Family Tree Maker 4.0

by William LaMartin, Editor,
Tampa PC Users Group

I have been using Family Tree Maker from Banner Blue, which is now a division of Broderbund, since it was a DOS program only. I remember when it could either not export or not import GEDCOMs—a fairly important feature to be omitted. It was simply a special use database for entering genealogical data. It provided for printing some nice descendant and ancestor charts, but that was about it. As I recall, there was no way to enter extended notes and information about an individual--or perhaps you just couldn't paste it into the program--since it was not a Windows program. I recall that I was so frustrated with this shortcoming and their reluctance to produce a Windows version that I set out to write a Windows genealogical program using Visual Basic. I was making good progress along these lines when Banner Blue produced their first Windows version and called it Family Tree Maker for Windows. Since this program did everything I needed, I discontinued work on my program and bought into the Banner Blue scheme of things.

Family tree maker was not and still is not the only genealogical program, but to me they seemed to be proceeding more in the direction I thought such programs should go than was the competition. And as I have watched them add new features with each upgrade I bought over the years, I still feel as though they have the premier genealogical database program. I believe that I have missed only one upgrade.

What is new to me in this version, but possibly not to those who had the immediately preceeding version, is the new report called a genealogy report, the ability to create a book, a Sources database, and a direct link to the Family Tree Internet site. Below is a listing of Family Tree Maker’s features for different versions. As you can see, they are about to come out with a new version, 4.4. It is due in late February. My version 4.0 seems equivalent to the 4.4 Standard Edition III, with the exception that I only have two CDs. They are the Family Finder Index. The Family Finder Index, by the way, can also be found online at the Family Tree Web site, http://www.familytreemaker.com.

 As I said earlier, Family Tree Maker is a specialized database for recording your family members, their places and dates of birth, death, marriage, etc. You may include brief additional facts or extensive notes. You may create an additional Source database which will track your sources of information. Additionally, you may include photos or medical histories of individuals. You may import data from or export data to other genealogical programs as a GEDCOM. And, as with any database, you have your reports.

For an individual, these reports may take the form of:

• Ancestor and Descendant trees in twelve styles, including fan trees, with your choice of contents and size
• Outline Descendant Tree
• Genealogy reports, such as Register, NGS Quarterly, and Ahnentafel, automatically create narrative family histories, complete with names, dates, notes, sources, and more
• Kinship Reports showing how individuals in your file are related
• Family Group Sheets and individual fact sheets
• Book
• Multimedia Scrapbook images

You may also print out a calendar with the important dates for all the individuals in your database noted on the calendar . I didn’t find the Book feature of much use, since the items you may add to it were very limited, as best I could tell. I do use the outline Descendant Tree quite often when I want to send someone a brief sketch of a particular line I am interested in to see if they might have information of interest. An abbreviated example of such a report is as follows

Descendants of Thomas Blount, Jr.

1 Thomas Blount, Jr. 1687 - 1729 b: 1687 in Perquimans Precinct, Albermarle Co., N. C. d: 1729
.... +Anne Elizabeth Reading
..... 2 John Blount Abt. 1715 - Abt. 1765 b: Abt. 1715 in Beaufort Precinct, Bath Co., N. C. d: Abt. 1765 in Beaufort Precinct, Bath. Co., N. C.
........... +Martha Lewis
............ 3 Jacob Blount Abt. 1740 - b: Abt. 1740 in Beaufort County, North Carolina
.................. +Martha
................... 4 James Blount Abt. 1760 - b: Abt. 1760 in Beaufort County, North Carolina
......................... +Martha Radford Spears
.......................... 5 John Churchill Golding Readding Blount 1791 - 1879 b: March 12, 1791 in Auusta, Georgia d: February 22, 1879 Bartow, Florida
................................ +Elizabeth Varn 1796 - 1861 b: April 22, 1796 in Beaufort District, South Carolina d: October 12, 1861 Tampa, Florida

Of course, you may maintain more than one family tree database. You could, for example, have separate ones for your wife's ancestors and your ancestors.

In my opinion, the WWW is revolutionizing how genealogy is done. As individuals research their family history, many are posting that information to the WWW, either to personal Web sites, other genealogical sites, or to the Family Tree Maker site.

As an example of the free online search of the Family Finder Index, here is a small selection of the information returned on my surname, LaMartin.

The Robert Lamartin listed is my father, and the listing comes from the Social Security records of individuals who died between 1936 and 1995. If I either buy this CD from Family Tree Maker (they have loads of genealogically related CDs for sale, having bought the Family Archive CDs several years back and continuing to add to their collection) or go to our local public library and view it, I will find the following information about my father.

• The individual's name and Soundex code
• Dates of birth and death
• Social Security number and state where it was issued
• State of residence at death
• ZIP CODE of last known residence and the primary location it is associated with (77% of the time)
• ZIP CODE of the address where the death benefit payment was sent and the primary location associated with it (15% of the time)

With Family Tree Maker 3.4 or later, for free you can go online and create your own Web page at the Family Tree Maker site. It can include text, up to five reports from your Family Tree Maker file and, with Family Tree Maker 4.0, a box-style InterneTree^TM using Java technology. Others will, then, have the ability to search the Family Tree Maker site using the Internet Family Finder for surnames that interest them. If such a surname is on your home page—or any other place on the Internet that has been indexed by the Internet Family Finder— it will be found, and the interested individual may then contact you or anyone else who has placed that information there.

Of course, as with all genealogy, the information you find at such sites may be incorrect and totally misleading. The computer with the Internet gives us a powerful tool in our quest for information about our ancestors. It allows us to easily share such information with interested parties. And, unfortunately, it allows us to post to the entire Web connected world incorrect information we have either created ourselves or copied from others. u