the family. On my dad's side, I was surprised to find that one of my uncles, who was killed in WWII, doesn't seem to show up in any of the online records. Is the data not available, is it incomplete, or have I just not looked in the right place yet? It's a puzzle, and to me, frustrating.

On the plus side, I have quite a bit more to talk to about with Mom. She enjoys discussing the family tree. I'll probably try searching ancestry.com now and then, when I've got some spare time.

If you're interested, there are other genealogy programs available, including some that are free. There are also any number of books and magazines devoted to the subject. You might want to visit Cyndi's List of Genealogy Sites on the Internet at www.cyndislist.com or the about.com genealogy site at genealogy.about.com.