I’m working on a pointless time-wasting story about something that’s passed along from one person in a family to another over a hundred years or more. I thought a family tree would help me keep straight who it belongs to and at what point, but of the two I’ve tried (GenJ and Family Tree Maker) neither shows the events in the main portion or on the timeline. Maybe I’m using the completely wrong tool for this? (entirely likely)
Any suggestions?
I think you need to elaborate on what you’re trying to see. FTM is a pretty powerful tool, but I can’t tell what it is you’re after here.
I’m not exactly sure what you are trying to do, but in the past I have found that Reunion does absolutely everything I want it to do, and I seem to recall that it has places where you can put entries for all kinds of specific events as well as narrative information.
Legacy Family Tree has a Timeline report and an Individual Report that may be what you are looking for.
Sorry I was been remembering the wrong software (it’s on my USB key and I deleted it and didn’t want to try undeleting it.) I had ‘Simple Family Tree’, which obviously was too simple.
Anyway, I’d like either the family tree view to be able to have a note like ‘2nd owner - (year)’ or the timeline to have entries for when each person got it, or, preferably, both.
Oh, and my personal computer is Windows XP.
Silver Tyger Girl, you’re looking for something that would track, for example, who had a piece of jewelry over the last 150 years?
I don’t know of software that does this, but I can guess why it wouldn’t tend to be a feature…
Example 1: When I’m 6, my parents give me a book for Christmas. Who owns it, since they can take it away from me at any time? When does it become mine?
Example 2: My grandmother buys a piano “for the children”. Who owns it?
Example 3: My father lets me use a guitar that’s been “in the family” for 60 years. I repair it, I buy a case for it. It’s been at my place for 10 years. Who owns it?
Example 4 (this is from real life, not mine): A daughter takes two chairs from a dining room set to her house. Later, the parents die. The daughter claims the two chairs meant that the parents “always meant” to give her the dining room set. The other children don’t agree. Who owns the set? Who used to own it? The parents, jointly? The daughter? The estate?
I agree. This isn’t the normal sorts of entries one would find a category for in genealogy software. However, FTM has a “facts” function that allows you to enter pretty much anything you want, and to name the category. Problem is, I don’t believe you can do a general search for facts and have it bring up the people related to that fact, like you can in a relational database like MS Access. Actually, that’s probably the best program for what I understand you’re trying to do.
I use The Master Genealogist which lets you define any kind of event, and also lets you pick any detail from an event to add to, for instance, a family tree. An event can have several people attached with different roles, so I think you could have an event “Gave-item” with a giver and receiver, and have both have appropriate notes in their boxes on the tree.
You could certainly get such information in an automatically generated narrative.
Yeah, something like that. I suppose I can always just have the family tree and an spreadsheet for the timeline.
Thanks for the help everybody. I knew it was a weird request.