In her recent post Getting Down to the Basics, Susan Clark of Nolichucky Roots asked readers to share what they use their genealogy software program for, and why. It’s a great question, so I started to leave a comment. But as it grew longer, I realized I could write a whole post on this. I wasn't the only one. So far I've seen Jasia of Creative Gene, Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings, and Denise Levenick of Family Curator weigh in too. Here's my response:
My genealogy software program of choice is Reunion 9 for Macintosh. I use it primarily for organization, record-keeping, and as a place to gather my thoughts on each individual in my database. The program seems relatively simple compared to others I hear about—not a whole lot of the latest bells and whistles—but its simplicity and flexibility work well for me. It complements my work rather than requiring me to learn a lot of complex details.
Naturally, I enter the facts I’ve gathered on each person—birth, baptism, marriage, immigration, occupation, death, etc.—into the database. That helps for sorting and indexing people. But the heart of the program, for me, is the “Notes” section for each individual.
I’m a big believer that writing up your research in narrative form helps you to see the big picture, as well as the little details you might otherwise overlook. Reunion gives me unlimited space to create running narrative notes on each ancestor. I structure this in chronological order, with sources attached to each point.
In the narrative, I write about all the details I find in census records, draft or military records, deeds, family histories, probate files, and so forth. I include full transcriptions of obituaries and other short records, and abstracts of longer ones. I even write reminders to myself right in the narrative about ideas I want to pursue or records I should check. Gradually, what I’ve written becomes something of a cross between a biography and a research report on the ancestor.
Granted, this takes a lot more time than just entering facts and sources. But the advantages seem worth it to me. I find that if I put a particular family on hold for awhile, having this narrative in Reunion allows me to pick it up and get back to speed again quickly and easily. It helps me see at a glance what I've already done so I don't waste time repeating my efforts. And perhaps most importantly, reading through it helps me analyze and correlate information.
So what do I do with conflicting evidence? Reunion allows you to add additional fields for any event, so if I have three death dates for an individual, I could record all three. But what I prefer to do is write about all three events in the narrative notes. That allows me to process my thoughts on the strengths and weaknesses of each record, and develop a hypothesis or conclusion. Then I enter one date into the death field. If I still haven’t reached a firm conclusion, I put the qualifier “abt” before the date, as a clue to myself that more work is needed.
The other thing I like about Reunion is that the mobile apps, which cost about $15 each from the iTunes App Store, allow me to carry my entire database, including the narrative notes, with me on my iPhone or iPad. I can access it anytime, anywhere, even if I'm offline. So when I go to a library or archive I'm familiar with, my phone is all I need to take along. I can leave my computer at home much of the time. I can sync from the computer to the iPhone and vice versa. No cables are required for syncing; the devices just recognize each other.
Reunion exports GEDCOMs nicely. It also can create family tree web pages--a feature I haven't explored but want to. I found it pretty intuitive and easy to learn. There's a help manual built into the program, and for more help there's an active ReunionTalk forum. There's also a phone number that users can call to get a quick answer to a question from the company.
Reunion has its limitations. It’s not the most visually appealing program, and produces a limited assortment of charts. It won’t format source citations automatically in Evidence Explained style, and there are only 16 templates (the freeform template, however, is usable for even the most complex citations). At $99, it's expensive. And I wish Leister Productions, which makes Reunion, kept a higher profile in genealogy circles. Is it possible I might shift over to different software in the future? Yes. I’ve considered trying RootsMagic, using Crossover to run it on the Mac platform. But for now, Reunion meets most of my needs.
So that's how I use my software program. What about you? Do you use a genealogy database program, and if so, why? What makes it valuable to you?
(Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Leister Productions in any way, and paid for my own copy of Reunion several years ago.)
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