Monday, November 21, 2005

Genealogy

What started out as an innocent school project for my daughter has turned into a full time project for me! What was a simple family tree has now turned into a genealogical expedition of epic proportions... well okay maybe not... But I have discovered some interesting facts:
  • my grandmother on my father's side came from Scotland
  • my great Grandfather on my father's side was a candy maker in Germany
  • my great grandparents on my mother's side came from England
My cousin (once removed) in Los Angeles (who I met over the internet) was a great help for getting me started with information about my mother's side of the family. My aunt in Saskatchewan has been great for my Dad's side of the family. I've never felt terribly close to either side of my family but a few phone calls and e-mails is changing my perception. What a friendly, helpful bunch of people!

Finally my software of choice has been a little Java application called GenealogyJ or GenJ for short. Having never touched a commercial tool that does this stuff I'm pretty impressed with GenJ. There's a nice little graphical viewer and lots of reports. The best part is that it stores all it's data in a UTF-8 encoded text file (in the standard Gedcom format) that's easily read in any text editor. That's pretty important to me so that my information will always be accessible even if GenJ should go the way of the Dodo.

For those of you who've been into this stuff for years and have some pointers, send me an e-mail or post a comment...

1 comment:

Red3 said...

That brings back some memories - I did a high school software project way back when to store Family History records called ProGen, which turned into an university project I won "Young Software Designer of the Year" for in England. (The project has long died a death.)
A good freeware program is PAF - Personal Ancestral File available from www.FamilySearch.org (sponsored by the LDS Church).