Software for Sail

Genealogists are always heading for home — looking for the link to their family’s immigrant past. The latest version of a popular software program aims to help you embark on that journey.

Generations Liberty Edition, version 8.5 of SierraHome’s best-selling line of genealogy software, brings together resources to identify your immigrant ancestors and trace their origins abroad. Within the 21-CD software package, you’ll find:

• Angus Baxter’s In Search of Your European Roots, an excellent introductory guide to researching your ancestry in all the countries of Europe, except the British Isles.

• An index to foreign-born heads of household in the 1870 US census. The names are grouped according to place of birth: Africa and the Middle East, the Americas, Asia, Eastern Europe, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Scandinavia and Western Europe. Researchers with Native American ancestry will be interested to find that the Asia section includes not only natives of the country of India, but also some American Indians, no matter where they were born.

• Historical overviews of the key countries that supplied immigrants to the United States, with a focus on the social and economic conditions that might have led your ancestors to come to our shores.

• A large selection of historic maps and images showing typical clothing, homes and landmarks in our ancestral homelands.

• A list of passenger ships arriving at the Port of New York from 1820 to 1850.

Other research resources bundled with the program include a database of more than half a million marriages in 18 states and the District of Columbia from 1691 to 1850, as well as an index of nearly 2 million US land records from 1790 to 1907. The program gives no sources for the marriages, so you’ll want to verify this information elsewhere.

Generations, one of the best programs for organizing your family history research, is especially noteworthy for its charting and multimedia capabilities. All three editions of Generations feature the same core genealogy software (see the December 2000 issue of Family Tree Magazine for a review of the other two editions). Generations Grande Suite also includes the entire 1800 US census and is a good choice if you have many ancestors who came to America before that year. Go for the $49.95 (after a $20 mail-in rebate) Liberty Edition if your family immigrated in the mid-1800s. Otherwise, opt for the cheaper Beginner’s Edition.

Generations Liberty Edition requires Windows 95 or higher, Pentium 100 or higher and 16 MB RAM. Contact SierraHome at (800) 757-7707 or visit <www.sierrahome.com>.

From the April 2001 issue of Family Tree Magazine