The Year Ahead – June 29

In the January/February 2024 issue of Family Tree Magazine, they have introduced The Year Ahead, 366 genealogy tips will make 2024 your best research year yet by Lisa A Alzo. Lisa mapped out a day-by-day research plan.

June 29 – Turn y our research upside down and print out a descendant tree chart from your genealogical software program. Note gaps to fill in.

I use Family Tree Maker (FTM) as my genealogical software program. FTM offers several different descendant reports. The first is a descendant chart. I like the view, but not helpful to seeing gaps. Next, they offer a Descendant Report. I like this report and have been using it often in my current project of finding all the descendants of one of my 3rd great grandparents. If you get in the habit of place seven underscores for missing names (first and surnames), you can quickly see missing information.

Also, this report gives basic information such as birth, marriage and death information, thus you can see if you are missing any of those fields.

The last report that I see for descendants is the Outline Descendant Report – this gives a quick list of all the descendants of your selected primary person. This report best represents how I am going through my file, verifying, adding and modifying information about the descendants of my 3rd great grandparents. This final report lets me work through the descendants without missing anyone. I can use it as a check list and cross of each descendant once I am happy that I have exhausted my research for them. I have removed all the vital information (for privacy reasons) however, you can see how this report can be useful as a checklist.

Remember to have fun and Just do Genealogy!