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INTRODUCTION |
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Copyright © 2001-2008
Tel +44 (0) 1704 512966 |
A very warm welcome to you and thank you for your interest. Let me begin by
saying that there are some extremely good genealogy programmes available
today, but you must be at your computer to fully utilise their features - and
most of them are quite expensive.
The Suffolk System of Recording Family History uses a word-processor
(which you are almost certain to have already) to store your data, and, as a
result of some "lateral thinking" by its author, allows you to
take ALL your relevant information with you in an A4 ring binder.
Your records are easily edited and updated and utilise a brilliantly simple,
yet incredibly effective, cross-referencing method. I will explain it to
you, and you can either "go it alone" or you can
purchase a set of templates for a fraction of the
cost of most Genealogy programs. (In fact, as soon as you are ready to buy the
templates, just click on the
The Suffolk System of Recording Family History is taken from "Family History the Suffolk Way”, a collection of writings by my late father, Bill Suffolk, on elementary family history research and the use of a word processor in recording and indexing the results.
Although written 10 years ago, the system he devised and the advice he has to offer is simply unbeatable. When Bill had finished developing his ideas into a working system, he sent it off to "Family History" Magazine in the UK for review. Much to his surprise he was told it would "revolutionise the recording of Family History" and before he knew what was happening, he had a mailbox full of letters from readers asking for details. Today, the format in which the information is displayed has been adopted and included in many of the more expensive genealogy software applications - but as Bill said 10 years ago, you don't need expensive software, just a word-processor. And, although he would have been amazed at today’s technology and particularly what you can now do with a word-processor, his system lends itself perfectly to distribution via the Internet.
It was originally written for the Amstrad PCW series and published in booklet form. I have updated his work to fit the electronic age and have re-created his templates for use with today's word-processors.
You may already have gathered a large amount of information and need a suitable way to store it - I doubt if you will find a better method than “the Suffolk way”. Not only will all your data be easily accessible and “updateable” within your computer, you will also have (and this is the real power of our way) an extremely portable system which you can take anywhere your research takes you!
(Another important detail is that our system is also considerably cheaper than virtually any Family History application! OK, so we don't supply 20 CD-Roms, but we are showing you an excellent, useful - and very usable - way to record the information you have now and will subsequently gather in your future research.)
The Suffolk System takes the conventional way of drawing out lines of descent and turns it on its side! You can display up to 15 generations, quite legibly, across a sheet of A4 paper.
The overall advice contained within these pages is appropriate to anyone, anywhere in the world, although the references to things such as “St. Catherine’s House” and “Parish Registers” etc are UK specific. Simply insert your “local” equivalent sources of records.
We will help you get started on a fascinating and rewarding hobby, and you will find some extremely useful information within. Interest in “Family History” has exploded with the arrival of the Internet and the availability of computers in the home. We cannot cover every single available resource to you – there are over 3 million references to "Family History" on the Internet! However, as this site develops, we will bring you more links to useful online resources.
Before we continue, just a few comments as to how the site is set up.
All links to external sources (i.e. someone else's website) will open in a new browser window, and to return here, simply close that window.
All internal links will open within this window.
Please click one of the links below
Introduction
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button on the left.)