The Family Tree
By Terence L. Day
Terence L. Day, genealogist and journalist, is on the Washington State University faculty. He welcomes e-mail at genealogy@moscow.com, or regular mail in care of the Tri-City Herald City newsroom, P.O. Box 2608, Tri-Cities, WA 99302-2608.
Genealogy considerably easier with computers
This story was published Jan. 9, 2000
You don't need a computer to do genealogy, but I'm not sure I could go back to that good old-fashioned method of recording my findings by typing or writing on forms.
In that, I suppose I'm a bit like a teen-ager. My legs provided marvelous transportation until I learned to drive, but the minute I got a driver's license I forgot how to walk.
The advantages of genealogizing with a computer may not be obvious to folks who have never done it on a computer. How does a computer make genealogy easier? Let me count the ways:
-- You only enter information once for a person. No matter how many times you print it out on paper, no matter how many different kinds of forms you want to print it on, you never have to enter the information again.
I suppose in the short history of personal computers we've already produced a generation of genealogists who have never known the tedium of writing or typing genealogical information on forms.
-- If you find a mistake in a person's data, or come across new data (perhaps Aunt Martha just died), you don't have to redo a form by hand. You just make the correction or add the new information in your database and the job is done. Every form in the computer that requires that information is automatically corrected or updated.
The dog ate your pedigree chart? No problem. Just print a new one from the computer almost as effortlessly as thinking about it. In another generation or two of computer improvements and we may not have to do anything more than think of it. So fast is the technology developing!
n Uncle Albert says he has names and data for 50 relatives you don't have? If you're both computerized, you don't have to type all that data into your computer. Software applications provide a way for you to import and export this information, almost effortlessly.
-- You would like to print photographs on pedigree charts (family trees) or family group sheets. What a mess that was in the old days! With a computer and the right software, you can store family photographs in your computer and print them on forms, make a page of photos, or whatever you like.
-- With a connection to the Internet via a phone line, your computer will expand your research opportunities beyond imagination! Without leaving your home, you will be able to discover the hiding places of many of your ancestors. Not all of them, of course, but many. You will be able to access research that others may have done on your ancestors and to download their data into your computer without having to retype any of it.
-- If you want to publish a book of your family's genealogy, but aren't a writer, hey, don't sweat it. There's software that will take most of the tedium out of the task while supplying most of the talent.
Of course it works only on the data you already have in your computer, but it really simplifies the task of producing a narrative ready to be bound as a book.
And narrative is a whole lot more interesting and easier to read than genealogical forms.
Fortunately, computers suitable for this work now sell for less than $1,000. Perhaps considerably less. A lot of folks have more money tied up in stereo sound equipment.
What software should you get for genealogy?
Uh-oh! I feel another column coming on.
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The Tri-City Genealogy Society will meet at 7 p.m. Wednesday in Meeting Rooms A and B in the Mid-Columbia Library, 1620 S. Union St., Kennewick. The program will be an overview of the library's holdings that are valuable to genealogists.