Some people don't know when to stop

[Bryman]

Most family groups are very simple with just a couple of children born to a single couple.

However, in years gone by, some families have had many more children with one of my direct ancestor couples producing 12 children just over 100 years ago. How did they manage to afford to raise so many? He was a village postmaster and not some rich aristocrat.

I am sure that other forum members can find instances of even larger families but I thought it worth starting a discussion about the complexity of some relationships. I like to see the pictorial representation of family trees rather than just data in tables but sometimes this can be difficult to draw clearly.

About 150 years ago, blood relatives of mine started a simple family . . .
A married B and had 2 children. Elsewhere, C married D and also had 2 children.
Then B and C died leaving A and D to marry. So far, not too unusual.
Not content with the combined family, they then produced another six themselves, at which point it was just too much and D passed away.
A obviously did not relish a life without a mate so was married for a third time and had another child to add to the family.

Then yesterday evening I discovered that A and D had produced a seventh child, before any of their previously known six. This was not the simplest of additions to make to the graphical family tree but I eventually found out how to identify which were the parents of the new child, within GenoPro, by separating the marriage lines. That particular chart is now looking a bit like a spider's web.

Have any forum members had more complex relationships to represent using other family tree programs?

 

[Tim]

Yes, GenoPro is very good at enabling you to visualise the family tree. I have found 3 connections just by being able to layout the tree and see that there's a common link.

FTM2012 is not too bad, it would be nicer if you could move people around and give them different coloured lines.

 

[Liberty]

Thank heaven for computer programs, of any sort! If my tree were on paper it would be incomprehensible. Even discounting the more distant cousins (with e.g brothers marrying a mother and daughter, a man marrying 2 sisters in succession and having children by both) I have one set of my GG Gparents being first cousins, and a GGF marrying his sister-in-law's sister (2 brothers marrying 2 sisters). There's only so much you can do with dotted lines, after all.

 

[Tim]

Yes, that's true, I also 2 brothers marrying 2 sisters, and other more weird combos.
And if it was on paper, how many times would you have to redraw it when you find a relative that you didn't even know about!

 

[Alexander Bisset]

Have any forum members had more complex relationships to represent using other family tree programs?

I think the difference from what I understand of GenoPro vs other programs is that in other programs the task of drawing the tree is almost entirely automated. Whereas, as I understand it, the task of drawing the tree is the core feature of GenoPro and you get to lay it out exactly how you want, which does mean that when you find someone new you have to play around with moving things to make it fit, whereas in other programs you just click draw and it draws the new chart as it sees fit.

I use FTM 2014 and can't recall the last time I actually bothered looking at a graphical layout of the tree. About the only time I do is if I have to print out a branch for a non computer user.

 

[Tim]

I think the difference from what I understand of GenoPro vs other programs is that in other programs the task of drawing the tree is almost entirely automated. Whereas, as I understand it, the task of drawing the tree is the core feature of GenoPro and you get to lay it out exactly how you want, which does mean that when you find someone new you have to play around with moving things to make it fit, whereas in other programs you just click draw and it draws the new chart as it sees fit.

That's not strictly true. GenoPro has auto layout which works very well, you can select which people to include in the auto layout or do the whole branch.

The difference is that you can get to choose where you want people to be, e.g. I like things in chronological order, which seems reasonable as we're looking at a family tree through time? In GenoPro I can put the first wife to the left with all their children, and the second wife to the right with all their children. I can move the line that links the 2nd family up or down so that it doesn't look like it joins with the 1st family. I can even choose to have the 2nd's family line in red, to make it stand out.

Whereas in FTM2012, it seems to be random, or maybe what fits best on the screen.

 

[Bryman]

I use FTM 2014 and can't recall the last time I actually bothered looking at a graphical layout of the tree. About the only time I do is if I have to print out a branch for a non computer user.

Interesting. For me, the graphical layout is core to the whole business of genealogy and I don't think that my interest would be maintained without it. I view everything in this format and only refer to tablular information when looking for more detail.

When I first started, with GR, I could see that any tree was likely to become too large to view as a single chart so decided to make things more manageable in GenoPro by having separate charts for each surname. Off page connectors, called external hyperlinks, then provide an easy and quick way to move between the various charts. That way I can see how the families are connected. I was always more of a physicist than a mathematician and needed to visualise a situation rather than just apply a formula.

I have also tried to lay out a chart with vertical spacing to reflect the passage of time but that then leads to further complications and messiness although it can make some anomalous situations more obvious.

The difficulty for me, at the start of this thread, resulted from having all partners joined on the same horizontal line across the chart. Adding a newly discovered child in the middle was then difficult to identify to the program which of the various partners were the parents. All became easy when I realised that I could separate the individual marriage lines vertically. As Tim says, use of differing colours for each marriage line can make this clearer.

