Online genealogy is simply using new tools to do the same research that always has been required of genealogists. To accomplish online genealogy research, instead of using a photocopier, you might save an image of the document or a searchable Portable Document Format (PDF) file from your scanner. Instead of sending queries in an envelope, you send them by e-mail, post them on forums, or make it your Facebook status. Instead of reading a magazine article on paper, you can read it on your tablet computer. And instead of (or before!) going to the library or courthouse for a document, you can search the card catalog and even the text of whole books from home. In other words, you are doing the same tasks with additional tools.

Please understand—I don’t mean to imply that you won’t ever do things the old-fashioned way again. Of course, you will! But you’ll use these online techniques much more frequently. Often, before you set out to research the traditional way, you will use some online tools to lay the groundwork.

Look Ma, No Wires!

You’ll need to learn about the Internet, software, and techniques for online information exchange to get the most out of the experience. This chapter covers such considerations and the software you might want to use. Of course, it is assumed you have a computer with some connection to the Internet. High-speed connections are best, as so many genealogy resources are now available as online images that take up a lot of bandwidth. Some people use a slow home Internet connection just for checking e-mail and surf the Web at a local library to take advantage of a high-speed connection. The disadvantages to that are obvious: In such a setup, you can only work on your genealogy when the library is open, and you certainly can’t work in your pajamas at the library, which is part of the fun of online genealogy!

Still, there will be days when you do go to the library, and then a laptop or tablet with wireless capabilities can be useful. For example, at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City (and many other libraries), you can now use your laptop computer, smart phone (such as a BlackBerry or iPhone), or tablet (such as an iPad or Nexus) with Wi-Fi wireless networking to check your e-mail, visit genealogy sites, or otherwise surf the Web. You can do all this without connecting any network cables; the wireless networking card in your device will connect via low-power radio waves to the building’s network.

This benefits you and the library in several ways. Often, you will find all of a library’s computers reserved on a busy day, but you can pull out your laptop and use that instead when the library has Wi-Fi network capabilities. The library saves money because it does not need to purchase so many computers, and they don’t have to worry about possible viruses and malware if you have the right protection software on your computer. And, in many local libraries, the card catalog is all online; with a laptop and Wi-Fi, you can search for the book you need, find out if it is on the shelf, and sometimes check out the e-reader version of it for two weeks!

An all-in-one printer with scanning, fax, and printing capabilities could be useful when asking for vital records from a courthouse miles away, so you may still use your phone line for some genealogy chores. A good color inkjet printer, especially an all-in-one that can scan and copy, can help you preserve images of your original documents and primary sources. And there are other choices in hardware.

Software

Once you have your hardware in place and you know how you’re going to connect, you need to look at your software. Many Internet service providers (ISPs) include software as part of the package: the communications software, browser, file transfer program (FTP), e-mail, and other programs you need. The programs you use to access the Web are often called browsers or clients. These programs send commands to other computers, called servers, instructing them to display files and information to you or to run programs for you. The resulting display might be e-mail, a webpage, or a GEDCOM you want to study.

Which Browser Should I Use?

I’m often asked, “Which is the best browser?” In my opinion, this is like asking, “Which is the best car?” It all depends on your taste, habits, and needs. The current leaders in the browser wars are still Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape’s progeny, Mozilla Firefox. Apple’s Safari is catching up, however.

Entire books are devoted to helping you get the most out of Internet Explorer. The major online services and ISPs have lined up with one or the other for their customers to use and install automatically with their software, so you don’t have to do any extra work to use it. Internet Explorer is free, and you get it (whether you like it or not) when you buy a Windows system. It works well with Outlook, Microsoft’s calendar, contacts, and e-mail program.

Firefox is free, has a nice user interface, and is easy to use. It now has a companion e-mail program called Thunderbird. Some sites, you will find, do not look as “clean” in Firefox as they do in Internet Explorer, especially if the site was created with a Microsoft product.

Google’s Chrome browser, which is free, is designed to integrate with Google’s products such as e-mail, calendar, document storage, photo storage, and, of course, web search. Tabs and windows work much the same way.

Apple’s Safari is the default browser for iPhone, iTouch, and Macintosh. Safari’s presentation is much like that of Firefox and Chrome. The status bar and menu bar are hidden by default; you have to click the relevant options to show them. You can make toolbar changes and customizations by clicking the gear icon—another similarity to Chrome. Safari boasts fast performance, a simple user interface, easy bookmarks, pop-up blocking, inline find, tabbed browsing, automatic form filling, built-in RSS (Really Simple Syndication), resizable text fields, private browsing, and security.

