Genealogy
Nick Peers reveals how to record, manage and share your family history research with Gramps, a powerful open-source tool.
Nick Peers reveals how to record, manage and share your family history research with Gramps, a powerful open-source tool. Then he tries to bury his sordid past…
Family history is one of the most rewarding pastimes: not only do you get to learn about your ancestors, but something about the world around you too. You may even reconnect with distant branches of the family tree, uncovering photos, documents and other insights you never knew existed. The internet has simplified the task of genealogy by saving you trips to dusty churches and archives to track down information.
But you still need somewhere to store all that information, and if you don’t trust online services, you’ll want to use your trusty PC for the task. When it comes to choosing a family history program, Linux users have one practical choice that doesn’t involve Wine: Gramps.
This is the finest example of open-source genealogy
software there is. It has gained a reputation for being powerful but not that user-friendly, though recent releases have made it much more accessible – and armed with this tutorial, you’re going to get a good grounding in using the program.
Set up your gramps
Gramps is provided in most Linux repositories, but despite what the Gramps wiki claims, installing it from the Ubuntu repos leads to version 4.2.8 being installed, which is now three years old.
Download the latest version (5.0.1 at time of writing) from https://github.com/gramps-project/gramps/ releases/v5.0.1. Save the DEB version to your hard drive and open a Terminal and use:
sudo dpkg -i gramps_5.0.1-1_all.deb
If you get an error about dependencies run:
sudo apt-get -f install
You’ll now be able to run Gramps from the launcher. When you open Gramps for the first time, you’ll be prompted to create your first tree: click New and give it a suitable name. Your surname followed by ‘Family Tree’ is a standard choice here. Once done, leave the file selected and click ‘Load Family Tree’.
You’ll find yourself at the main Gramps dashboard, which is basically a multi-paned window you’ll be able to customise later on. For now, it’s time to start building your tree. All genealogy programs follow a similar basic structure: you create individuals (People), then link them (Relationships) by connecting to their immediate relatives (Families).
The best place to start is with yourself: first, select People from the left-hand pane to switch to a new view. Click the green + button in the toolbar to enter your details: you’ll see there’s room for lots of them, but typically all you need is your first name(s), entered in the Given field, and surname entered in the field next to ‘prefix’. If you’re female, your surname should be your birth name, if applicable. Select your gender from the drop-down menu and click OK.
You’ll see your surname appear; click it to expand it and reveal your personal entry. Double-click this to return to the Person Editor screen to add some flesh to your genealogical bones.
Start by adding your married name if applicable:
select the Names tab, then click the + button beneath it. Set the Type drop-down to ‘Married Name’ and fill in the details as before. Click OK when done.
Add your first event
Now switch back to the Events tab. This is where you record all the details and facts that make up each person’s life, from their birth to their death and every significant event in between – from appearances in documentary evidence (whether it’s a census return, employment records or – gasp – in front of a judge) to places where they lived, jobs they held and so on.
Click + and you’ll see the Event Reference Editor window open with ‘Birth’ selected as the ‘Event type’. All events – also known as facts in genealogy circles – are made up of several elements: the type, date, place where it occurred and a handy description field. You’ll also see a tags option; these allow you to create your own system for organising and finding information, but aren’t compulsory and can be added later.
Start by entering your birth date: you can type it in manually using the following (ISO 8601) syntax: YYYYMM-DD (for example, 1975-12-25 for 25 December 1975). That’s fine if you know the exact date, but you’ll come across dates that are less precise – and even estimates. You can simply enter YYYY or YYYY-MM, or click the date editor button to the right of the Date field for more options, such as setting the date as an estimate or providing a date range (such as 1874-1876).
Events are also linked to places. These aren’t recorded as simple text fields but are instead linked to a database of place names. Not only does this provide a means of keeping place names consistent, it also works on a hierarchical level, with separate entries for each place division (countries, counties, cities, districts all the way down to individual buildings), which are then linked together by a means of ‘enclosures’. Confused? Don’t be, it’s quite simple: counties are enclosed inside countries, cities and towns inside counties, and so on.
Setting the scene
It’s an elegant system, let down by the fact no places are provided by default – you literally start with a blank page, even with standardised places like counties and countries. Thankfully, adding places isn’t too difficult: click the + next to Place to start. First, enter the lowest level of the address you have; if you’re recording a birth, for example, than it might be a hospital name. Enter the name, then set the Type drop-down to Building. You’ll see spaces for recording latitude and longitude, allowing you to pinpoint the place on a map. You can get this information via Google Maps: locate the building, right-click and choose ‘What’s here’ to reveal the coordinates, or even Wikipedia in the case of some historical buildings now closed or demolished.
