Researching my Family Tree

I have been meaning to research my family tree for as long as I can remember; conversations with distant aunts at family gatherings, traipsing around the Port Fairy cemetery after my grandmothers funeral, and the inquisitiveness of grandparents unknown. My father and his sister grew up wards of the state and for many years we believed their parents had died in a car accident, but there was little information known.

So with some time on my hands over the Christmas break I decided to get started. I had some info from my mother and her brother to get me started on the maternal side and my sister had copies of birth certificates to help with the paternal side.

Software, Memberships and Free Research

First step was to find some recording software; in addition to having a tree to view, it’s become obvious that you need a way to tie all the info (and photos/documents) together cohesively. I chose to go the free option and downloaded the MyHeritage software. It is client software that runs on your machine and uploads the content to a website (it also performs backups to the website which has been very helpful).

It is linked into many of the online database and so will do “some” searching based on the information held in the client. It also has a Smart Matches feature that will try to link contents of your family tree with other family trees held by MyHeritage. This was very helpful initially, given a few trees built be distant cousins. However, I soon found the free software limited and I needed to upgrade to the premium offering to be able to look into other trees. I learned very quickly that there’s no such thing as free in the world of genealogy.

Many of the searches led to ancestry.com-based websites. It seems this is the premier site for online research, having access to a far larger set of online databases than MyHeritage. Again you can create a family tree with a free account, but as soon as you want to do any research you have to pay (and it’s expensive).

My theory is, as with many things I do, I’ll have this great burst of enthusiasm at the start which will fade in a few months. Also, genealogy seems to be one of those areas where you can develop a solid base of information early on and then pursue specific details after that. Once you have scoured the common databases and determined names, families, birth/marriage/death dates, locations and migrations there is little use for them. From thereon it’s specific research by visiting specific sources (online and physical).

So paying for access to the common resources for 6 or 12 months seems a waste. The ancestry.com site has a “pay as you go” option where you pay for 10 credits (at $10.95) and use the credits to view/download/attach documents and references. This seems to have been a good way to go.

I’ve also found that my State Library has free access to the Ancestry Online Library edition. I don’t think it has access to everything that full membership does, but combined with the library’s other resources (such as the births, deaths and marriages indexes for all states) makes a few hours in the library as productive (and much cheaper) than some online researching.

I’m still tossing up whether the cleint-based MyHeritage or web-based Ancestry.com.au is a better approach. Having client code means you can only update from the machine the client is on (i.e. at home, shared with the kids) whereas online is far more flexible. The Ancestry site has better linking of documents/photos found through their site. Both do a good job of merging information. Both do a good job of displaying info online; the MyHeritge tree view is easier to navigate.

The two sites are:

• http://davidandlisaedwards.myheritage.com/, and
• http://trees.ancestry.com.au/tree/14387951 (may not be publicly visible)

It won’t be long before I get sick of maintaining both sets of info.

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