I was curious to know how other members managed with similar or more complex situations using other family tree products. If others do not rely on the graphical representation as much as me then perhaps they do not see this as a problem.

 

[Alexander Bisset]

The difficulty for me, at the start of this thread, resulted from having all partners joined on the same horizontal line across the chart. Adding a newly discovered child in the middle was then difficult to identify to the program which of the various partners were the parents. All became easy when I realised that I could separate the individual marriage lines vertically. As Tim says, use of differing colours for each marriage line can make this clearer.

This is what I find odd. When I add people even if its exactly that situation multiple marriages and multiple children per marriage. Adding a new previously unknown child is simply another record in the database. I usually click sort to ensure children are in birth order but how that looks on a graph simply doesn't even cross my mind. I know that if I click on reports I can get the program to generate a graphical tree that will include every child sorted into order. So it therefore doesn't occur to me to worry about how a graphical layout would work as I know it is always automatically there if I need it. For me it is far more important to add the appropriate facts and to be able to easily navigate around the tree.

 

[Bryman]

Ok, each to his/her own prefered method of working. My interest lies more in how/where the families originated and how they moved/developed rather than concentrating on getting the individual facts stored on the computer, which I just see as a means to an end. Hence my appreciation of the checks and displays being provided by FTA. I look at the family charts which have been created the way that I prefer to see them rather than have them automatically generated and require some modification by me each time.There are some parts of my tree where I am sure that things are not quite right and I can allow for that in my charts. If they were always automatically generated from the incomplete/incorrect data then that might not be so obvious.

That's just my preference (at the moment) and I am interested to learn how others fare with other products, without going into too much detail. After all, a change of family tree program is not a trivial activity but should be considered if it becomes apparent that there is an exceptional benefit to be gained from doing so. I don't have the time or money to install/test/review/evaluate all new features of the various products available and am happy to be guided by others' experiences, at least initially.

 

[Tim]

I used to use GenoPro exclusively, but now I use FTM2012. However, I know I can, and indeed do, load my gedcom into GenoPro because I found it that much easier to know where everyone is while adding the data into FTM2012.

The only reason I moved from GenoPro was to enable me to utilise fully the capabilities of FTAnalyzer.

 

[Alexander Bisset]

As I've said in previous discussions Family Tree programs are one of those things that you didn't know anything about when you first start but once you get used to using one of them, REGARDLESS OF WHICH ONE IT IS, it becomes the "normal" way of doing things. Thus any change often "just feels wrong". I really don't believe there is any one family tree program that is superior to any other, they all have their pros and cons. Its just we come to expect certain things and trying out a new program when you are used to a certain way of dealing with things can get frustrating.

Thus for me a visual representation of a tree has always been a subsidiary issue. I use the standard treeview of FTM 2014 which is a pedigree view going back 4 generations in the top window and a father/mother/children view in the bottom window. Using this I can quickly navigate through the tree finding how people are related without having to see a full diagram. I also extensively use the index to jump from one branch to another, as I am frequently dealing with the hundreds of "twigs" I have for my one name study. Thus it isn't possible with these twigs (bits of tree with a handful of individuals sometimes a solo individual) to see deep relationships as the whole point is I've not found the piece of the jigsaw that links the twig up into one of the couple of dozen bigger branches.

So when I find a new fact I navigate to the right person and add the fact. If I find a new person I navigate to the appropriate family group and add them in to that group and click sort to keep them in order. The default view updates the person appropriately allowing me to navigate around how they are presented on screen. As such I've never worried about how it would look on a printed sheet. The pedigree view and family view seems sufficient.

However as yourself I am interested to know what it is about more graphical programs such as GenoPro that gives you something extra.

 

[Bob Spiers]

However as yourself I am interested to know what it is about more graphical programs such as GenoPro that gives you something extra.

I have only just found this discussion which I find most interesting. It seems I am more like Alexander in my approach to recording data in my preferred FT program, and my recent gravitation to FTM which is quite different but gradually growing on me. I do have Gen Pro but exclusively for its chart making properties. The charts are all the better because they can be modified and manipulated to suit your preferences.

It is when dealing with the family that Gen Pro comes into its own. They are already able to read the minutia details about any member who concerns them by logging on (with supplied access code) to my Tribal Pages. Even so it is only when I produce a chart which I send or take to them (invariably encapsulated) that their eyes light up. This seems to satisfy in a way no about of data can achieve. There is nothing in the chart they could not find out in Tribal Pages but a Chart can be hung on the wall or passed around for individual viewing and that pleases them more than anything.

So I think the bottom line is go with whatever suits and if that be a chart or a FT program of your choice, so be it!