Geneology software

[TimH]

Whats the best Geneology site/software?

Any opinions?

[Bob Smalser]

Whats the best Geneology site?



The ones that tie in to the Mormon research center in Salt Lake. Ancestry.com is probably the largest.

Depends on how many census records they have these days on digital. Otherwise you visit a branch of the national archives and go through microfilms of census records from 1920 and earlier. Then from there you seek a migration center with immigration and ship passenger archives like the German Migration Center. From there you travel to the country of origin and search local church records, hoping they weren't destroyed in some war. You may even find local family associations that have done much of the old country piece for you already.

Finding your kin on census records can be easy in rural areas, but can be very difficult in urban areas unless you have a good address and know which ward it's in. Same with names. If you're looking for Mary Smith, you can expect larger problems compared to searching for Helena Petzold. Tracing female lines is also more difficult.

I never found the need for any special software.

But it's worth the trouble. Here's an example of what you can come up with:





http://pic20.picturetrail.com/VOL12/1104763/2999461/368380294.jpg

Eli James Smalser – Male Lineage

Sippe Schmalz of the Alemanni Tribes, Aar and Emmen River Valleys, Switzerland.
Partial migration circa 1400 to the Murg Valley of the Black Forest in Germany as early Anabaptist heretics, taking the name Schmalzhaffen.

Unnamed Schmalzhaffen, Minister to the Count of Eberstein, Living 1400
Hans Schmalzhaffen, Living 1417; Peter Schmalzhaffen, Living 1484
Leonard Schmalzhaffen, Living 1484
Lorentz (the Elder) Schmalzhaf, Living 1550 + Eva
Hans (the Elder) Schmalzhaf, Living 1550 + Margaretha
Lorentz (the Younger) Schmalzhaf, Living 1550 + Catharina
Hans (the Younger) Schmalzhaf, Living 1600 + Rosina
Stoffel (the Cowherd) Schmalzhaf, Living 1600 + Margaretha

Hans Joerg (the Bubenschmalzhaf) Schmalzhaf, 1626 – 17 Jun 1751
+Anna Margaretha Ramberger, ? - 22 Oct 1703

Philipp Adam (the Schultes) Schmalzhaf, 20 Dec 1678 – 22 Jul 1754
+ Barbara Rosina, ? – 19 Jan 1754

Johann Adam Schmalzhaf, 16 Feb 1714 – 30 Apr 1756
+ Johanna Friederika Bickel, ? – 20 Nov 1738

Johann Augustin Schmalzhaf, 4 Dec 1735 – 26 Sep 1800
+ Rosina Margaretha Bickel

Johann Cristoph Schmalzhaf, 12 Jun 1791 –
+ Maria Christina Kochdoerfer, 5 Mar 1795 -

Philipp Schmalzhaf-Smalser, 12 Mar 1831 - 20 Sep 1894
+ Lydia Nyhart, 13 Sep 1838 – 1 Aug 1600

Frank Leslie Smalser, 20 Jul 1880 - 1956
+ Helena Betzold, 1880 – 29 Jun 1938

Eugene Curtis Smalser, 16 Aug 1912 – Apr 1975
+ Elizabeth Park Turner, 3 Aug 1911 - 1992

Robert Smalser, 1948
+ Elizabeth Ann Bakker, 1951

Aaron Curtis Smalser, 1978
+ Erin Christine Cassidy, 1979

Eli James Smalser, 1 Mar 2009

[veets]

If you are looking for software to record genealogical information and you have a Mac, take a look at Reunion (http://www.leisterpro.com/).

[k4lmy]

IMHO The best and cheapest out there is Roots Magic.. Have been using it since it was called Family Origins some 18 years or so ago.. Bruce Busby who wrote the program lost control of its destiny and formed a new company with the program called Roots Magic.. now ver 4. I am still using 3.? Lots of options for reports and for noting sources etc. It is compatable with the Morman program and lots of others through the GED com exchange format. I have something over 6500 individuals recorded.

Henry

[Norman Bernstein]

I've been doing the Bernstein genealogy for about 15 years, and after trying a number of commercial genealogy programs, I came to the conclusion that the freebie from the Mormons is the best. It's not without it's faults, but, by and large, it's easy to work with, and produces good reports that are considered very 'readable' by the family. Our family, starting with Avram Bernstein, born 1802 in Rukhovo, a small village near Minsk, now has 480 descendants... and the standard report runs 68 pages.

[martin schulz]

TIf you're looking for Mary Smith, you can expect larger problems compared to searching for Helena Petzold.