If you have disability issues, such as macular degeneration or arthritis, there are browsers that magnify the type on a webpage, read the words aloud to you, accept spoken rather than typed commands, and more. Check out www.e-bility.com/links/software.php for a list of pointers to information and some demonstration versions of alternative browsing methods.

My advice is to test-drive a few different browsers and see which one suits you best if you don’t like the one that comes with your ISP.

Genealogy Programs

Your most important software will be your genealogy program, which is basically a database program for recording, maintaining, and sharing your data. In shopping around for the right genealogy program for you, consider these factors:

    • First and foremost, check the program’s ability to record your sources. If it doesn’t have a way for you to track where and when you found a fact, reject it out of hand. You’ll wind up retracing your steps a thousand times without the ability to instantly retrieve the sources you’ve already used.

    • Second in importance, but only slightly second, is the appearance. This may seem trivial, but it’s not. Most genealogy programs have some sort of metaphor: When you open the program, the screen looks as if you are working on a scrapbook, 3 × 5 cards, or a genealogical chart. Finding one that presents the data in a way that suits your methods is important.

    • Third, consider how you output your data. Don’t use anything that can’t output to GEDCOM, which is the standard for all programs. A GEDCOM is a text-only file with the data formatted so that any other program can use it. This is important for comparing your research to others’, but that’s not the only output form for your work. For hard-copy output, think about what you want to create. The output can be simply data; whole books with pictures; or wall charts, a website, iron-on transfers, or even a giant mural for the next reunion. Look for a program that fits your output needs.

    • Fourth, look at the software package’s support, and ask friends what their experience was when they needed support. Read the manual to see how much support is included with the purchase price and for how long. Understand that within a year, the software (any software) will be upgraded. Find out whether upgrades are free or available for a minimal charge. A really good program may cost from $25 to $50 a year to keep it current; some shareware gives you upgrades for $5 or less. Also, ask at the next meeting of your local genealogy club whether anyone has the program you are interested in and is willing to help you with the learning curve.

    • Which brings us to the final consideration: the cost. When you find the program you want, can you afford it? If not, see whether the program comes in different versions—some less powerful but also less expensive than others. Sometimes, the cost includes CD-ROMs of secondary or primary material, but perhaps some of this material is available at your local library and you need not buy it.

An important development in the world of genealogy software since the last edition of this book is that Personal Ancestral File (PAF) is no more. As of July 2013, the popular and newbie-friendly program was discontinued by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), both in download and support. For several years up to that, as the online FamilySearch became more sophisticated, the software team at FamilySearch focused on building relationships with partner software companies to meet the needs of the twenty-first-century family historian. When most of those products both integrated with FamilySearch and have free versions, after a good, long run, PAF was retired.

The following sections provide a quick roundup of some popular programs that you can at least try for free, and these particular ones will sync your data with one or more online sites such as FamilySearch and Ancestry.com.

RootsMagic 6

This $30 program has worldwide fans: It has a function to create CDs to share with your family, to run the software and data directly from a portable flash drive, and to integrate a feature called WebSearch to help you pursue your genealogy online, especially with FamilySearch.

RootsMagic has five main views, plus a sidebar for easier navigation. You switch between the views by clicking the tab for the view you want. You can navigate using either the mouse or arrow keys. Double-clicking a person’s name brings up the data entry screen for that person. You can even open multiple databases side by side.

The RootsMagic edit screen lets you add an unlimited number of facts for every person (such as birth, death, marriage, occupation, religion, description, etc). The edit screen is shown in Figure 2-2. If you want to add a fact type that isn’t in RootsMagic’s predefined list, you create your own fact types. RootsMagic also allows notes and unlimited source citations for every fact, and you can attach more than one person to a source and more than one source to a fact. You can add, edit, delete, merge, and print the sources of your information.

FIGURE 2-2. RootsMagic’s edit screen lets you see facts about one person and include sources and proof.

Every piece of information on a person is available from the main screen: name, parent and spouse info, personal and family facts, DNA test results, alternate names, or LDS information. You can directly access the notes, sources, media, and more for every item.

Output format includes pedigree charts, family group sheets, four types of box charts, six styles of books, 27 different lists, mailing labels, calendars, hourglass trees, graphical timelines, relationship charts, letter-writing templates, individual summaries, five types of photo charts, and seven types of blank charts. Your database can be output into a pedigree chart with Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) links among the individuals in the genealogy.

