Preserving Family History in the Digital Age

I have always seen life from a wide angled perspective. Growing up I heard the stories of the hardships my Parents suffered, and although at the time I didn’t take their lessons quite as they might as hoped, they echoed in my ears for many years after. Through the trials and experiences of my own life I came to appreciate those stories with a new, more empathetic twist.

This helped me to nurture an appreciation for the cycle of life that we all live within. We are all links in the chain of life and though our time in this world may end, we send forth boats down the river of existence that carry our genes forth.

As Bertrand Russell wrote:

“To be happy in this world, especially when youth is past, it is necessary to feel oneself not merely an isolated individual whose day will soon be over, but part of the stream of life flowing on from the first germ to the remote and unknown future.”

Naturally, seeing oneself as a link in a chain that extends back into the past and forth into the future means that you take your family tree seriously.

I have always done so, but sadly found that those in my family who also took it seriously did not mean that they also took its recording seriously. It wasn’t a given that a family member who could recite lineages and relations from memory had it recorded anywhere other than their own memory. I had heard that we had a paper family tree somewhere, but this was no doubt buried under piles of papers and folders somewhere, akin to finding a needle in a haystack.

But this wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to know my family tree, I wanted to record it, but I also wanted to ensure that it could be amended and expanded as time goes on. What’s more, I didn’t want it to be physical. Its hard to amend and expand a physical document enough to account for future expansion, and it is hard to share it around to all family members in the hope they will maintain it themselves too. I was the first generation of human in my lineage to be born into a digital world, so I knew that this duty now rested squarely on my shoulders.

As I thought about these factors, my requirements for such a solution became clear. I wanted three main things:

To start a family tree in digital format
To ensure the file format is open source
To ensure the program that makes/edits the file is itself open source

Thankfully, I found just what I needed.

Enter … Gramps

I stumbled upon Gramps.

Overlooking the odd choice of name, Gramps is an open source Software that is specifically made to digitise genealogies. From initial research, it looks like the program itself is frequently updated and has a healthy number of people using it. As far as I am concerned these facts are enough to inspire me with confidence to know that it wont fade into oblivion anytime soon.

Gramps uses the GEDCOM (.ged) file format, which is an open format used to save genealogy information and import/export into the programs/platforms that support it. Interestingly, it was first standardised by a group of Christian ‘Latter Day Saints’ (also known as LDS). If Gramps ever becomes abandoned, or simply outclassed by a future newcomer, then my family tree is still safe and ready to use somewhere else as long as I keep a copy of the .ged GEDCOM backup.

Nothing is perfect however, and Gramps too comes with its downsides. The interface leaves a lot to be desired and initially you feel entirely lost when you face the empty program and start to build your family tree. I found however, the three building blocks that underpin the process were:

Adding People
Adding Family ‘Units’
Adding Person ‘Relationships’

Once you figure out how to do these, your family tree will flesh out significantly. Although I mentioned that the UI isn’t great, its easy to see how quickly it is to do things once you get familiar with the system.

Family Tree Diagram

Strangely enough, the idea of creating your own family tree showing every member is something that I couldn’t see that Gramps supported out of the box. The ability to see the lineage of a specific person (called ‘Pedigree’) is instead the focus. After a quick search online however, it turned out that I had to install a plugin called Graph View which added this ability to see a complete tree of everyone.

At this point, it seemed pretty straightforward, I had the Family Tree before me, there must be an option to export it as a high quality image … right? Unfortunately not.

This is where I feel there is an extra step of unnecessary complexity that most people will not even attempt. It is honestly frustrating that the simple desire of a having a (popular) open source program assemble and generate a digital image of a a family tree is thwarted in this way.

Nonetheless, I didn’t come this far only to give up at this point.

After some more research I found a tool called GraphWiz that is able to take a .gv file and generate a high quality image based on it. Thankfully, I am able to get this .gv file from within Gramps to do just this.

The full process requires use of the command line, and I have summarised the steps below (based on Windows):

With Gramps open, enter GraphView mode
Select the Print icon from GraphView Toolbar and export the Family Tree. This will give you 2 files, a .gv and a .svg file
Install Graphviz onto your system
Open Command Prompt and run the below command from the same directory as .gv file:


 "C:\Program Files\Graphviz\bin\dot" -T[FILETYPE] [GV FILE] -o [NEWFILE].[FILETYPE]

For example, to generate a PNG image file or an SVG vector file:


 "C:\Program Files\Graphviz\bin\dot" -Tpng Graphview.gv -o FamilyTree.png

 "C:\Program Files\Graphviz\bin\dot" -Tsvg Graphview.gv -o FamilyTree.svg

A moment after the above command is run (depending on which format you wish), you will end up with a high quality image representation of your Family Tree.

The Future

Starting this journey, I intended to find a Family Tree software that was equipped to stand the test of time as much as reasonably possible. Gramps is open source, has a dedicated community and exports to an open standard file format. I think as far as any reasonable person would agree, I feel as though I have accomplished my goal.

Gramps also has many other features such as adding information for events in a persons life, photos of them, events in their life and a geographical map of family members all across the world. As nice as these all sound, the bar was very low for me. I am happy with simply recording names, ages, marriages and relationships, and Gramps accommodates for that too.

Having done my part, I hope to spread the resulting .ged file to family members en masse. Whether they are interested in maintaining it themselves, updating it or even passing it down to their descendants over time is their choice to make. I am optimistic but also a realist. I know that this software isn’t easy to use or intuitively understand and besides, not everyone cares enough about their lineage in our times to warrant spending any significant amount of time on this like I have.

But if there is even one person, perhaps someone alive today or yet unborn who wishes to carry on and maintain the Family Tree, then they will have everything at their disposal to do so. Gramps may come and go, but I know that whatever replaces it will still be able to read the information I have collected in my .ged file.

The specific files I intend to spread around family members (and leave behind to my own children) will include:

A copy of the Gramps application
The .ged Family Tree file
A Gramps backup mirroring the contents of the .ged file
A JPG Image version of the family tree

This will be enough for anyone to get started and continue the tree independently.

Perhaps a time will come when Gramps is relegated to software used before something ‘proper’ was released. As software becomes easier and cheaper to build, I have no doubt this will be the case. I foresee that beautiful, effective and simple software will arise which carry out this task in an effortless and accessible manner. Until then, I will do my part to document my family history and pass the information down as part of the minor contribution I have made to my family name.

For now, Gramps will do.

References

26th August 2024

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