For nearly 20 years I had used Legacy as my family tree program. But I’m doing a One-name study and the person who will take over when I’ve gone uses Family Historian.

Conscious of my age I thought it only right to change my program to Family Historian which was her program of choice.

I bit the bullet and paid for Family Historian, trusting that making a financial outlay would give me the incentive not to go back.

Well, Family Historian really didn’t like importing the Legacy gedcom, but with 9000 individuals I gave it no choice!

Next, I looked on the Calico Pie website for Tutorial videos. There were only a few and they seemed to me to be mostly about charts and diagrams.

An area that doesn’t interest me particularly. Legacy has 100’s, if not 1000’s, producing at least one new one every week.

Obviously, a lot on topics of general interest to Genealogists, but a lot about the program, with loads of tips and shortcuts.

I then discovered FHUG – loads of information, but the constant links to other sections I found confusing.
Then the e-mail Group.io. It was there that I asked the question that started this Group.
Lots of people saw loads of problems with an online group.

Lots more thought it a good idea, but no-one said they would do it. So I set up the Group and then what did I do – never having used Zoom before, I downloaded and installed it.

I set up a session for the very next evening, thinking about 4 or 5 might turn up and I could work things out as we went along.
In the event there were 20, I stumbled my way through, people complained that my free version only gave us 40 minutes.
A couple of folk, who knew about Zoom sent me the email addresses that had been added to the Chat box.
I did a crowd funding appeal and by the next week we had our pro version.

Derek Heritage  October 2022