GenealogyClassBlog

Most of my students know that I don’t use Windows at home. Mine is primarily a Macintosh household. To keep track of various genealogy research, from personal to client work, I use Reunion, which is only available for the Macintosh. I do have a dream to be able to spend hours trying out various genealogy software packages so that I can answer questions and possibly make recommendations about particular genealogy software packages. But, the amount of time spent on each different software program would be considerable and I just do not have that kind of time.

There aren’t too many people that would have that opportunity, or who would bother to take the time, but Richard Eastman does. He keeps his eye out for new developments and reviews new products and upgraded versions in his online newsletter. In his June 17 Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter, he provided a list of twelve genealogy software programs for Windows. Each of the listings includes a brief description, the producer, distinctive features or attributes, the selling price, and the link to the producer’s website. To introduce the list, Dick says,

“The following is a list of all the more popular genealogy programs that I know of that are actively being marketed for Windows users in North Americas. In fact, more than one hundred genealogy programs have been offered to Windows users over the years and a handful of them are still available for purchase today. However, not all of them are being actively developed and supported. For this list, I will focus only on the products that are current and still have developers writing updates, bug fixes, and new releases.”

The list includes, in alphabetical order:

Ancestral Quest
Branches
Brothers Keeper
Family Historian
Family Tree Builder
Family Tree Maker
GRAMPS
Legacy Family Tree
The Master Genealogist
My Blood
Osk
Roots Magic and Roots Magic Essentials

Dick also writes,

“The above is NOT a complete list of all Windows genealogy programs. A complete list would fill perhaps 30 or 40 pages! Instead, the above is a list of the more popular Windows genealogy programs sold in North America. Several of them are produced in other countries, however.”

In a few cases, Dick has provided links to interviews with the developers of the programs. A few of the above programs are also available for Macintosh and/or Linux.

Dick is a great source of this kind of information, because he actually buys and tests out genealogy programs on his PCs and on his Macs. Visit, or better yet subscribe to http://blog.eogn.com to receive a daily email newsletter. Read what Dick has to say about genealogy software, websites, events, television shows, or about related equipment (from cameras to the iPad). To find earlier articles, use the search box on his site (search for the word, “Macintosh,” for example), or click one of the category links in the list on the right-hand side of any of his web pages.

Last July I presented a program for the Tulsa City-County Library on organization called, “Information Overload: Organizing Your Genealogy Records.” It was very well attended. Many people struggle with the mountains of paperwork, photos, computer files, and notes that we produce as we search for our ancestors, and so the topic is a popular one.

The Tulsa Genealogical Society has asked me to present a program on organizing, with a special emphasis on the paper records. I am scheduled for their March meeting, Monday, 15 March. Janet Cottrell teaches a free beginners class beginning at 6:00, and the meeting is from 7:00 to 9:00.

The monthly meetings are held the third Monday of the month (September through May), at the TGS Library, located in the southeast corner of the Briar Village Shopping Center, in a suite of offices behind what was once a Price Mart. Meetings are free and open to the public.

The address is 9162 E. 31st St. TGS has a web site: www.tulsalibrary.org.

Berwangen, Baden, Germany

I have been teaching myself to research using German genealogy resources for a while now. I have also been trying to learn to speak a little German and have learned to read some of the old Gothic print that was used in pre-World War II records. I have located and studied parish registers for Berwangen, the small town in Baden where my great-great-grandfather, John George (or Johan Georg) Mayer was christened in 1826. The parish registers were microfilmed by the Genealogical Society of Utah in 1978 and 1982, and so I have accessed them through the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, by way of the New Haven Family History Center.

There are three Family History Centers in Tulsa now — two in churches of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a new one at the Genealogy Center. While anyone can order genealogical records on microfilm for a reasonable price through any of the three, the Genealogy Center has also been collecting German resources in print which anyone can use to help locate small towns like Berwangen. The location of the records is closely tied to the place where your ancestor lived. I have learned to use both the multi-volume resource, Map Guide to German Parish Registers, a great new resource, and Meyers Orts- und Verkehrs-Lexikon des Deutschen Reichs, an important resource written in German, which was first published in 1913, and I’d like to explain the process of using both of these to anyone else who is interested.

Last spring I visited Berwangen. Although I didn’t actually do any genealogy research while in Germany, we met some wonderful people. The day that my daughter and I spent in Berwangen was the best day of our two-week trip around Europe. Before the trip, I learned to use maps on Google and while there we took pictures and video. Now that I have been there, I am anxious to learn more about the history of my ancestors in this town.

The Genealogy Center is located at 2910 S. Harvard in Tulsa. The free program will be in the Harmon Foundation Meeting Room from 2:00 – 3:30. I hope to see you there.

I used this post to see whether I would be able to put up a link to a map I had made with Google Maps. The map is one I created a year ago as I was planning my first trip to Europe. I used the markers to keep track of the places as I located them. Berwangen is the small town that I wanted to visit. It was the home of my great-great-grandfather, Johan Georg Mayer before he came to the United States in 1853. He was christened in the church there in 1826.

View Germany in a larger map

After posting, I tried editing my Google Map by adding a red place marker for Ittlingen, which I just last week learned was the home of one of Kathy Huber’s German ancestors. Kathy Huber is the Genealogy Librarian at the Genealogy Center in Tulsa. I still can’t believe how close her little German town was to my little German town.

As for my test — the red place marker now appears on the posted map, so the above link to the “Germany” map will take you to the latest version of the Germany map, even as I make changes to it in the future. Pretty cool.

Bartlett-Carnegie Sapulpa Public Library Drawing by Russell Crosby

My topic will be “How To Be a Power Hitter: Improve Your Online Searching Skills,” one which is designed to help genealogists work around common problems found in indexes.

View Larger Map

The group meets in Frank Hall — a meeting room on the lower level of the Bartlett-Carnegie Sapulpa Public Library, 27 West Dewey Avenue, in downtown Sapulpa. Meetings begin at 10:00 a.m. and are open to the public.