Genealogy Chat

thanks for all the ideas, thats a brilliant idea..will be buying my ring folder today and making a start!

I have mine on FTM but for one relative who wanted only his branch, I did something similar to Kate.

For the front page, I had his tree and then I included family group sheets, census pages, BMD certificates, copies of parish records etc for each generation.

It was far more interesting for him to see all the detail rather than just look at names on a tree.

I couldn't do that for my complete tree though, far too many people (almost 2000). I have it all in folders for my own personal viewing but for anyone else who wants to look, they just get the names on a tree!!

Sam x

Hi Margaret

I think it was about 300 descendents of this one particular couple - what you can do in Reunion (which I use) is to go to the top of any particular line, which in my instance was Joseph Hurst (1732) and wife Margaret, then you can create a descendent report that only includes the descendents of that particular couple, rather than every name in the tree programme file being included.

What took up most of the volume was the notes on them - baptisms, addresses, website addresses (some in the tree had owned pubs or hotels and I found that some were still around so the ones I found on the internet, I included the URL so people could look them up).

Kate,

Can I ask how many people you had in your tree at this stage?

Margaret

Kates done something I'd love to but at the moment a lot of my tree has queries over it, I did though buy FTM 2008 (was half price with 6 months ancestry membership) and this allows you to print out your tree in a variety of ways and its easy to amend the 'start/home' person only downside is it doesn't print off siblings as well just 'direct ancestors' I think the newer version will print siblings too.

While I wouldn't mind paying to have it proffessionally printed once the queries have been sorted, in the meantime my A4 printer and some sellotape produce an acceptable working tree. Other thing with the FTM program is you can choose whats included (so could just be name birth and death date or everything you have found out, by asking it to exclude information not filled in means I don't get a lot of abbreviations printed with no information next to them) and how many genrations back/forward you want the tree to be that prints.

Also allows you to create files to email of the tree(s) you create, which is handy as I can email family an updated tree if I make major progress, up to them if they print it.

Anyway I'd say read up on the various programs and what they will print off for you. I'd only get my tree done 'proffessionally' as a gift for a family member if I thought they'd appreciate it, although most of them would prefer a CD with it all on.

Saw this post earlier and meant to reply . . .

Last year, I put a sort of book together (in a ring binder, using document wallets for each page) to take to a family party.

I'm quite good with Photoshop so I made a front cover with a montage of photos of gravestones, dead relatives, living relatives, a sample of handwriting from a birth certificate that I photographed with a digital camera.

Then, using my family tree programme, I created a report (it listed all children born to a couple under their parents then had the biographical details of the children below so I cut out all the "lists" - it would have been well over 140 pages otherwise but I managed to cut it down to 90 sides of A4!) in my word processor. That had birth details in, baptism, addresses, jobs, whatever I'd added to the programme really.

I also collected various photos together on Photoshop (setting the page size to A4) and added notes saying who was in the pictures, and added the picture pages in at different places in the main printed document to break up the text. Also I photocopied the birth, marriage and death certificates and dotted them through the main thing as another kind of illustration.

just wondered if any body had some tried and tested ideas on how to present your family tree......do i do it myself?, buy software or get someone to do it professionaly?? many thanks! :)