My genealogy odyssey - how I got started

January 15, 2008 by digicopi

In 2004 we moved my grandmother, who was 93 at the time, from her independent living apartment to an assisted living arrangement to insure that she had someone more closely watching out for her safety.  As we were helping her move, and downsizing her belongings to fit her new living arrangements, we pulled several boxes of old photographs and related memorabilia out of her closet.  As the resident computer geek in the family, and owner of some sophisticated scanning equipment, I volunteered to take the items and digitize them and redistribute them back to our family.

Amongst the literally thousands of photographs, letters, and documents that represented several generations of our family was a hand-written family tree that my grandfather had carefully scribed many years prior.  I recall seeing this document when I was a young child and had seen snippets since that time but here was the original that I remember from 35 years ago.  The document detailed a paternal lineage going back 4 generations from my grandfather to Bavaria on my grandfathers side and the same on my grandmothers side.  There were only about 20 individuals on this document but it was the catalyst that started me thinking about who these people were, what their lives were like and their connection to me.

With my family tree of 20 people in hand I decided to complete the tree as best I could, at a minimum I wanted to extend it from my grandfathers generation down to my own kids and all of their cousins.  As an IT guy I also knew that this was the type of data that was best preserved in a a database of some sort and I turned to Google to see what free or open-source applications existed to satisfy my need.  I found several options availble to me but settled on Personal Ancestral File which is available FREE from the FamilySearch.org website.  The software was very straightforward and intuitive to understand, there is a language and nomencalture spoken by experienced genealogists and I was able to navigte without needing to understand all of this jargon.

I used PAF for some time and then found that as my understanding of the genealogists language and nomencalture grew so did my desire to mre carefully manage my growing collection of information.  After looking at virtually all of the avaialble genealogy products on the market settled this time The Master Genealogist (TMG), available from Wholly Genes Software.  I found TMG to include more features than I currently needed which should allow me to continue to grow into the software for some time.  The one thing that I found lacking in TMG was a good interface for putting this information on the web and so I went back to look for software that would provide a good web interface.  I found phpgedview, an open source product that is freely available from phpgedview.net.  At this point I began doing the unthinkable, maintaining my core data in TMG and then exporting gedcom files to the web for display in phpgedview.  I am cintinuing that practice today as I find the TMG interface better suited for the detailed data entry work and the phpgedview interface much better for online viewing, so I have a working tool (TMG) and a display tool (phpgedview).  I am very interestd in getting to a single interface and the truth is I am not on the current release of either product so watch this space for updates as I reevaluate my options here.

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