Family Reconstitution using FH

farm7880 · Post by **farm7880** » 21 Dec 2008 17:24

After 30+ years of researching, about to take the plunge and computerise. Trialling Family Historian and it looks to be my preferred choice, because of flexibility and customisation. In addition, to my own families I have vast records on about 300 families connected with Steeple Morden, Cambridgeshire, plus huge and varied source records. Has anybody else used Family Historian for something similar? Any tips? Presumably each family name is best as a separate file?

ID:3193

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 21 Dec 2008 19:28

Personally I would use 1 file for the place research as if it's any thing like Dorset place research the families are very very very interconnected.

What you can do when you need to share the data from the village you can use the Split tree tool to 'cut out' the data for a researcher on a single family, while being able to easily interlink the villagers.

AnneEast · Post by **AnneEast** » 22 Dec 2008 19:08

I run a FH file for a One Name Society. We have all the families with that name on the one file. If I find there are some connected ones it is then easy to connect them up.

If a society member wants information about their own branch I just split a Gedcom off for them.

There is no problem with having non connected families there. If I need to work out who one person is connected to I can just run a diagram and get an instant look.

We currently have over 8,000 individuals and over 2,000 families on the file! Of these families there are about 100 completly unrelated (as far as we know!) groups

Anne

farm7880 · Post by **farm7880** » 22 Dec 2008 19:14

Thanks, Jane. Certainly there are a lot of interconnections, so I will go the 1 file route. Very timely advice.
Have you done something similar for a Dorset parish? Or have a lot of Dorset ancestors?
I guess for my own family a file per surname will work best?

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 22 Dec 2008 19:32

Some of my ancestors lived in a small group of rural Dorset parishes and I have found it much easier to keep everyone together.

I keep all my own family research in a single file. FH will handle very large files with ease (some people have 10,000 plus people in a single file).

The split tree will allow easy splitting for sharing the data as I mentioned, having all the data in one file also makes it easy to find links you might otherwise miss, inter-marriages etc.

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