About 6 or 7 years ago my Mother in Law was needing something to fill her empty hours of the day with something enriching and interesting. We were having a discussion about family history and the idea of getting her started in doing family research for her family and Ricks Dads family was appealing to her. It would do several things. Give her a long lasting interest, teach her to become more computer literate (something she had been trying to do but nothing really kept her interest to cause her to learn more), Therefore giving her a genuine enrichment in her life, and give her something to talk about to other people. At the time she was alone and not involved in much of anything. She had a great time for years with her family research. She took Ricks Dads family back to 1435!!! It's pretty incredible stuff. She got me started, and I enjoyed it so much.
When we were looking into how to get her started, Rick and I found a cool software called Family Tree Maker (The software I'm using today) and found it was a subsidiary of a Huge company called Ancestry.com., based in Utah and owned by the Mormons. As a kid growing up in a primarily Mormon based community I remember hearing "If you need to know anything genealogy based, you go to the Mormons." As the internet grew all their research starts getting stored digitally, and it becomes the mass industry..... Ancestry.com.
Anyone can build a tree in ancestry.com, but the research is a paid subscription. If you are interested in looking at my research directly online, A free registered guest account is required (first name, last name and email is all that is required) and then I can invite you as a "viewing" guest to my tree.
The information online is pretty basic, My software "Family Tree maker" is really cool. Software by it's nature is more robust than any online programs. Online is really only a place to do the research and store documents you find and put photos. But FTM takes all my information and creates data bases based on the information I input. I'm really only just starting to understand the depth of this program. I've been taking classes about the software on You Tube (Luv you tube) and I'm learning the correct way to use the software. That being said. A lot of the information I entered years ago needs to be reorganized and reentered correctly in order for the databases to work. (This has seriously cut into my transcribing of census' time). For example, I can create maps with pinpoints of all the locations that a person or family lived, I can I can create pedigree charts and family group sheets, relationship carts or descendants reports.
Now I'm boring you!
When my Mother in Law passed, she asked if I would take care of her tree so it wasn't lost. I'm happy to do it. I played a bit with it, but recently decided to really dive into my own tree.
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Finally, I have a the 1930 census for John Berech transcribed and ready to go. I will be posting it very soon....
I think you will find it...........Interesting to say the least.... I hope it generates questions and conversation among everyone when you read it.
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