One of my hobbies is researching my family tree/~history. A hobby that starts with asking questions and recording information about living relatives and recently deceased people whose memories are still fresh. Then begins the quest for dates, information, sources, photos, etc.
But what is the best practice of processing and storing that data?
In other words, a quest for software with the right features and that works for you!
My first encounter with family tree research was in the late 1980s. I found a TV series from the dutch broadcasting company Teleac, accompanied by a book called "Genealogy - From Family Tree to Family History," particularly interesting, and I started asking my parents some questions. Apparently, some family members had already put some things down on paper. Yes, back then we still did almost everyting on paper. Working with a typewriter and notepads... Then I found a 5.25" floppy disk with a family tree program, "Family History" running under DOS, at a bookstore in Hulst. When I got home, I installed it on my XT286 PC, and I was amazed!
Entering people and data was remarkably easy. Creating links for families was a piece of cake (for a purely DOS program, anyway), and retrieving information was also very simple. With my aunt's binder brimming with information about my mother's side of the family, I was ready to go. I wasn't at all worried about archives and sources yet. Little did I know... :-) But school and later on military service put an early end to the search.
In the years that followed, I occasionally restarted my research and tried various genealogy programs (links for the software at the bottom of this post), such as Personal Ancestor Files (PAF), Pro-Gen, Aldfaer, and more recently, Ancestor Tree Manager, Ancestris, Humo-Gen, and Gramps. I quite like Humo-Gen; it's for editing and presenting a family tree online on your own website. So, not on commercial sites with privacy risks and little control over changes. Sites like ancestry.com, familysearch.org, myheritage.com, etc. (That's right, I like to maintain control over data and changes myself.) A minor drawback of Humo-Gen, however, is the limited output of reports and little insight/influence over the organization and structure of data storage. Last on the list to try was Gramps.
So, Gramps was my last option among the programs I knew that could also be used on Linux. I'd already read a lot about it, including that it has a significant learning curve. It's a difficult piece of software to understand and quite tricky to use. But it is comprehensive. My first impression was indeed: OMG! What is all this then?! But luckily, I found some very interesting video tutorials on YouTube that made everything a lot clearer. So, I got to work entering data from scratch, linking relationships, etc. And I have to say, it's working fine so far. Perhaps a bit cumbersome compared to other software, but quite comprehensive. And especially the output options I was looking for, and good insight into registering sources, locations, media, etc.
For me, I think this quest is (for now?) over. Working locally with Gramps to properly organize and store all the data, and working with Humo-Gen for publishing online for family members who are interested. Meanwhile, I'm slowly getting to grips with potential sources like archives, websites with background information, online resources, and so on.
The search for my ancestors continues!
- Software links:
Personal Ancestor File (discontinued): https://personal-ancestral-file.software.informer.com/5.2
Pro-Gen: https://www.pro-gen.nl (free demo, pay for full version)
Aldfaer: https://aldfaer.net/sitemap/index.php (free)
Ancestor Tree Manager: https://ancestortreemanager.sivworks.nl/nl (free)
Ancestris: https://www.ancestris.org/index.html (free)
Humo-Gen: https://humo-gen.com/wp (free)
Gramps: https://gramps-project.org/blog (free) - Video tutorials Gramps die ik gevolgd heb:
@tech-tutorials channel