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I started out using Ancestry's web-only approach but once I really got going on my family history (i.e. < 1800AD) I quickly hit the limits of what the web UI wa

I started out using Ancestry's web-only approach but once I really got going on my family history (i.e. < 1800AD) I quickly hit the limits of what the web UI was offering. Many others hit this wall as well, and that is why there is cheap desktop software, Family Tree Maker, that integrates seamlessly with the online web UI. My entire tree (~4.5gb) lives offline on my Mac, is backed up with Arq and is two-way sync'd to Ancestry's online version. Of all the providers out there that have "data lock-in", I really don't consider Ancestry one of them. If you really care about your data, keep the copy-of-record on your computer. If Ancestry's online service ever folds, your official copy will keep working perfectly. This isn't the same thing as replacing a social network service, but the actual trees do capture comments, stories, submissions, etc. from other users.

jerf 12y ago
How is the data stored? Can anything else read that data? Having a local copy is better than not, especially one you can back up, but in 50 years it won't help much if the format is too difficult for anything else to read. (Honest question, though. I don't have this software, so I don't know.)
- jamroom 12y ago
  You can export to / import from GEDCOM: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEDCOM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEDCOM which is a well know standard in the genealogy world.
  - _kst_ 12y ago
    Yes, but how much of the information actually shows up in the GEDCOM file?
    - apaprocki 12y ago
      GEDCOM is "good enough" to get out of the software for most things. I think you can export pretty much everything into some kind of readable format, but the multimedia aspects of it aren't necessarily captured by GEDCOM. You have all the pictures and things there as well, but I don't think every single link will wind up in the generated file. Maybe things have changed a little -- I just haven't had much need to export into GEDCOM.
Raphmedia 12y ago
> (i.e. < 1800AD) Now this is impressive. How did you get back that far? I've trouble finding out who my great-great-grandparents were.
- briandh 12y ago
  (Not the person you were asking) It depends on your heritage (I am of northwestern European and American descent, so my records are very good) but Ancestry makes it very easy, to their credit. A few minutes after you've added a new family member, Ancestry begins suggesting historical records and public trees (I try to avoid relying on the latter) that may reveal additional information about them, including who their family members are. You then mark which information to import. So essentially you would start by inputting the family history you know, and then let Ancestry start making suggestions. It still takes plenty of manual intervention but I've taken their suggestions back to the 1500s in some cases.
- apaprocki 12y ago
  Basically anyone who ever set foot in the U.S. is 99.9% guaranteed to be found electronically now. That will take you to where they came from and in most cases that original generation will be known. Since people did not travel much (as we know it today), chances are they are mostly from that place , wherever it is, for some time back. Thanks to Napoleon (you don't thank him much, do you?), standard records have been kept across at least Europe back to their inception in ~1810. Prior to that, records devolve into individual church parishes and are mostly in Latin. It is super easy to pick up the Napoleonic civil record format in any language. I never could quite grasp the hand-written ink-well pen Latin records of the late 1700s so I don't know how much further back I will be able to go. I do have to give a special shout-out to the Polish national archives as well as the U.S. National Archives people in Maryland. I was able to deal with the Poles entirely online and request hundreds of records which they reproduced for a reasonable fee in a short time. The U.S. archives also went out of their way to help me. Hell, even the FBI FOIA process worked well and gave me a valuable dossier. The one awesome lead that let me down was the NYPD FOIL request I made. A relative many generations back ran with Al Capone when he was in Brooklyn and was gunned down. The NYPD never caught the killer and supposedly had a hat left at the scene and other evidence. Murder investigations are kept indefinitely so they should still have it in some warehouse somewhere, but they couldn't find it after searching for it manually. (Digitize all the things, people!)

jerf 12y ago

How is the data stored? Can anything else read that data? Having a local copy is better than not, especially one you can back up, but in 50 years it won't help much if the format is too difficult for anything else to read. (Honest question, though. I don't have this software, so I don't know.)

jamroom 12y ago
You can export to / import from GEDCOM: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEDCOM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEDCOM which is a well know standard in the genealogy world.
- _kst_ 12y ago
  Yes, but how much of the information actually shows up in the GEDCOM file?
  - apaprocki 12y ago
    GEDCOM is "good enough" to get out of the software for most things. I think you can export pretty much everything into some kind of readable format, but the multimedia aspects of it aren't necessarily captured by GEDCOM. You have all the pictures and things there as well, but I don't think every single link will wind up in the generated file. Maybe things have changed a little -- I just haven't had much need to export into GEDCOM.

Raphmedia 12y ago

> (i.e. < 1800AD) Now this is impressive. How did you get back that far? I've trouble finding out who my great-great-grandparents were.

briandh 12y ago
(Not the person you were asking) It depends on your heritage (I am of northwestern European and American descent, so my records are very good) but Ancestry makes it very easy, to their credit. A few minutes after you've added a new family member, Ancestry begins suggesting historical records and public trees (I try to avoid relying on the latter) that may reveal additional information about them, including who their family members are. You then mark which information to import. So essentially you would start by inputting the family history you know, and then let Ancestry start making suggestions. It still takes plenty of manual intervention but I've taken their suggestions back to the 1500s in some cases.
apaprocki 12y ago
Basically anyone who ever set foot in the U.S. is 99.9% guaranteed to be found electronically now. That will take you to where they came from and in most cases that original generation will be known. Since people did not travel much (as we know it today), chances are they are mostly from that place , wherever it is, for some time back. Thanks to Napoleon (you don't thank him much, do you?), standard records have been kept across at least Europe back to their inception in ~1810. Prior to that, records devolve into individual church parishes and are mostly in Latin. It is super easy to pick up the Napoleonic civil record format in any language. I never could quite grasp the hand-written ink-well pen Latin records of the late 1700s so I don't know how much further back I will be able to go. I do have to give a special shout-out to the Polish national archives as well as the U.S. National Archives people in Maryland. I was able to deal with the Poles entirely online and request hundreds of records which they reproduced for a reasonable fee in a short time. The U.S. archives also went out of their way to help me. Hell, even the FBI FOIA process worked well and gave me a valuable dossier. The one awesome lead that let me down was the NYPD FOIL request I made. A relative many generations back ran with Al Capone when he was in Brooklyn and was gunned down. The NYPD never caught the killer and supposedly had a hat left at the scene and other evidence. Murder investigations are kept indefinitely so they should still have it in some warehouse somewhere, but they couldn't find it after searching for it manually. (Digitize all the things, people!)