BEGINNING LESSON #1 Birth Records as Primary Evidence WELCOME to the wonderful world of family history! They tend to call it that sometimes since "genealogy" sounds so formal. Whatever we decide to call it, we're going to have fun this year learning how to discover your roots. Indeed, Alex Hailey stirred up a lot of interest in the subject with his famous television mini-series called ROOTS. One of the first concepts to grasp is the idea of STARTING WITH YOURSELF and working backwards in time. This is opposed to taking your surname (last name at birth) and finding an original immigrant, and trying to trace through his descendants until you connect to your parents. The second choice of action simply is not an option. Your great-great grandparents can have over 1,000 descendants. Complicate that with a name like Smith or Jones, and you have a real headache brewing. THIS WEEK: Your assignment is to get a copy of your birth certificate, proving your parentage. While you are at it, gather ANY other family history type documents together so we can begin to discuss and organize them. This will work except for cases of adoptions, where the original birth record was altered to reflect the adoptive parents. Adoptees will have another row to hoe. You have a perfect right to persue your adopted line. Or you may choose to discover your bloodline. Check with <A HREF="aol://4344:167.myrtli ve.1414159.531676257">Finding LIVE People</A> in my column area, and AOL's <A HREF="aol://4344:1595.adopt.12321274.517073523">Adoption Forum</A> for ideas. Birth records are considered PRIMARY sources of information, a legal document. They generally were created at the time the event happened. Contrast this with a birth announcement in a newspaper. It could have all sorts of human errors in it, since those other than the immediate family and physician are involved in creating, typesetting and publishing the article. Newspaper articles are considered SECONDARY sources of information, since the stories RETELL what people think happened. As competent family historians, we are thankful for the CLUES left in secondary sources, but try to gather as many primary sources as possible to prove our lineages. Beginning Lesson #2 CHOOSING A GENEALOGY PROGRAM I hope you made a lot of progress getting your vital records together from last week's lesson. Now, we'll tackle what to do with the information you collected as you climb your family tree. From: MeNiceGuy DearMYRTLE I would like to know what the best software program (preferably shareware) is to track family histories. I am just beginning, and want to start right. -- Thanks. I receive letters from lots of people who have been working on their own for a few months, making custom databases with Excel or DBase IV. I hope to save you similar heartache by telling you there are lots of good genealogy programs on the market today! The advantage of using one of the main stream genealogy programs is that they adhere (sometimes loosley) to a set of guidelines called GEDCOM for transfering data between different genealogy programs. You simply MUST use a program with this file transfer capability. Without it, you'll just have to type all those names in again, when you realize what wonderful programs are actually out there. I know that by hanging out in the Genealogy Forum here on AOL, you'll hear from lots of other genealogists about what program(s) they are using. Remember that there are both Windows and MAC users. Here's a list of the ones I here the most about! MAC favorite - Reunion (Leister Pro), PAF-Personal Ancestral File (LDS Church) WINDOWS - Family Tree Maker (Broderbund), Family Origins (Parson's Technology), Ancestral Quest (Infobase), Roots IV(Comsoft), Reunion (Leister Pro), Family Roots (Quinsept), Brother's Keeper (Shareware) DOS - PAF-Personal Ancestral File(LDS Church) Make it your goal this week to find out about genealogy programs and begin to make plan to purchase and install one to organize your family history early on!