Family histories have become a national obsession. According to Maritz Marketing, interest in genealogy has grown 33 percent in the past five years, with about 120 million people at least somewhat interested in their roots.
If you want to unearth your roots, you'll need a place to store and organize the information harvested. Below are five popular genealogy programs that record and organize names, dates, stories, photos and resources from your search. They each provide tech support, create charts and give research tips.
If you're just dipping your toe in the genealogy pool, start with Personal Ancestral File, or PAF; free download at www.familysearch.org, or $6 for a CD-ROM). PAF is a no-frills program that is a cinch to use, and the price is right.
Don't waste your money on the virtually identical Ancestral Quest; 1-800-825-8864, or www.ancquest.com. At $38, even the bonus world-atlas software, which pinpoints thousands of cities and dishes out trivia tidbits, doesn't add much that you can't find on the Internet.
If you need more features than PAF can offer, you can easily merge the data stored in PAF into one of several more comprehensive programs, which we've listed in order of ease of use.
Family Tree Maker; $20, 1-800-548-1806, or www.genealogy.com is so intuitive to use, we mastered almost all its features in 15 minutes without cracking the manual. To ensure your roots are firmly grounded before branching off into other research, the program escorts you through entering yourself, your parents and grandparents.
It then automatically scours its Web-based resources for possible connections to your family tree. Bonus: You get free Web space to post your findings and network with others.
Adding personality to your family charts is a breeze with Generations Family Tree; $20, 1-800-757-7707, or www.sierrahome.com. You can size photos, change colors and tweak fonts with ease, and inserting a background image is as easy as cutting and pasting.
The software includes eight CDs with 300 million names from marriage, land and other records, plus an Internet genealogy how-to guide. It also comes with free Web space.
The Master Genealogist; $99, 1-877-864-3264, or www.whollygenes.com, is the Swiss Army knife of genealogy software, geared to the more advanced, computer-savvy researcher. It'll do almost anything — from performing simple data entry to publishing a book with a table of contents, bibliography and index.
Much of the 450-page guide details an extensive list of features that ensures your research is complete and accurate. You'll need time to get acquainted, but, oh, the things you'll do together.