While I was home for Thanksgiving my mom got out some family trees that one of her aunts had put together in the 80's. It was fascinating to see the a small portion of where my family came from and it actually has me looking into geneology software for the mac. From what I've read the best program out there is Reunion, which has all the features and costs $100. There are less expensive ones, but they haven't gotten nearly as much positive feedback. I downloaded a demo and played with it and the program's pretty easy to use.
So I think that I'm going to buy the program and get into charting my ancestors. I wish I'd started this 5-10 years ago when my grandmother and her sister were still alive so that I could get their stories and input, but I guess better late than never.
Oh, and I learned something interesting looking over that family tree. Apparently I'm descended from kissing cousins! My great, great grandparents (mom's dad's dad's dad & wife) were first cousins. And (before the southern jokes come flooding in), this was before anyone immigrated, back in Germay. We don't know whether it was a due to lack of jewish spouses available or if it had to do with family money or property, or if perhaps they were just in love (awww). But it's pretty funny nonetheless.
Comments
I use Family Tree Maker, and having literally hundreds of people in it already, I am sort of wedded to it. Also, it has a feature that allows you to join a rather large online tree and find even more connections. I would say that a feature allowing changes is important to consider. If you add someone and need to delete them or if you have to merge branches because you made one twice it is nice not to have to redo whole segments.
As for the cousins, first cousins marrying is sort of unusual. It was common for more distant cousins to marry back in the day because they knew the family and generally there was a lack of available spouses.
Posted by: Ben | November 29, 2005 08:23 AM
Family Tree Maker, though popular, isn't available for Macs. Also, I read somewhere that Family Tree Maker was designed based on an earlier version of Reunion.
Reunion does seem to be pretty readily editable as far as things go. And like I said, of the Mac programs it seems to be the best.
Posted by: Daniel | November 29, 2005 02:45 PM