Summer Genealogy Musings | GenDetective

2012 GRIP German Class

Over the summer I attended my very first genealogy institute.? I took?the German Genealogy Research course presented by John Humphrey at GRIP?in Pittsburgh.?? I learned?more than I ever imagined about researching my German ancestors.

During class I was?asked a couple of seemingly easy?questions:?who were your immigrant ancestors?? How ?German? are you?? I have to confess, Monday night I went back to my room, and determined the answers.? I am less than 25% German, my husband is closer to 50%.? Not the answers I was expecting.? After all,?I was taking a German research course, well, because my husband and I are mostly German.? Right?

I returned home determined to get a better picture of my family.? As I?m sure you know, this is not the easiest of endeavors.? I tried paper and pencil, computer charting tools, and priced custom genealogy charts.? My criteria for my chart and each ancestor:

• Vital statistics
• Military service
• Country of origin
• Space for a picture
• Print for a reasonable price

Family Tree

I have been asking questions of aunts and uncles, as well as raiding their?photo collections for years.??If I?m going to print a chart it needs to be something attractive?that I can share with those poor people who have tolerated my endless stream of questions.

After discarding several possibilities, a friend and I arrived at a viable solution:?Microsoft Visio.

To begin, I created a ?standard? block for males and females, with space for vital statistics and a picture.? Each chart is 32?48, oriented vertically (my friend prefers horizontal), and when printed, is a standard size of 16?24.? From my male/female blocks I created a template with 8 generations, and started typing away.

A side benefit to creating my family tree in Visio, was it provided an opportunity to?identify gaps and a?few?inconsistencies in my family tree.? There are two keys on each chart:

• A key to the flags which identify immigration country and military service
• A key to the abbreviations used throughout the chart

Now for the good part, the printing and costs.? Most print shops?prefer a PDF file (Save as PDF in Visio).? I printed my chart at Staples, on glossy photo paper, for about $22.50 including state tax.??Many print shops also have a heavier bond paper (stationary weight) which can be used to print a ?working? chart which you can write on.

If you would like a copy of?my?template tree, email?techsupp@rumblesoftinc.com and?request a version.? I am happy to share.?? Now if I could find a way to automate the creation of the diagram ..

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Source: http://blog.gendetective.com/2012/09/04/summer-genealogy-musings/

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