If you import a GEDCOM and find it has some mistakes, you can correct them, but it can be tricky.

For example: I imported a GEDCOM with my grandmother’s family, BEEMAN. In my grandmother’s generation, some of her siblings were duplicated because of nicknames. This fix was easy: Simply click the merge sign in the toolbar, bring up both entries, and merge them into one.

But further back, there was a more complicated problem. My great-great-grandfather James Ivy Beeman had what today would be called a melded family: After the Civil War, he was widowed with two children. He married a woman named Sarah or Savannah Cross who was widowed with two children. This resulted in a mistake in which the two Cross children, John Wesley Cross, Jr. and Ransom Patrick Cross, were listed as the sons of James Ivy Beeman. Adding to the confusion is that John Wesley Cross, Sr., the father of these two, was not yet in the database. Then, Sarah and James Ivy had several children of their own.

The fix: First, click each of the children, then click Edit, and then click Unlink. Then add the person who is their father, John Wesley Cross, Sr. Then add the two children as his and Sarah’s. Simple!

I also like that when certain the family was correct, I was able to share the good data to FamilySearch with one click of the tree icon in the toolbar. Very handy!

Family Tree Maker

Family Tree Maker (www.familytreemaker.com) is Ancestry.com’s product now, and it is closely integrated with the website. You can use Ancestry.com and Family Tree Maker together to get the most out of both by importing your family tree and attached images from the website to the program or vice versa. From the Family Tree Maker program, you can search Ancestry.com and merge what you find into your tree. It also uses the Ancestry.com hints feature to suggest records that might match your data. I included this program in this brief list because Ancestry.com is so important to online genealogy, but this is the one program that does not have a try-before-you-buy policy as of this writing. You have to buy it to try it, which puts it at a real disadvantage in my mind; however, you probably can find a genealogy buddy or library that has a copy of the program you can test-drive.

You can scan documents and photographs and then organize your photos, document images, and other graphics into slideshows, books, and other formats as well (such as sound and movies). The source function has standard source templates to help you save the right information about a source and rate each source on how useful you found it.

Once you have your data in, you can view relationships within the context of your entire family tree, with timelines and interactive maps highlighting events and places in the lives of your family.

The user interface lets you quickly switch between important features and import data from any program that can produce a GEDCOM. It has tools for merging duplicate individuals, calculating dates, creating to-do lists, and more. It retails for $39.95 and requires at least Windows XP or Vista to run.

The Master Genealogist

The Master Genealogist (TMG) (www.whollygenes.com) does everything the previously mentioned programs will do, but more—it helps you organize your search. Cheryl Rothwell, who writes three genealogy blogs, said, “I have used TMG since before it was officially released. I don’t know how to do everything and I never will. There are some features I will just never need. But it is flexible enough to do what you want the way you want.” A screen shot is in Figure 2-3.

FIGURE 2-3. The Master Genealogist is the favorite of many long-time genealogists.

You can tie many more facts and historical context to your ancestors with TMG, as it is affectionately known, as well as output in almost any format you like. Mind you, it has a learning curve, and the program is written with professional genealogical standards in mind. That should not deter you, however. It comes with a tutorial and has much more flexibility than its easy-to-use competitors. It is designed to let the novice get started quickly and grow into the more advanced features. Wizards, “cue cards,” data-entry templates, ditto keys, macros, and other features make TMG easy to learn and use.

It is this flexibility that makes people feel that TMG is worth the effort to use. The program allows for an unlimited number of people, events per person, names per person, relationships, user-defined events, freeform text, photographs, citations, and repositories. You control the data. It also has features to help you track what you need to find and a to-do list of genealogy chores.

Referencing source data is TMG’s strongest point for the serious genealogist. Each entry provides space for documenting an unlimited number of citations, including a rating scale for their reliability, which is an important point. Newspaper articles, family bibles, and interviews with your relatives all have different reliability, which can be recorded with TMG.

For $40 for the Silver edition and $80 for the Gold, TMG is a popular program with experts in family history.

Heredis

Available for desktops, tablets, and smart phones, Heredis is fully revamped for 2014, and it is impressive. Very popular in Europe, it has versions for Mac, Windows, iPad, and iPhone. At about $50, it is a feature-full program with a great user interface. You can download a trial version at http://heredis.com.

What I like most about Heredis are the different views of a family. The Immediate Family tab displays all the members of the immediate family (parents, spouses, children, grandparents). One click, and you access the quick entry screen to add members (see Figure 2-4).

