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Ancestor+

Copyright © APDL 2003. All Rights Reserved

Introduction

Installing

General description

It is also necessary for there to be some way of recording facts about the people, especially the all important 'proofs'. If you want your research to be taken seriously then you must provide evidence for the relationships. Normally this would be references to places and registers where information can be found, or copies, often scans, of documents. Recording 'facts' is not enough, you also need to record the sources for the information.

There is also a difference between genealogy and family history. The former is concerned with discovering and proving family links, tracing bloodlines and ancestors. The latter is about recording interesting facts and histories of family members. Despite the superficial similarity between the two there is a fundamental difference in approach. Most programs are designed to do one job or the other, but what begins as an attempt to record a family tree, the basis of genealogy, can often move into family history if interesting people and events are discovered.

Because Ancestor+ enables an almost infinite amount of material in almost any format to be stored about each individual it will not lead to problems if you wish to move from genealogical research into family history.

The original Ancestry was designed to be easy to use, even for someone with very little experience of computers. Ancestor+ follows a similar system, based around a window showing a person and the immediate family members of this person.

A person in a 'tree' will have relationships in three directions. First the 'upward' relationship with his/her own parents. Next the 'downward' relationship with children. Thirdly a 'horizontal' relationship with a partner. In this context the term 'partner' could mean wife, husband, or any other similar relationship. These would normally be referred to as 'marriages' although when charting a family tree, the legal status of such a relationship is immaterial. There may also be further horizontal relationships with brothers and sisters.

Although strictly not part of genealogy it is also possible for there to be partnerships between two people of the same sex, or where a couple adopt a child. The purist might feel that such relationships are irrelevant, but they are part of the historical record of a family, so Ancestor+ does not prevent the user from creating single sex partnerships and allows children to be adopted into a family.

Whereas a person would normally only have two natural parents there could be several marriages and children. To keep the main display as compact as possible children, siblings and spouses are 'stacked' as shown in the simplified diagram. In this diagram the 'Siblings' box is shown dotted, as it will not be present if there are no brothers and sisters. The Parents boxes will always exist, as everyone must have two parents, even if either or both of them are unknown.

There may, of course, be no partner or children, and so these boxes would not appear, but for the present we shall assume that they do exist, as otherwise the person could not be part of a 'tree'.

Where there is more than one spouse the children shown (if any) are those from the marriage with the partner at the top of the stack.

Where there are two or more people in a stack there will be a small 'menu' icon at the top right hand corner. If you click on this a menu will appear showing the names of all the people in the stack. Clicking on any one of these names will bring that person to the top of the stack. If this is the Spouse stack then by bringing that person to the top you will also alter the display to show any children of the union.

Each person is given a unique number, allocated as the person is 'created'. This number is not significant of itself, it is just a shorthand way of referring to that person. Similarly each 'Family' is given a number. A Family is a family group, and would normally (though not necessarily) consist of two 'partners' and any children associated with that partnership, natural or adopted.

Navigation

Double-click on the RoyalFam database and Ancestor+ will be run and the database loaded. The main window will open with King Henry VIII at the centre. You should be able to understand the relationships between the people displayed from the description in the previous section.

As Henry VIII is the Current Person his box is in the centre, with a red outline. The information in this box is described in more detail later, but briefly the top line is his Title, the second line his Forename(s), and the third his Surname, as indicated in the top left had corner of th window. Below this is the year of his Birth and Death. The first character of the bottom line is Sex (M or F), the second character is Status, in this case it's X, which means dead (eXpired), and this is followed by a number, which is his age. For a living person this would be their present age, if the person is dead it's the age at death. In the bottom right-hand corner of the box is a figure in red. This is the person's number, and for Henry this is 5.

You will see that the same details are supplied for all the other people.

In the area between the boxes of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon there are some figures. At the top, in a blue box, is the Family Number. Below this, above the two horizontal lines (indicating a 'marriage') is the year of the start of the marriage, below the line is the year of the end of the marriage. For Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon these are 1509 and 1533.

You will see that there is one child of this marriage, Queen Mary I.

If you click on the menu icon at the top left hand corner of Catherine of Aragon's box the menu will appear and you can select any other of Henry's wives and the display will change to show that person and any children of the marriage. You might notice that Anne Boleyn's date of birth is shown as 150?. This means that the exact date isn't recorded, but it's between 1500 and 1510. As the date of birth isn't known her age at death can't be calculated, so this is shown as a question mark as well. You will also see that the marriage details between the boxes has changed. The union number is now 4 and the beginning and end of the marriage are 1533 and 1536

As you display Anne Boleyn so Queen Mary vanishes to be replaced by Queen Elizabeth, who was, of course, the child of the union of Ann Boleyn and Henry VIII

Looking to the left you will see Henry's two siblings. One of these is Queen Margaret, and the short line below her box indicates that she had children, as we shall see shortly.

Click on the sibling stack menu and select Henry's brother Arthur. You will notice that he was born before Henry and so was the natural heir and was given the title of Prince of Wales, but he died aged only 15 and so Henry succeeded to the throne.

Now bring Queen Margaret to the top of the stack again. Place the mouse pointer anywhere over her box and click SELECT and she will move to the centre and become the current person. Many details in the window will now be redrawn. The two people at the top remain the same, as Queen Margaret had the same parents as Henry VIII. Prince Arthur stays in the same place, but clicking on the menu reveals that the second sibling has now become Henry VIII, which is what you would expect since Margaret has moved to the centre and usurped his previous position.

To the right you will see that Margaret married King James IV of Scotland, and this is recorded in the database as Family number 9. Their child is King James V of Scotland, and if you click SELECT over James V's box to move him to the centre you will see his marriage and child (Queen Mary Stuart of Scotland) appear. You will also see that his parents, King James IV and Queen Margaret, have, as you would expect, moved to the top of the window.

One further point. You have seen that clicking on a person with SELECT moves them to the centre of the display. If a person has been adopted the parents shown will be their natural parents if recorded. Only if the natural parents are not recorded would their adopted parents be shown. To see the adopted parents when natural parents are also recorded hold down the SHIFT key when you click on the person.

You have seen how to navigate around the family tree by clicking on the people with close relationships to the current person, and this is the easiest way to move up and down the tree. However, you can also move using the person's number.

At the top left hand corner of the main window, at the end of the 'Button Bar', is a small red bounded box. If you have King James V's box in the centre you will see that the number in this box is 17, the same as the number in James V's box. This number reflects the current person, and you can enter a number here and press RETURN to jump directly to that person. You may remember that Henry VIII's number was 5, so click SELECT over this box on the button bar and the caret will appear. Use the Backspace, Delete or COPY keys in the usual way to delete the 17, enter the number 5, and press RETURN. The window will be redrawn with Henry VIII at the centre, and he has now become the current person.

Also on the button bar, towards the left, are four 'arrow' buttons <, >, |< and >|. As you would expect, these move respectively one number back, one number forward, to the first person in the database, and to the last person in the database. Back, forward, first and last refer to the number of the person, and this need not have any relationship to their genealogical position, as these numbers are allocated by the program when the person's details are entered. In a 'normal' family tree, where people are entered as they are discovered, these numbers might bear no relationship to the dates and relationships of the people. In fact, as information is normally gathered by working from the present day to the past, the numbers will tend to be 'backwards'. As the Royal Family tree was created from data already well known the numbers are roughly chronological, and so clicking the |< button will take you back to Henry VII, and clicking the >| button will take you forward to Princess Eugenie and the present day.

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