Family Tree Location

The family tree is stored in the working area of Paul de Freitas at Genealogy.com. For this reason, it defaults to entering the tree at the Paul de Freitas entry. Instructions on the page allow you to quickly find a particular individual, to make another individual the jump-off point for further exploration and so on. It is very easy to use.

The tree is located at: http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/d/e/f/Paul-De-freitas/tree1.html.

Family Tree Format

The actual data which makes up the family tree is stored in an FTW file. This is fine and dandy for those of you who have Family Tree Maker software. However, the file can be exported in the universal GED file format which can be imported into most genealogy software programs. If you wish to maintain your own family tree, the information for the family tree can be exported to a GED file and sent to you by e-mail. Contact Paul de Freitas for further information.

Building the Family Tree

Like any family tree, a lot of time, research, copying and data entry goes into its construction. Our tree is missing a lot of ancestral information and is also (mea culpa) missing entries for the many children of our far flung family members. To make the tree as best as it can be, we need as much information as possible for each family. Here is an ideal list of the things needed for each family member to update the tree:

• Name of parents
• Name of person
• Date of birth
• Place of birth
• Baby photograph
• Growing up photographs
• Date of marriage
• Name of spouse
• Name of spouse's parents
• Location of marriage
• Marriage picture(s)
• Date of death
• Place of death
• Also interesting and useful would be:
  • Dates and college/university attended
  • Military service
    • country and branch of service
    • current or final rank attained
    • medals/honours received
  • Civil honours received (OBE, MBE etc...)
  • Pictures associated with the above

What software should I use?

I use Family Tree Maker from Genealogy.com, and GenDesigner from GenDesigner.com. I much prefer GenDesigner - however, it is not currently available for purchase since it is undergoing a massive re-write. GenDesigner allows you to construct the tree in a simple graphical drag-and-drop method, and contains very advanced features. Once version 3.0 is released, I will be able to maintain the family tree on our own website. This will allow me to provide direct access to their individual part of the tree for each family. Family Tree Maker does not allow publishing of the information to your own web page on your own server.

If you already have a family tree...

Please export your tree in GED format and e-mail the resulting file to Paul de Freitas so that your work can help to update the big picture.