On that note, anyone got a good FREE site for creating and tracking a family tree?
The only one that I can suggest is FamilySearch:
https://www.familysearch.org/en/united-states/
The website itself belongs to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but it's (quoting from the website) "
free of charge to everyone, regardless of tradition, culture, or religious affiliation. FamilySearch resources help millions of people around the world discover their heritage and connect with family members. " From what I can tell, a person's ancestry has always been a big deal with the LDS; and even though a church owns it, there's no religion vibes to the FamilySearch website.
They do aprear partnered with Ancestry.com, but the LDS website is a non-profit. I don't trust commercial for-pay websites, and Ancestry ends up gobbling up all of the smaller genealogy websites anyway.
So what software do you all use for your research? is it in the GEDCOM (i thnk that is the universal format) and is it free?
I don't use any special software. I've never really figured out the GEDCOM thing, either. The way I do my own genealogy is to find, and work from, original period documents which I search out, and download or copy. I found so much wrong information, and mainly lack of information, on my own family that focusing on, and organizing and interpreting, original docs has been the only way I've been able to unravel the true story.
I use excel to keep track of these documents, in spreadsheets that I can work with by searching, sorting and filtering- "organizing". I also use excel to draw my own family trees, which in my case has been essential to keep everybody straight (during one critical period there were
six related "John same-last-names's" all living within the same general area!!!).
I also keep all of my notes on each person in a simple .word document, per person. I also use .word for other types of notes, like a series of an individual's movements or land transactions.
The main thing, is to keep all of the accumulated data organized, so that you can find things easily, and to be able to examine and compare the data (as I'm so easily confused!). At this point, after about 25 years of working on it, I have several thousand images of original period docs, on hundreds of people that are related directly and distantly. This part, would be difficult, if not impossible, without using a computer.
Sooo . . . the way I do mine it is free, but takes some time and work.
For somebody just starting, I think that starting a tree on FamilySearch is about the best place to check it out and try things out. Most people will tire quickly of genealogy (it can be frustrating, and takes time and work), others will be fascinated by it and become obsessed with it.
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nope, I am not going to ask ...................................
you know what I meant
