Hi,
for various reasons I have been thinking about entering all the churchbook data from the German villages I am researching into one of the large databases. I would prefer familysearch, but I am open to other suggestions.
I am currently using MyHeritage's Family Tree Builder and the FamilySearch database surface for keeping my trees. Problem is that I found that both of them suck for entering a lot of data at the same time. Too much clicking back and forth for a single record, be it baptism, marriage or deaths.
Not an issue when it comes to my own tree, but with my eye towards indexing whole churchbooks as efficiently as possible I need to look into different solutions.
I mainly want a software where I can
- enter a lot of data using only one mask
To give you an idea of the problem, a typical Prussian marriage record from the 1820s to 1874 usualy contains: 1) Name of groom, his age, his date and place of birth, his profession, sometimes future residence after the marriage 2) information on both his parents, their names including the mother's maiden name, his father's profession, their current residence and whether one of them is deceased. If the mother is a widow and has remarried the entry often lists her current husband's name. 3) whether the groom is a widower or not, often the name of the first wife is noted. 4) brides name, age, date and place of birth 5) whether she is a widow or not, often with her first husbands name 6) similar info on the bride's parents as on the parents of the groom 7) info on any children born to the couple before their marriage.
So quite a lot of info for a single record - from one marriage entry I can essentially get vital data for at least 6 people. With MyHeritage FamilyTreeBuilder I have to create all those 6 people seperately, using additional seperate masks for places of residence and for profession. FamilySearch is even worse. The steps I have to take to enter all the info that is contained in the record are just too much of a pain.
It would really help and save a lot of time if I could enter all the data on a child/a person and his parents in one go.
- The software needs to be able to handle a lot of non-connected records. I am not planning on creating one large tree, I want to create a lot of tiny gedcom-files with data on 1-7 people that I can upload somewhere.
- Software should help me create larger trees, ie if a widow remarries and I enter the second marriage the software should alert me to the first marriage if I already entered it. Ditto if a child out of marriage that I already got marries - it should catch that I already have the parents.
- Website has to be freely accessible and not behind a paywall. Extra bonus points if there is a software that connects well with that site without any funny business such as messed-up characters and lost details.
- Software should be affordable - under 100 USD. I got the time to do this bc I am underemployed. I am working part-time only, but this also means that I don't make as much as I would like to.
If everything fails I may just go the route a fellow researcher took - enter everything into a table in a word document and copy/paste it to blogspot and let google do the rest. But I really want it to be on a site where people will actually look. :/
Thank you for reading this and for any suggestions you might have.
