Going to a Family Event - Wed, 16 Jan 2008

My wife and I are leaving for Nashville Tennessee for the weekend. My wife’s first cousin’s youngest daughter is getting married. We’re really looking forward to this little getaway, and a bit of a break from our -20 C temperatures.

Of course, family events are always great for adding a bit more to the family tree. What I like to do is take all the relevent family information with me. Being old fashioned, I still like a printed copy.

I haven’t updated my genealogy data in about 10 years. It’s waiting version 2.0 of Behold before I do that. But that still doesn’t stop me from using what I’ve got. I want the data printed, and for me Behold is the perfect tool to do that.

I open up my GEDCOM with Behold and quickly find my wife’s cousin. (Using Find and their name is the easiest way.) Then I right click and select Instant Organize on my wife’s cousin. The resulting view is exactly what I want for this. It generates families in sequence, starting with my wife’s cousin, then with her parents, then with her grandparents, etc, and anyone not related to her is by default, not included. Each level gives people one level more removed. That is perfect for this, because she’s likely to invite the people in the nearest groupings. I can concentrate on her most immediate relatives and still have everyone else related to them listed further down where they’re out of the way.

Behold then prints its nice Index of Names, Places and Sources following all the data which makes it easy to find anything in the printed copy. In this case, the whole report came into a nice 20 page listing. I printed it on both sides of the paper and that was 10 sheets, which I stapled together into a nice compact package.

I’ll keep this in my coat pocket and be able to write everything new I find out directly onto the sheets. That at least is my technique. It works very well for me. Try it next time you go to a family event. And be sure to also note who told you what to document your source with it.

So I’ll write again when I get back.