Generations Family Tree is a software package that is no longer in production, but can still be found on sites like eBay.com and craigslist.org. Please note that it is sold under the name “Reunion 9” for an Apple Mac computer. This software is for those who are researching their family tree and want to create, update, and maintain charts of their family lineage. The software was first created by Sierra Home, a company that was bought by Genealogy.com’s parent company, AE Television Networks, in 2002. It started out as a piece of software called Reunion that was developed for the Mac.
The company that introduced Reunion later sold its version of Windows to Sierra Online. Sierra Online later became Sierra Home. It was then renamed and is now known as the software, Generations. The version of Generations called Millennium that was created by Sierra came complete with a number of useful bonus pieces including Civil War muster rolls, digital images of the handwritten 1800 census for Charleston, New York, and Philadelphia, and two discs. complete containing the death of Social Security. index records. It also included a complete disk of historical documents held by the US National Archives and Records Administration.
As a bonus, it contained a marriage records disk, Ellis Island records, an immigrant boat disk, a land records disk, and a marriage license. Anyone who has used Generations genealogy software has enjoyed the reporting and charting options that include full-size wall charts, hourglass charts, and timelines. The extremely easy setup and the ability to import files from other programs are great. If you want to rearrange items in your family tree, you can easily do so by dragging and dropping the entries.
You can also insert photos, captions, and documents, as well as video and audio clips. Anyone who has reviewed this software has said that it is easy enough for newbies to use, yet advanced enough for more experienced genealogy researchers. Users of Generations software appreciate being able to make great family tree charts.
Some of the goodies that come with the software are great and include Master Cook Heritage Edition for retrieving family recipes, Snapshot Express software that allows you to touch up old photos after scanning them, and iCollect which is a program that allows you to save websites for you to watch them offline. Genealogy researchers in the United States will agree that even when the software becomes outdated, the extras, most of which include the digital images from the 1800 census, will always remain valuable and treasured pieces of information.
The website, Censusfinder.com, also offers links to some archived data from the US Census online, as well as records for countries such as Scandinavia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Native Americans. The Generations Family Tree forum has an expanded list of answers and questions about this and other genealogy programs. However, keep in mind that it is not updated very often.
A detailed tutorial detailing the differences between the version published by A&E Television Networks and the Sierra Home versions is available online. So while the software itself is no longer created for Windows systems, many people have experienced it and put their guidelines and advice on the web that anyone considering buying a second hand copy that was bought on eBay or Craigslist could find. a fair amount of support for the software.
British genealogy researchers who are interested in Generations genealogy software can purchase the UK version (not including the US version CDs filled with census and other US data) from online software distributors including TWR Computing. An available software patch ensures that it is compatible with Windows 7 and Windows XP. Also for Brits and non-Brits, and will provide some great pieces of information on which versions of the Generations software are compatible with which version of Windows.
It could be very useful for anyone considering buying a used copy that can be found online. While there are unofficial comments available stating that version 8.5a of Generations software (the latest version available) is compatible with Windows Vista. There is a good chance that you will be able to find one or two sites that allow you to download Generations for free, you are advised to be skeptical of such sites because they will almost certainly download viruses to the computer you are using instead of the software you thought that I was receiving. For those who are concerned about purchasing Generations software only to have to start from scratch at a later date, you can save your Generations database as a GEDCOM file. Almost all genealogy software will allow you to import and export to a GEDCOM file. You can export Generations files in GEDCOM format and be pretty sure you’ll be able to open and modify them in that form with other genealogy software packages.