Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
This is a bit off the OP, but what especially do you like about Legacy?
The poster had concerns about Ancestry.com and privacy, which is one of the things I addressed.
I like Legacy because it is continually updated, it is very user friendly, it allows me to compile information in a large variety of reports. Data entry is easy and can be adjusted for you personally.
In speaking with professional genealogists, many of them prefer Legacy also.
If you allow someone to add photos, comments, etc. to your tree and want to later edit or delete them, how do you discern what they added versus what you created before that. Do their written additions look differently than yours?
When something "extra" is added to your tree (an image, a story, a comment) it's marked with an "added by _____" (whatever the user name is). It looks the same, but it has that marking. It will, even if you add it yourself.
What in your opinion makes one program better than another? What would you want in a program? This from a person that has only used paper charts where you enter the name, date of birth, date of death, and other basic information. I have yet to purchase a program my self.
Gosh. I could go on for pages and pages about what I look for, and what makes the program I chose (TMG) the best. I'll try not to, though.
But first off, I have to say that everyone needs to determine those things for themselves. What you want out of it, and how much time you put into it are also things that factor in. Don't use anything that can't create a GEDCOM (though that's a dead program ... but still the best universal one).
Also, I made my determination about this program back when choices were pretty abysmal. This was the first of the new generation of genealogy programs. Others have tried to incorporate what it does, and so have become better themselves. But still, I think not as good. And my loyalty lies with the original, not the copiers.
I am VERY serious about genealogy. So I wanted a program that would do it all. First and foremost, I wanted a program that I could adequately cite my sources with. Many programs allow you to enter the vitals (birth, marriage, death) and then give you a memo field where you can record the extras. With TMG, each event in a person's life can be entered separately, and a source (or sources) attached to that event. Each "event" has a memo field. So take for instance a marriage record. I record the date and place of the marriage, and in the memo field I enter the exact wording from the newspaper account of the marriage. And, I attach a graphic image of that newspaper account to the event. That event record has the bride and the groom attached to it, and anyone else who might be pertinent (who are called witnesses). Say the bondsman, the minister, the flower girl (each of whom can have a "role" in the event, with a canned sentence for the output). So I only have to enter one record of the event. On the bride it says "Jane was married to Jack on January 1, 1900 at the old brick church on Main Street ..." Jack's record says "Jack married Jane at the old brick church on January 1, 1900 ..." The minister says "On January 1, 1900 Rev. Smith performed the marriage of Jane to Jack at the old brick church ..." and the flowergirl's says "When she was six Mary was the flowergirl for the marriage of her oldest sister Jane to Jack" .... all with different wording, but using the same bits of information (the date, place). Now, that takes a lot of work to get it to do it, but for me it's worth the effort. It means I can call up a report, and have it spit out a readable, publish-ready book, that doesn't have stilted, canned sentences. That has footnotes (or endnotes), and has the images inserted (or not).
It is a program that caused me to do my genealogy differently, and much, much better, because it was capable of recording everything and anything I found. I usually refer to it as, the old programs (and the paper) were the skeletons of a person. A program like TMG allows you to put meat on the bones of each person. It makes me look for records other than just the ones that ancestor is named in. I had someone who died in a Civil War prison. So I found all the records I could about the prison itself, the description, images of it, a diary of a man incarcerated about the same time, looked up the illness he died of and how it manifested itself and added that all to my ancestor's records. I found descriptions, and photos of the land he lived on. It made this ancestor's very short life come alive, where before all I knew (or recorded) was that he was born, he married, he fathered children, and died. I can attach two people who were never married (regardless of their sexes), but had a "marriage-like" relationship, and describe it as such. I created my own tag (which I can do) which I call "alliance." Many programs automatically assume a marriage, if a child resulted. TMG doesn't.
TMG then presents this all to me (on my screen) in chronological order, all the events of their life (including the births of children). I'm looking at a record on my screen (that I was going to print off and include, but it's much too long). From the time of his marriage in 1619, there is not more than a 3 year gap that I don't have record of something occurring in his life, until his death in 1662. There are 31 events.
I think we're creatures of habit. Give us a form with blanks on it, and we want to fill it in. And that's it. A good genealogy program has no blanks ... you can add whatever and anything you want.
Gosh. I could go on for pages and pages about what I look for, and what makes the program I chose (TMG) the best. I'll try not to, though.
But first off, I have to say that everyone needs to determine those things for themselves. What you want out of it, and how much time you put into it are also things that factor in. Don't use anything that can't create a GEDCOM (though that's a dead program ... but still the best universal one).
