ANCESTRY from MINERVA

Reviewed by Sheridan Williams

INTRODUCTION

Tracing your family history can be a fascinating experience, and one that I'm sure many more people would get involved with if it were not for the sheer amount of paperwork needed. Ancestry, to a large extent, takes the drudgery out of record keeping. So if you are interested in starting your own family tree research, but don't know where to start, buy Ancestry, enter all the information that can be gleaned from your living relatives, and lo and behold, you'll have the basis from which to expand. Starting this way, with a package as sophisticated as Ancestry you will quickly find that you are hooked on finding out more. Genealogy is like doing a jigsaw - each extra piece of information helps complete the picture, except that a family tree can never be complete however far back you go, but that simply adds to the intrigue.

THE PACKAGE

Ancestry comes in a distinctive mauve and yellow standard plastic case, with 56 page manual, disc and registration slip, the latter explaining that you get 90 days free software support, and inviting you to a further year's support for £30. The manual is adequate, but I found it vague in places, with the index not directing you to all the references. It explains that you should first make two backup copies of the original disc, unfortunately Minerva's method of preventing unauthorised use, means that you will always need to keep the original disc to hand, as you will be prompted to insert it whenever you leave the title screen. This applies also to copies made to hard disc. Minerva suggest that you contact them if you are unable to live with this method of operation.

FEATURES

Minerva supply the British Royal Family from Henry VII (born 1457) to Prince Henry (born 1984) as a sample data file. Section 3 of the manual takes you through the Royal Family file in a tutorial fashion, and provides a superb way of getting to know the package in detail. You get a real feel for just how powerful Ancestry is. Also supplied are Royal Family User and Picture files containing notes about, and pictures of individuals. However, if you wish to include pictures in your own file this will require a digitiser, or art package for their generation. The pictures can be displayed along with other details. Having familiarised yourself with the Royal Family file, creating your own data file is a relatively straightforward process.

Two modes of browsing are available, TREE or CARD. TREE displays one generation before and after the individual currently selected (at startup this is individual number 1), and clicking on any person will display the three immediate generations to which they are related. Clicking on the current individual switches to card mode for that person, and shows in three pages marriages and immediate family. Both modes allow fast movement around the file, including a search for matches.

CREATING YOUR OWN FILE

This is simply achieved by simply adding cards to an otherwise empty database, you need not concern yourself with anything else. Matters become slightly more complex if you require the optional "User" file which can contain free format text about individuals, in which case you have to "Create Skeleton User File" and decide at the outset how many cards you want.

As you enter the details about an individual such as forenames, surname, dates and places of birth and death, sex, status and title, the program allocates it a unique reference number. You could use this reference for labelling photographs, documents etc. The next task is to "link" various people in either of two ways - partner or child. The former need not be a marriage, and a person may have up to 7 partners. Having formed a partner link, you can now link offspring. Warnings can appear at this stage for example "<16 at date of marriage", "Child born after first parent's death", which I found very useful in trapping errors.

OUTPUTS

The package supports various standard reports - for Individuals, Ancestors and Descendants, any printer will do for producing these. There is also a very powerful and easy-to-use Report Generator, allowing you to print reports of your own design.

TREE PRINTING

For many, producing the family tree is the piece de resistance, and something that several packages fail to do automatically. Amazingly, if your tree will not fit a single sheet, the package will number the sheets for you to paste together. Printout takes place sideways and requires an Epson compatible printer. You can decide on any of tiny, small, medium or large print sizes, the smallest allowing 12 generations per page. You can also select light or dark print (the latter taking twice as long as it uses double strike mode).

CONCLUSION

Unfortunately for those (like me) who would like to transfer data from other software, Ancestry is let down by its inability to generate or accept data in the internationally accepted GEDCOM data format. However, there is a facility to export data in CSV (comma separated value) format. I approached Minerva about getting data into the package, and their response was that the file design was extremely complex, and other than approaching them to write a transfer routine (for which they would charge) the only possibility is to examine the "add a card" routine in the Basic program and try and patch in the transfer yourself. I succeeded in modifying PROCadd (lines 2760-3200) in program Anc/161, and in particular I replaced line 2940 with the necessary input routine.

Apart from the data transfer aspect, I find it difficult to fault Ancestry, and conclude that it is a brilliant package. If you can find any excuse to buy it, then I suggest that you do so immediately. But beware - even though I have been tracing my family for many years I found I could not put Ancestry down.
ProductAncestry
SupplierMinerva Systems
 69 Sidwell Street, Exeter,
 Devon EX4 6PH.
 Tel. (0392) 437756
Price£79.95 inc. VAT