Legacy Family Tree is a genealogy program for recording your family tree. It is currently in it’s eighth version (Legacy 8.0) and is available in a free version, or a deluxe ($29.95 US) version. I use the free version.
For those for whom English is not their first language, it is even available in a whole range of other languages, including the four versions of English – Australian, Canadian, US, and British.
Downloading and installing the program is easy and takes maybe 10 minutes or so, unless you have a really slow connection, in which case, come to the Library and use their wireless (if you have a laptop).
Once installed, start entering your information, starting with yourself as person number one. When you have entered all the information you had collected so far, now you can start to play with the program.
Here is what one page may look like: (see photo – top)
In the example, Jon Ihle and Eva Willer are married, above them are the names of their parents, and below them are their children. This version of Legacy is great in that you can see half relations on the same screen; in older versions you had to change which “spouse” you were viewing. In this example, Jon was married twice and the half relations are his children by his previous wife.
Immediately below his name is a dark bar, followed by when and where he was born and died. Just above that dark bar and at the right hand edge of it, there are two small arrows pointing in opposite directions. This is a very handy item. When you click on this, it will take you to an internet search screen that lists all the names you have in your database, with the selected person as the current selection. It will immediately search for this person on “familysearch.org” website. This is the website from the Later Day Saints. They have an extensive collection of names that is constantly growing as their volunteers keep inputting data from around the world.
If the search finds a match, the page will look like this: (see photo – bottom)
On the left is the record of the person from your list, on the right is what they had on their website.
The search will look for duplicate entries (for Rosina, there were originally about seven entries) which, if you are certain they are of the same people you can “merge” them, then you can import any data they have that you didn’t with a simple click on the little arrow beside the line that you want to import, including spouses, parents and children. It is a wonderful tool.
There are lots of other features of the Legacy program. To learn more, either download it and play, or drop in at the next Genealogy Group meeting at the Library.
Our next meeting is at 5 p.m. on Oct. 27. If you have your own laptop, please bring it.