Which makes sense in the US, but given that (as example) the name you are looking for in Petzold, the nameowners will probably come from Germany/Austria wher a name such as Petzold is very common.

I am surprised that you were able to come up with a lineage dating down to 1400. I am not even able to find out who was my grand-grandfather.

[paladin]

Part of mine was already pretty much done for me....in high school I had traced all family bible records through mom's bible to Sarah Ann South. Her sister, Josephine, had written a book tracing the family history back to one of Patrick Henry's son's. The man she married was the son of the great granddaughter of Sir Francis Drake...not the explorer...The original Sir Francis was married twice but never produced an heir...so when he died his nephew, also Francis, inherited the title.
Dad's side has been a problem....doggone Welsh Vikings that invaded and migrated to America and his grandmother was Comanche from Texas....and mom's mom and dad were Half and full cherokee.
The internet has made everything so much easier. I tried Reunion but for every good hit I had to weed out 2-300 bad ones.....the Mormon site is sooooo much better....and records more accurate..
If there's any native American blood you may find that the various tribes kept better records than the white man.

[pcford]

I really don't know much about genealogy...but would like to know more.

It appears that much reliance is given to the Mormon archives. It's my understanding that the archives are based on genealogy that was self-reported by reasearchers...in many (most?) cases, amateurs.

My cousin traced the Ford family back to a widow Ford(e) who came over on the Fortune, the boat after the Mayflower. He reported this to the Mormon archives; if you look up my lineage it goes back until then. I did a little work with a generous genealogy librarian and it appears that the connection is not necessarily certain.

It appears what he did was to project the generations back from about Revolutionary War times to Plymouth. Much of this is good, in my humble opinion. However, when the line gets close to the Plymouth era, he apparent assumed a generational link...that may or may not be correct. I found an article in a genealogical journal which argues that it is not. There was at least one other Ford living in the Plymouth area in the early 1600s.

In other words the Mormon archive data may or may not be correct. It is not examined for correctness...just what people turned in.

Please correct me if you have further information in this regard.

[Norman Bernstein]

I really don't know much about genealogy...but would like to know more.

It appears that much reliance is given to the Mormon archives. It's my understanding that the archives are based on genealogy that was self-reported by reasearchers...in many (most?) cases, amateurs.

My cousin traced the Ford family back to a widow Ford(e) who came over on the Fortune, the boat after the Mayflower. He reported this to the Mormon archives; if you look up my lineage it goes back until then. I did a little work with a generous genealogy librarian and it appears that the connection is not necessarily certain.

It appears what he did was to project the generations back from about Revolutionary War times to Plymouth. Much of this is good, in my humble opinion. However, when the line gets close to the Plymouth era, he apparent assumed a generational link...that may or may not be correct. I found an article in a genealogical journal which argues that it is not. There was at least one other Ford living in the Plymouth area in the early 1600s.

In other words the Mormon archive data may or may not be correct. It is not examined for correctness...just what people turned in.

Please correct me if you have further information in this regard.

There's plenty of good info in the Mormon archives.... but it does have to be checked, and for some people (like me) there's nothing whatsoever. It works great for English-speaking Christians who emigrated to this country as far back as the early 17th century, in some cases. Yuo clearly have a problem if you've got a common name.... in your case, 'Ford' is probably very common.... in my case, 'Bernstein' is to eastern European Ashkenazi Jews, what 'Smith' is to the English... so I followed a lot of dead leads.

For me, whose ancestors emigrated from Belarus at the turn of the last century, there was mostly nothing in the Mormon archives. Aside from getting much of my info from living descendants, I gathered a lot from the Census records, both here, and in Canada. My big breakthrough came after I commissioned some research in Belarus, from a genealogical society there... which took me back fully another century, to 1802. Best of all, it only cost me around $200 or so.

[TimH]

My mothers side has been in the US for a couple of generations - before that Sweden and Norway. My father was born in Coburg Germany.

Does the mormon information include more than just US records?

[paladin]

Yes....We could trace our family (mom's side) back to Scotland, then through the revolutionary war (two ancestor buried at Point lookout from the civil war) plus the majority from the Eastern Cherokee nation. Dad's side back to Wales and then lost with the Scandinavian connection. When a non-native American married a Cherokee woman, the tribal council did their own "background check" requiring certain information on the prospective husband, and a contract, that if he later decided he wanted a divorce, all his assets would go to the woman to be held in trust for any children. I was able to trace dad's grandmother thru that system.

[Bob Smalser]

Which makes sense in the US, but given that (as example) the name you are looking for in Petzold, the nameowners will probably come from Germany/Austria wher a name such as Petzold is very common.