FIGURE 2-4. Heredis has an Immediate Family tab that makes it easy to enter and modify data.

New to this version is the Melded Family view: siblings, remarriage, stepchildren, stepbrothers and stepsisters, children from other unions of the different spouses, noting whether or not when they belong to the direct lineage. This makes situations such as I described earlier much clearer.

The Migrations Map is fascinating: Taking the location data, it displays a family’s movements on an interactive map, with numbered pins that display dates and events on mouse-over.

The Search Assistant shows the progress of the life a person, displays known or missing information, and highlights certain unexplored tracks. At a glance, you will know if a date or place is missing and what associated source, witnesses, media, or notes go with an event.

Finally, with this version, Heredis has launched an online presence to upload and backup your data, much along the lines of FamilySearch. You can search the trees uploaded there when you register for a free membership.

Consider the Surface Scratched

The short list presented thus far merely scratches the surface of available genealogy programs by presenting those that are arguably the most popular. For more options, consider these that are certified to work with the new LDS FamilySearch site:

    • Ancestral Quest

    • FamilyInsight

    • Gaia Family Tree

    • Get My Ancestors

    • Legacy Family Tree 8

    • MagiKey Family Tree

    • Ordinance Tracker

Also, go to Cyndi’s List (www.cyndislist.com/software.htm) and poke around a few websites. Go to local meetings of your genealogy club and ask for recommendations. Finally, use a search engine to find matches for “genealogy software” and your computer. Download some trial versions and check them out. Then you’ll be ready to choose.

Smart Phones and Tablets

Handheld web-enabled devices, netbook computers, and cell phones with e-mail access are becoming the standard. They all can offer you convenience when traveling, but cost will be a big factor. Sometimes, you might have issues with connectivity, depending on your data plan, and for those with far-sightedness, those tiny screens can be hard to see. Still, you might find some of these useful.

Tablets

Tablet computers have thoroughly replaced the old personal digital assistants of old. From Asus to Google to Apple, every company you ever heard of, and several you have not, now have taken over the small digital world.

    • GedStar for Android and iPad phones and tablets. The Windows version takes your data from Master Genealogist, Family Tree, RootsMagic or a GEDCOM and puts it on your smaller device or on an SD card to be inserted into your phone or tablet computer. This app has a nice interface. This program also lets you browse a GEDCOM (see the Glossary) and could be useful for trips to the library.

    • FamilyBee for Android was favorably reviewed by Dick Eastman. It stores your data on an SD card, which your desktop computer can probably also read.

    • Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.com, MyHeritage.com, and Genealogy.com all have a smart phone app as well as a tablet app. Genedroid is the app for Geni.com.

    • BillionGraves is an app for tombstone/cemetery transcription projects. Take a picture, upload it to the website, and help preserve cemetery data.

Additional Programs

There are other programs that are not, strictly speaking, genealogy programs. These include databases, journaling programs, and other, more mundane software, such as word-processing programs, that can be used to make your quest for family history easier. You may want to consider any combination of these.

Add-On Programs

A subset of genealogy programs work with your main database program such as Legacy or RootsMagic. Some help you search, some help you organize, some help you notate. Some to consider are

    • Catch is an app for keeping a diary of your research and posting it to the cloud with tags. It can be used for text, sound, and images, which all can be shared or protected by password as you choose.

    • Evernote can be used much as Catch, with the added ability to save the picture of a piece of paper as a searchable PDF document. Think of it as photocopying to your computer. With Evernote, you can upload to the cloud or keep it only on your device. If you search for “using Evernote for genealogy,” you will come up with several good articles on that topic by leading genealogists. The key is to use tags, not “notebooks,” to organize your gleanings. Evernote has a free version and a paid version with more storage space on the cloud.

    • Clooz is a $40 program to consolidate, index, analyze, and report document and image data. This Windows desktop program can help you gather, analyze, and validate clues and evidence about potential or suspected ancestors. It can export data to Legacy Family Tree software. At clooz.com, you can download a trial version.

    • GenSmarts (www.gensmarts.com) analyzes the data you have and develops a profile of your ancestors based on where and when they lived. This $25 program uses artificial intelligence to analyze your existing genealogy file and give you research recommendations. GenSmarts reads popular genealogy software file formats directly; no need to create a GEDCOM.