Once done, click the + button on the ‘Enclosed by’ tab to create the next level in the place’s address: a street name perhaps, or the village, town or city. Click OK and you’ll see it appear. Now click OK and switch to Places view. You’ll see both places in the list – doubleclick the entry you’ve just created and click + under its ‘Enclosed by’ tab to create the next level, and so on until you reach country level. Don’t bother entering geocodes for these higher levels – they’re only really needed for a building or precise street address.
Once you’ve entered your first event, you can move on to the next one. Again, choose a type, date and place, but when you come to enter the place details you
can click ‘Select an existing place’ to choose a place already created, as well as create new ones. If a selected place has already been enclosed, you won’t need to do so again. Check out the quick tips for another way of quickly adding a place to a specific place hierarchy, or – if this sounds like too much hassle – check out the box (far right) for a plug-in that can help remove the gruntwork.
Manage your places database via the Places view; you can edit places from here, plus get a comprehensive list of all events they’re linked to (look under References for this). You can also attach photos via the Gallery tab; for more on photos, see the step-by-step guide below.
Making connections
We’ll return to adding more details to individual ancestors – photos, sources and so on – shortly. For now, let’s switch focus to building out your tree by adding all your family: children, spouses, siblings, parents and so on. The quickest way to add additional people to your tree is to automatically link them together in families as you create them. To do this select ‘Add > Family’. Here you’ll be greeted with a new dialogue box from where you can add existing people, or create new ones from scratch as parents and children within the family. You’ll also find a ‘Relationship option’ drop-down enabling you to specify the nature of the parents’ relationship: married, civil union, unmarried or unknown.
You’ll also see an Events tab, where you’ll see it’s possible to create (or link existing) events to family groups as well as individuals. It works in the same way as it does for individuals – perfect for recording shared events such as marriages or census returns. Once done, you can then link the event to all individual participants (bride, groom and so on) as well as the family.
As you build up connections between people, you’ll see the Families view start to fill out with a list of families. You’ll also see a Relationships view: select a person under People and then select Relationships to view both their parents and family (partner and children). This view may seem superfluous, but – like
all of Gramps – it serves a purpose in aiding navigation. From here you can switch active view to another individual (click their name), or use the pencil icon next to a name to perform some quick edits.
Build up your history
Family history is far more than simply compiling a list of names and dates to see how far back you can push your tree. Take the time to learn a bit more about your ancestors’ lives using documentary evidence, and you’ll be surprised how you can quickly build up a rich picture of the kind of lives they led. Unlike other genealogy programs, Gramps can’t easily link to third-party websites to let you quickly hunt down and merge records into your tree, so this information needs to be entered manually.
When you’re recording events – also known as facts – it’s important to provide supporting evidence for that information, particularly when you come across conflicting information: people’s ages were recorded haphazardly from one census return to the next in the 19th and early 20th century, for example. This is done using sources (see the box on page 65 for details) and as with other aspects of Gramps, you can set these up as you add events.
When inputting an event’s details, go to the Source Citations tab and click + before clicking + to create the source itself. Use the Notes tab to transcribe specific information, and the Gallery tab to attach a scan or image of the document (if downloaded from the internet). Switch to the Repositories tab if you want to assign it to a repository.
You’ll see that Gramps provides separate views for sources, citations and repositories, enabling you to review and edit these independently.
Exploring your tree
Once your tree starts to take shape, Gramps provides you with numerous ways in which you can view and explore your research. Select a person and click Charts, for example, to view a simple pedigree chart of the selected person and their immediate ancestors. Use the Geography view to plot the selected person’s life on a map, with each place highlighted on a map; for this to work, you need to properly geocode each place.
When it comes to creating more meaningful insights, explore the Reports menu. This can be used to create graph-like displays, charts or reports, which can be exported as PDF files or printed out. You can also build a fully functioning website for offline use (load it onto a USB stick for another family member to browse) or to upload to your web space.
Each report is fully customisable, and the number of options can be a little bewildering at first. Take our advice and experiment with settings producing PDFS, if necessary, before committing anything to paper.
Now that you’ve explored the basics of Gramps and got to grips with its breadcrumb-like navigation system, powerful set of tools and customisable user interface, don’t forget to keep digging. Make use of its Bookmarks system to add shortcuts to frequently accessed items – just navigate to the view you want and choose Bookmarks > Add Bookmark.
Also make use of the Go menu to retrace your steps through each separate view, and explore the Tools menu for a series of options helping you to analyse your data in various ways as well as performing various checks and – if necessary – repairs. Finally, don’t forget to bookmark the Gramps Wiki (https://grampsproject.org/wiki) – if you run into problems, you’ll find detailed help here.