I am surprised that you were able to come up with a lineage dating down to 1400. I am not even able to find out who was my grand-grandfather.

And like Schulz, given that my grandmother's name was common and spelled both Petzold and Betzold, and she immigrated as a child with her shoemaker family from a large city (Leipzig) around 1890, I haven't made much progress with her family.

The Schmalzhaf side was relatively easy, once I found my Greatgrandfather's (below) original name via a letter he wrote his brother in Baden. It's an unusual name even in Germany, and there is a large, active Schmalz Family Association based in Meiringen, Switzerland. There it's about Ehre, the men do the research and take great pride in it. Besides the Berner Oberland, there are branches of the family in Kreis Heilbron, Biberacte, Prague and South Africa, but only one (mine) in North America, and me knocking on their door was a big deal.

Thanks largely to them, I can go father-son-father-son through the 30 Years War when the church records were destroyed, and then progressively generic all the way back to Roman times.

Some of this gets amusing, besides having Stoffel the Cowherd as a forebearer. Apparently Philipp Adam the Schultes was the local magistrate, the word Schultes being archaic local dialect for Judge. And today I believe the word schultes means to shrug ones shoulders. ;)

http://pic20.picturetrail.com/VOL12/1104763/2999461/368427899.jpg

[TimH]

There is still sort of a resemblance there Bob :)

[Bob Smalser]

There is still sort of a resemblance there Bob :)

The sloping shoulders and the knuckles dragging on the ground are familiar. ;)

I suspect I'm the better part of a foot taller, however. And my sons certainly are.

He was a farmer all his life, and I visited the farm in Germany he was born on. The youngest son of a youngest son, looking at the thin upland topsoil that wouldn't support one family, let alone several, left no doubt why he left for America, and dispelled a lot of family legend. He emigrated at 19 with a childhood friend, the son of the local baker, and they were sponsored in Pennsylvania by a Schmalzhaf uncle that was the first to emigrate 15 years earlier. As a consequence, they became relatively prosperous relatively quickly. Within 10 years he was married with children and owned a 100-acre farm.

[k4lmy]

My paternal Grandfather came up from the island of Saba, NA in the 1890,s , (Saba , St. Maarten, St. Eustatius) joined the forunnner of the Coastguard along with his brother .. I have wound up being one of three or four folks obsessed with the island Geneology.. Nothing on the Morman site.. only in the last year or so has the Dutch government put some of their archives on the web.. my DNA has taken me back to the UK ..

I got into the family tree climbing hobby in the early 1990s with my mothers family that came over to the colonies in 1670 with marriages back to two of the Plymouth types.

The Roots Magic program is only 29.95 the first time around.. not the 3 or 400 $ of the Professional Geneologist pgm. I think the upgrades are 19.95 when the new versions come out..

Good luck .. its habit forming..

Henry

[TimH]

So the free 14 day ancestors.com trial probably wont get me far? Sounds like you have to do a lot of time consuming digging.

[elf]

My family did not talk about this at all, unfortunately. Curiously I can find no immigration record for my paternal elders at all and have no idea whether if I coughed up some cash I might do better. My grandfather was an abusive drunk and his children all fled him as soon as they were able and did not want to talk about it. In addition, the name spelling is problematic.

Happily I have one wonderful photograph of my father and his sister and his parents before they departed Europe, but it has no date on it.

[Tom Galyen]

Wow Bob,

Only 18 generation and you've traced Eli's ancestry back to the 1400's the world is indeed younger than we think.

And he's such a handsome fellow to.

[David G]

Mr. Smalser,

It appears as if we have similar backgrounds. My sweeties does the geneology in our family, but she tells me that my ancestors fled Switzerland - at that same time, IIRC - due to religious persecution. They were Anabaptists and Mennonites. One preacher was even hung because he refused to renounce his beliefs. All of the property and goods belonging to all of his relatives was confiscated by the Catholic church/Swiss government. The family name back then was Krahenbuhl.

[Bob Smalser]

... my ancestors fled Switzerland - at that same time, IIRC - due to religious persecution. They were Anabaptists and Mennonites. One preacher was even hung because he refused to renounce his beliefs. All of the property and goods belonging to all of his relatives was confiscated by the Catholic church/Swiss government.

The family name back then was Krahenbuhl.

Of course the named Mennonites didn't come along until Luther, Zwingli, Menno Simons and the Protestant Reformation a hundred years later. But Johann Huss had a considerable following in Switzerland as well as Bohemia, and after he was burned at the stake at Konstanz in 1415, the local church cracked down and expelled every family who admitted to baptizing adults or didn't believe in physical punishment for the unfaithful. They were lucky to leave with what they could carry, and many followed the teachings of Menno Simons or the Swiss Brethren later.