Also, I made my determination about this program back when choices were pretty abysmal. This was the first of the new generation of genealogy programs. Others have tried to incorporate what it does, and so have become better themselves. But still, I think not as good. And my loyalty lies with the original, not the copiers.
I am VERY serious about genealogy. So I wanted a program that would do it all. First and foremost, I wanted a program that I could adequately cite my sources with. Many programs allow you to enter the vitals (birth, marriage, death) and then give you a memo field where you can record the extras. With TMG, each event in a person's life can be entered separately, and a source (or sources) attached to that event. Each "event" has a memo field. So take for instance a marriage record. I record the date and place of the marriage, and in the memo field I enter the exact wording from the newspaper account of the marriage. And, I attach a graphic image of that newspaper account to the event. That event record has the bride and the groom attached to it, and anyone else who might be pertinent (who are called witnesses). Say the bondsman, the minister, the flower girl (each of whom can have a "role" in the event, with a canned sentence for the output). So I only have to enter one record of the event. On the bride it says "Jane was married to Jack on January 1, 1900 at the old brick church on Main Street ..." Jack's record says "Jack married Jane at the old brick church on January 1, 1900 ..." The minister says "On January 1, 1900 Rev. Smith performed the marriage of Jane to Jack at the old brick church ..." and the flowergirl's says "When she was six Mary was the flowergirl for the marriage of her oldest sister Jane to Jack" .... all with different wording, but using the same bits of information (the date, place). Now, that takes a lot of work to get it to do it, but for me it's worth the effort. It means I can call up a report, and have it spit out a readable, publish-ready book, that doesn't have stilted, canned sentences. That has footnotes (or endnotes), and has the images inserted (or not).
It is a program that caused me to do my genealogy differently, and much, much better, because it was capable of recording everything and anything I found. I usually refer to it as, the old programs (and the paper) were the skeletons of a person. A program like TMG allows you to put meat on the bones of each person. It makes me look for records other than just the ones that ancestor is named in. I had someone who died in a Civil War prison. So I found all the records I could about the prison itself, the description, images of it, a diary of a man incarcerated about the same time, looked up the illness he died of and how it manifested itself and added that all to my ancestor's records. I found descriptions, and photos of the land he lived on. It made this ancestor's very short life come alive, where before all I knew (or recorded) was that he was born, he married, he fathered children, and died. I can attach two people who were never married (regardless of their sexes), but had a "marriage-like" relationship, and describe it as such. I created my own tag (which I can do) which I call "alliance." Many programs automatically assume a marriage, if a child resulted. TMG doesn't.
TMG then presents this all to me (on my screen) in chronological order, all the events of their life (including the births of children). I'm looking at a record on my screen (that I was going to print off and include, but it's much too long). From the time of his marriage in 1619, there is not more than a 3 year gap that I don't have record of something occurring in his life, until his death in 1662. There are 31 events.
I think we're creatures of habit. Give us a form with blanks on it, and we want to fill it in. And that's it. A good genealogy program has no blanks ... you can add whatever and anything you want.
Just wanted to post that I just upgraded to the 2012 version of Family Tree Maker. It's not a huge difference over last year's version, but the ability to sync with my tree on ancestry.com is a very nice bonus for me.
Gosh. I could go on for pages and pages about what I look for, and what makes the program I chose (TMG) the best. I'll try not to, though.
But first off, I have to say that everyone needs to determine those things for themselves. What you want out of it, and how much time you put into it are also things that factor in. Don't use anything that can't create a GEDCOM (though that's a dead program ... but still the best universal one).
Also, I made my determination about this program back when choices were pretty abysmal. This was the first of the new generation of genealogy programs. Others have tried to incorporate what it does, and so have become better themselves. But still, I think not as good. And my loyalty lies with the original, not the copiers.
I am VERY serious about genealogy. So I wanted a program that would do it all. First and foremost, I wanted a program that I could adequately cite my sources with. Many programs allow you to enter the vitals (birth, marriage, death) and then give you a memo field where you can record the extras. With TMG, each event in a person's life can be entered separately, and a source (or sources) attached to that event. Each "event" has a memo field. So take for instance a marriage record. I record the date and place of the marriage, and in the memo field I enter the exact wording from the newspaper account of the marriage. And, I attach a graphic image of that newspaper account to the event. That event record has the bride and the groom attached to it, and anyone else who might be pertinent (who are called witnesses). Say the bondsman, the minister, the flower girl (each of whom can have a "role" in the event, with a canned sentence for the output). So I only have to enter one record of the event. On the bride it says "Jane was married to Jack on January 1, 1900 at the old brick church on Main Street ..." Jack's record says "Jack married Jane at the old brick church on January 1, 1900 ..." The minister says "On January 1, 1900 Rev. Smith performed the marriage of Jane to Jack at the old brick church ..." and the flowergirl's says "When she was six Mary was the flowergirl for the marriage of her oldest sister Jane to Jack" .... all with different wording, but using the same bits of information (the date, place). Now, that takes a lot of work to get it to do it, but for me it's worth the effort. It means I can call up a report, and have it spit out a readable, publish-ready book, that doesn't have stilted, canned sentences. That has footnotes (or endnotes), and has the images inserted (or not).
