Class 2: Pre Homework

I encourage relatively "targeted" family trees.  It is better to have well-targeted, small to moderate sized trees than one or more large trees.  (The reason is as much technical as it is semantic:  big trees are unstable and your program will have a high frequency of unexplained crashes.)  Ask me in class what my organization is.

Each tree will be constructed from a template tree, which contains a number of things you will want to standardize between all your trees.  This standardization, using Family Tree Maker 2019, is the theme of the next two lectures.

One bit of standardization that will require some work on your part is to establish a list of relevant: 

1. Family names
2. Places
3. Timeframes

The historic events include wars, formation or dissolution of government entities (eg, counties, states), epidemics, social events, and perhaps even some key pivotal events involving your family members.

Please start building lists that you can use to enter the necessary information into the FTM tables.  Sign up for or create Ancestorian groups. Bring the lists to class, since they will need to be entered in FTM.