Family tree gift?

Question:Whats a good gift for my Dad who wants to start tracing his family tree?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Whats a good gift for my Dad who wants to start tracing his family tree?

I would strongly suggest getting him one of the Genealogical software programs.

I had been doing some genealogy work for a couple years when my sister gave me Family Tree Maker (I think it was Version 1). 20 years later I'm still using it.

I'm not plugging FTM, it's just the one I was given and used. Pretty much any of them are quite fine, and most do come with a "free" subscription of some term to a major genealogical site.

Not knowing your father's age or your age, realize that at a minimum he would have knowledge of three generations...your generation, his generation and his parent's generation. If you are of an age where you or your siblings have married and have children of your own, that's four generations. If he has knowlege of his grandparents, five generations. That's just readily available information he has RIGHT NOW.

To keep track of things manually, while absolutely doable - I did for a number of years, is really a task - a BIG task. And can be overwhelming for a person new to genealogy. A genealogy program really, really, really helps.

Of course, this would only be a good gift IF your father had a computer - and if he was comfortable using it. For my father, it would be great - he is comfortable with his computer. For my wife's father, it would be worthless. While he had a computer, he used it mainly for e-mail and playing a bridge game. He was always scared that if he hit the wrong button, he would blow up the entire machine.

But if your father has a computer, and is comfortable using it, it would be a fantastic present - one I know he would use and benefit from. Of course, you may have to help with installation and even figuring some things out at first - but that's one of the joys of genealogy - getting with your family TOGETHER and working things out. In fact, at the start, it really is the only way to do things -- together as a family.

a book that he can put geneaology info into, maybe start a couple pages.

something that won't break.

I bought Anthony Adolph's book 'Tracing Your Family History'. It was a fantastic resource for me. (First link shown below). It does largely focus on researching in the UK though, so if you're researching elsewhere, this book is not for you.

If he is looking at doing it long term, and it's not a passing fad, you might like to invest in a software package. I bought the one released by the BBC - Who Do You Think You Are. It cost me ￡5.00 and it lets you map out everything, and can even publish a book in 10 seconds flat showing you all the information. A fantastic buy, and you can't do wrong for ￡5. (Second link shown below)

If you didn't mention a country, we can't tell if you are in the USA, UK, Canada or Australia, EVEN if you clicked on the flag. That is the most frustrating thing YA does. I'm in the USA, for instance.

There are lots of possibilities, but they depend on

1) What country you are in.
2) How comfortable with computers he is.
3) How much you want to spend.
4) If you are in the USA, Canada, Australia or NZ, how recently your ancestors came to that country.

Family Tree Maker comes bundled with a free subscription to Ancestry.com for some number of days. It would be a good choice if you are in the USA and he is computer-skilled and you can afford it and your ancestors were here (on some lines, at least) for a century or two.

Most of the on-line genealogy is by and for people in the USA, with the UK coming second. If you are third-generation Poles or Hungarians or Japanese or Zulus . . . and don't speak the old language, you should probably get him interested in fly fishing instead.

Finally, how determined is he? You can find "Exercise machine - used twice" advertisements in the newspaper classified ads every day. Lots and lots of FTM packages are like that. Tracing your family tree is a lot like doing a term paper for a high school history class. You don't have to have a Ph D., but you do have to work at it, and it doesn't happen overnight.

(In the same vein, people who take up nature photography should not expect to shoot a prize-winner the first week, and people who take up fly fishing shouldn't expect to land 16-pound trout on the first six casts.)