Database CD-ROMs

You’ll find that many records have been indexed and transcribed or scanned onto CD-ROMs. Some of these you can access at a local library; some you can order with software or by themselves; some are available from the Family History Centers. Census records available on CD-ROM include the U.S. federal census, various census records from Canada and the UK, Cherokee and African American census records, and a few local censuses. Cemetery records and death records from all over North America and the UK are available on CD-ROMs; so are parish records. Check out www.cyndislist.com/cd-roms.htm#Vendors for sources of these CD-ROMs.

Word-Processing Programs

Don’t overlook the lowly word processor as one of your genealogy tools. You can use it for journaling your genealogy quest, creating custom write-ups of your results, and even creating a book. You can use a word processor to create and track your to-do lists, write letters for vital records, and more.

As with your genealogy program, you need a word processor that can handle all of your chores, yet isn’t more trouble to use than it’s worth.

Maps

Sooner or later in tracing your genealogy, you’re going to need maps, and not just your handy 2014 road atlas. The boundary lines of cities, counties, states, and even countries have changed over the years; Kentucky used to be part of Virginia after all! A dictionary or index of place names is called a gazetteer. As I mentioned in Chapter 1, a hard copy is a handy thing to have, but you can use software and Internet versions, too.

E-mail

Reading mail is the biggest part of online life. Some of the best information, and even friendships, come through e-mail. Personally, I prefer to have all my e-mail in the cloud, and for that I use Gmail. But if you want to use Outlook, Thunderbird, or Eudora, they are all fine choices. Whichever way you go, use the features they all have to make your life easier.

Filters

A filter is an action you want the mail program to take when a message matches certain conditions. It can have your e-mail program reply to, copy, move, or destroy a message based on such things as the sender, the subject line, or the words found in the text. You can have the e-mail program do all that before you read your mail, or even before the e-mail is downloaded from the mail server. When you start getting involved in active mail lists, you’ll want to sort your mail by geography, surname, and time period, at least. Most e-mail programs and sites also come with built-in detectors for the unsolicited advertising e-mail and scams that circulate regularly.

Audio Resources

The Internet has become a broadcast medium, and shows originating thousands of miles from you can stream right down to your computer over the Internet. To listen, you need a good media player, whether it is Microsoft’s Windows Media Player, RealAudio, iTunes, or some other program. Most such programs have a free version and are usually easy to set up and use.

Viruses and Worms

No journey is without risk. Whenever you enter the wilds of cyberspace, that dreaded microorganism, the computer virus, might be lurking about. Not only that, but your activities could attract Trojan horses and worms, too, so keep a sharp eye out.

A virus is a program hidden on a disk or within a file that can damage your data or computer in some way. Some viruses simply display a message or a joke, while others can wipe out all the information you saved to the hard drive. Some simply reside and track your online activity; others hijack your computers’ memory to be used by someone elsewhere. Both will really slow your computer down. Therefore, I strongly recommend that you inoculate your computer before using any mode of electronic travel.

AVG Anti-Virus FREE and Ad-Aware Free Antivirus+ shared PC Magazine’s Editors’ Choice honors for the best free protection you can get.

Virus protection is good, but if you opt for a high-speed, continuous connection, such as digital subscriber line (DSL) or cable Internet, you also need a firewall to help protect you from hackers, Trojan horses, and worms. A firewall is a piece of software, hardware, or combination of both that forms an electronic boundary, preventing unauthorized access to a computer or network. It can also be a computer whose sole purpose is to act as a buffer between your main computer and the Internet. A firewall controls what goes out and what comes in according to how the user has it set up.

Examples of firewall programs are ZoneAlarm by Zone Labs, BlackICE Defender from NetworkICE, and Internet Security 2000 by Symantec Corp. A detailed description of how firewalls work can be found on Shields Up, a website devoted to broadband security created by programmer Steve Gibson, head of Gibson Research Corp. (www.grc.com) of Laguna Hills, California. Run the tests. You’ll be surprised.

Wrapping Up

    • You will probably wind up using both a desktop computer and some smaller device such as a laptop, tablet, or smart phone to run your computer software.

    • You will need a good, reliable ISP and Wi-Fi capabilities.

    • You will need a browser that can play podcasts, video files, and sound files and display most graphics files.

    • A genealogy program that can run on all the devices you have is a good thing.

    • Helper programs such as Evernote and Clooz can make research easier.

    • Get a reliable, free virus and malware protection program.

    • Ninite.com can help you download many of the programs you need with no malware, adware, or other software attached.

    • Back. Up. Your. Data.