I think you may find your family name evolved over time.

Those in the Schmalz family (Schmalz is an archaic name for fat, ie, cheesemakers from the Emmental) who resettled on poor ground near the marches in Biberach took the name Schmalzried or Schmalz of the Reeds, and my line settled in crude shacks near the Murg River and took the name Schmalzhaffen or Schmalz of the Harbor, later shortened to Schmalzhaf.

Plus you have to be careful with the original spellings. In my case, Schmelz means smelt (blacksmith) and hof means building, and names with those spellings are much more common but have no relation at all.

Searching for a Swiss family association for Sippe Krahen might pay off for you as well.

[Bob Smalser]

And he's such a handsome fellow to.

We'll keep him, thanks. ;)

Given that his other grandfather is 6'7" and played professional baseball bodes well for the family gene pool.

[Norman Bernstein]

So the free 14 day ancestors.com trial probably wont get me far? Sounds like you have to do a lot of time consuming digging.

It's been a while since I did the more fundamental research, but I recall it was my general impression that the commercial genealogy sources didn't do all that much for me. So much of the stuff is available online these days for free... some of the most valuable was the US Census records... they're held offline for 72 years, but after that, you can read the actual records online... in 2002, for example, the 1930 Census was posted.

The 'time consuming digging' is part of the fun of it! :)

[TimH]

It's been a while since I did the more fundamental research, but I recall it was my general impression that the commercial genealogy sources didn't do all that much for me.

I spent a couple of hours last night. Found a couple of census records for my mothers side. Nothing from my fathers side.

[ccmanuals]

Ancestry.com is the best info on the web. The mormon site "familyserarch.org"is a great site but one does need to know how to use. It can be difficult to navigate for US info. There is a educational site that has online classes that teach how to use several sites www.genclass.com. Excellent educational resurce.

[Bob Smalser]

I spent a couple of hours last night. Found a couple of census records for my mothers side. Nothing from my fathers side.

I hadn't been to ancestry.com in a few years, so I checked it last night to see what new has been digitalized.

A lot of new information, for sure, but it still pales in comparison to searching microfilm in the National Archives. For example where ancestry.com shows a dozen or so hits for my name in the census records, I obtained over a hundred records the old-fashioned way. Where it did help however, were hits in states I was unaware the family had members migrate to, and I can use those to obtain more information manually.

You might take a day off and visit the National Archives Branch over near the UW:

http://www.archives.gov/pacific-alaska/seattle/

http://www.archives.gov/genealogy/

[floatingkiwi]

My wife is a free lance genealogist. If it is findable, she will find it.

Your ancestors are waiting to talk.

[elf]

It appears from the 1930 census that my grandfather was 30 when my father was born but my grandmother was only 17.

Curious.

[seanz]

Whats the best Geneology site/software?

Any opinions?


You Suck!
:D

I've 'wasted' hours on this now. ;)
The LDS site is pretty good and I don't think I've used it before.
http://www.familysearch.org/eng/default.asp

I've got as far (for one branch, Dad's side) as I can go without ordering a copy of documents......I think.
Has anybody ordered micro-film before?

The records that are listed are birth certificate for GG grandfather and marriage certificate for his parents, I'd expect there would be at least a birth certificate for both of them but can't find it.
:confused:

So, anybody else got relatives from Montrose, Scotland?

[TimH]

LOL!

[Norman Bernstein]

One resource that I believe is often overlooked is the existence of 'city directories'. Going back as far (or further) as the turn of the last century, it was common for cities to publish an annual directory, listing residents, their children, and their occupations... I don't think they do this much, anymore.

I found one entire branch of the Bernstein family this way, starting from nearly nothing, by visiting the Portland Library in Portland, ME. I knew that one of my great-great aunts had emigrated there, but had very little other information. Via the city directories, I found her and all of her children.... this eventually developed into finding some 80-odd descendants. The city directories actually told their story, over the course of nearly 30 years.... describing the prosperity in the 1920's (based on the occupations), followed by the hard times during the depression.

The most delightful part of doing this: it turned out that this specific branch of the family were all very close, and held annual family gatherings, but none of them were particularly aware of the existence of the other 400 or so descendants of our common ancestor. I made contact, and attended one of these gatherings (which took place on the old ferry at DiMillo's on the Portland waterfront).

From this contact, I actually learned that there were two descendants who lived in my own home town, who I never knew!