New Category: Genealogy Software

DNA is now a household word, but the history dates back to Charles Darwin in 1859 when he published The Origin of Species and had a fascinating history leading up to The Human Genome Project in 2003 and continues to advance today.

For most of us, one of DNA's fascinating uses is the ability to trace your roots back further than ever imagined. Most people have a family history and a pretty good idea of their roots, but you might be surprised at your true DNA. All it took was on great, great, great great, grandfather to cross over from France to Germany or Poland to the Ukraine for a little fun and everything changes, as I recently found out. I was always told I was Italian, French, German, Polish, and English. They weren't far off, but they were off:

Great Britain 21%
Ireland 12%
Scandinavia 9%
Caucasus 2%
Africa North 1%

I never saw Ireland or Scandinavia coming at such large percentages. It turns out my wife, who is Irish is probably more Italian than me. But, the significant portion of my DNA is Europe, particularly Western Europe and that does cover France and Germany. That said, as you can see, these details are still a little vague as more DNA rolls into the big three websites, so we still have a long way to go.

FamilyTree DNA (my favorite), Ancestry, and 23andMe are the most popular costing $9.99 a month or a reduced annual fee, plus a charge for submitting your DNA.

If you're on a budget, this might not be something you can afford, but if you have the time and patience, you can build your family tree for free. Because of this, we've scoured the web for the best, free Genealogy Software. Even if you use one of the web-based services, you still might want a local copy of your family tree.

Here is the list of our current Genealogy Software:

Gramps gives you the ability to record the many details of an individual’s life as well as the complex relationships between various people, places, and events.

Genealogica Grafica can build an ancestor, descendants or relationship chart and produce an elegant web-style genealogical text in your language.

ScionPC is a free and portable genealogy app with a modern, easy-to-use interface, ideal for both the novice and the experienced genealogist.

Ahnenblatt is a free and easy-to-use genealogy app designed to manage your genealogy data and to generate reports and graphical trees.

MyHeritage Family Tree Builder helps you research your family history, build your family tree and add photos, historical records and more.

Geneotree is a Gedcom file PHP viewer that's full dynamic on the web featuring dynamic trees, cartography & stats.

Well, you made it to the end, and we bet you have a question; which one is the best? We would begin with Gramps, which is top-rated everywhere we went.



Close runner-ups would be Genealogica Grafica and ScionPC. We listed these three at the top for this reason.

We hope you like the Genealogy Software we've hand-selected for you and wish you luck in your journey.