It is a program that caused me to do my genealogy differently, and much, much better, because it was capable of recording everything and anything I found. I usually refer to it as, the old programs (and the paper) were the skeletons of a person. A program like TMG allows you to put meat on the bones of each person. It makes me look for records other than just the ones that ancestor is named in. I had someone who died in a Civil War prison. So I found all the records I could about the prison itself, the description, images of it, a diary of a man incarcerated about the same time, looked up the illness he died of and how it manifested itself and added that all to my ancestor's records. I found descriptions, and photos of the land he lived on. It made this ancestor's very short life come alive, where before all I knew (or recorded) was that he was born, he married, he fathered children, and died. I can attach two people who were never married (regardless of their sexes), but had a "marriage-like" relationship, and describe it as such. I created my own tag (which I can do) which I call "alliance." Many programs automatically assume a marriage, if a child resulted. TMG doesn't.
TMG then presents this all to me (on my screen) in chronological order, all the events of their life (including the births of children). I'm looking at a record on my screen (that I was going to print off and include, but it's much too long). From the time of his marriage in 1619, there is not more than a 3 year gap that I don't have record of something occurring in his life, until his death in 1662. There are 31 events.
I think we're creatures of habit. Give us a form with blanks on it, and we want to fill it in. And that's it. A good genealogy program has no blanks ... you can add whatever and anything you want.
Tried to rep you again, but it's too soon.
RootsMagic works much the same way with the documentation.
I envy you the detail you have found on some of your ancestors. I do not expect to find it on many of mine, though I keep trying.
I never expected to get into it as deeply as I have, so I was negligent with documentation at first. I am better now.
I do have one ancestor for whom a cousin sent me wonderful family pictures.. He was a POW at Camp Douglas in IL in the Civil War. It was interesting to read about conditions there, and I found a book with photos. He allegedly returned home when he was released, ordered his clothing burned, and shaved every hair on his body (lice, you know ). It is fun to see him later, with full beard, and speculate what he looked like with no hair.
I found church records for one set of several times great grandparents. They were kicked out. She was let back in. He was not. After he died, estate records showed the widow paid for whisky on a regular basis!
Estate records are fascinating. The things they owned say so much.
So I, too, find it fun to get past the names and dates to the nitty gritty of their everyday lives.
I have not been very diligent with looking at the geography. That is a future project.
I do need to go back and clean up my tree and fix the documentation. Do you have any suggestions on the best way to do that? Record by record, or start a new tree and migrate the records over and clean them up? It seems the latter would be the best way to know who you have revised and cleaned up.
It's hard to say. When I moved into TMG, it was from really basic programs that didn't allow any documentation at all. So at that point, I did choose to go back through everything and re-enter it, sourcing everything as I went. It took years for me to do.
One of the nice things that TMG does (not sure about Roots Magic ... which is a fine program, one of those that modeled themselves upon TMG) is to allow me to set "flags" - which can be for pretty much anything. One that I do set from time to time is one for "Needs edit." I can then have those people whose "needs edit" flag is set to "yes" to appear in a different color. That way, I can easily pick them out of the list, and work my way through editing them, or doing further research on them.
If Roots Magic will do something similar, that'd be a good way to handle it, without doing all that re-entry.
It's hard to say. When I moved into TMG, it was from really basic programs that didn't allow any documentation at all. So at that point, I did choose to go back through everything and re-enter it, sourcing everything as I went. It took years for me to do.
One of the nice things that TMG does (not sure about Roots Magic ... which is a fine program, one of those that modeled themselves upon TMG) is to allow me to set "flags" - which can be for pretty much anything. One that I do set from time to time is one for "Needs edit." I can then have those people whose "needs edit" flag is set to "yes" to appear in a different color. That way, I can easily pick them out of the list, and work my way through editing them, or doing further research on them.
If Roots Magic will do something similar, that'd be a good way to handle it, without doing all that re-entry.
I think it will do that. Many thanks!
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Wonderful Information
I am better now.
). It is fun to see him later, with full beard, and speculate what he looked like with no hair.
