Anyone else out there into genealogy? I did it for years before the computer age, visiting countless local cemetaries, courthouses, libraries, etc. while planning and executing treks to the National Archives, Library of Congress, etc. Amassed reams of data. Now computer genealogy has come along, and I’ve never really been able to get a handle on it. The computer program I began using in the 80’s (Roots III) went the way of all old software, and all my data is locked up in it, and I can’t even get it to run on my modern system. I did convert the whole thing to Ultimate Family Tree, but I’ve just never gotten comfortable with using it.
Any advice for me as to how to make the jump to computer genealogy in the modern age? Don’t tell me to re-enter all my data into a different program by hand, I’ve got over 5000 individuals already entered into my old one.
I don’t have anything useful to tell you, but I think that what you’ve done is impressive! I find geneology to be interesting, but neither of my parents has any names of family members farther back than their grandparents, so…
Do you know why the program won’t run on your new system though? If it’s a matter of having the big(5 and something inch) floppy disks, you can have a drive installed in an empty port of your current system. My parents did that, and all their dos based programs on old disks ran on the newer computer.
My family is Icelandic, and geneology has pretty much been the national pastime there for - oh, forever. When the human genome was being mapped, researchers apparently wanted to use Icelanders because of such good family records.
That being said, we recently tracked down our family to before Christ.
I’ll send out an email to all those on my mailing list for “emigration from Iceland to the americas” and see if there is anyone out there among the teeming millions of Icelandic geneology buffs that can help you.
Does your old program allow you to make a GEDCOM file? Gedcom files (*.ged) are a standard that can be used with most of the genealogy software currently available. For the record, I use Brother’s Keeper (5, not 6), which is available as fully functional shareware from http://www.bkwin.com. You could also try the LDS software, Personal Ancestral File (PAF) which is free, and can be found at http://www.familysearch.org.
You can probably find further information on this subject at Cyndi’s List - http://www.cyndislist.com - this has to be the greatest collection of genealogy links on the internet.
On a more humble note, I have a few genealogy links on my website - try http://www.mbtree.com/links.htm
The internet has made genealogy so much easier. I was a member of a mailing list for a while that was called Cemetery Photos - as a member, you agree to take photos in your local cemetery if asked, and other members will do the same for you. You can charge for your expenses (film, postage), but you aren’t allowed to make a profit from it. This is a great exchange, and I was able to get pictures of my great great great grandmother’s grave back in England (my family emigrated to Australia in the 1830’s). It was strange to know I was the first descendant to look upon her grave in more than 100 years - even her son didn’t get to see it. That was a special moment I THINK you can join the list by emailing cemetery-photos-l-request@rootsweb.com, making sure the subject line contains only the word SUBSCRIBE. The list could be defunct by now for all I know - I left a long time ago, as it was a lot of mail and no one needed lookups from my area (I’m still on their webpage, so it doesn’t matter).
Good luck! Embrace this new technology - genealogy is so much easier these days!! Have fun. Contact me if you need any help with anything.
Re-entering old data sucks but sometimes has to be done. I’ve done that exactly once and feel for you greatly if that’s what you end up doing. I suggest first finding a program you are comfortable using. I use FTM but others find other programs more useful. Most have smaller shareware versions that you can play around with before you spend the bucks! Once you do find one keep upgrading. Don’t get too far behind or it may happen again.
This other thing I did was not exactly re-entering data, but rather modifying. I went through and changed all my places from “Crosbyton, Crosby Co., TX, USA” to “USA, TX, Crosby Co., Crosbyton” So that when I make a report I can sort them by place and all the people from Crosbyton will be next to each other, right next to all the people from Crosby Co. Although later on I wanted to go through and reformat my sources I got 12 people into it and said “No freakin’ way!” and stopped. But then some people in my tree have about 30 sources.
Good luck, I hope everything works out for the best.
Brother Rat - descendant of a 1,000 Southern farmers
Thanks for the links and advice, all. I’m just going to have to get insanely obsessed with this pasttime again, instead of resting on my laurels, and really figure out how to do all that stuff!
Qadgop
whose 9x great grandmother was hung for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692
I THINK you can join the list by emailing