Genealogy Software

Family history research takes many forms. Many people wish to research their own family tree to find their ancestors as far back as they can along one or multiple lines.

Others are researching all the families in a particular geographical region (place study) or those with a particular surname (one name study). Demographic studies can also benefit from this type of software.

QL Genealogist is a family tree program written for the Sinclair QL and compatibles, and allows you to store a whole host of details about your family, even allowing you to build up a single tree of both your male and female ancestors.

Genealogy Research System is a much enhanced version of this software, written to run under the Windows operating system and building on both QL Genealogist and the earlier Genealogy for Windows program (also by Deltadrive). The Genealogy Research System proves an invaluable tool in the study of inheritance and genetics in both humans and animal breeding. Any work that involves tracing back through each generation for medical, financial or any other reason will benefit from this software. Genealogy Research System is available direct from Deltadrive

The user friendly interface for both of these programs ensure that you do not waste valuable research time in learning how to use a new program in order to enter your data. In fact, you are asked to enter the information in pretty much the form that you find it - for example, birth certificates. The program then tries to match up the information which you have found against the people already in your family tree, asking you to verify whether each person is a match, a possible match or definitely not a match.

Tracing your family tree is a fascinating hobby that can grow throughout your lifetime and into retirement and who knows what pedigree your lineage will turn up! Many other interests complement family tree research and studies of local history, inheritance, gene research, genetics, heraldry, demography and many others may follow. The internet is making research easier and faster to do, although it must be noted that although there are hundreds of sites on the internet dedicated to genealogy, not all of them can be trusted as a source of historical information. Research on the internet must therefore be seen as one of several sources in helping you verify your family history.

You will be able to leave a valuable inheritance as a result of your hobby for your own relatives and descendants if you publish your work.

We would also recommend that you search through the National Archives, which provides the ability to search and view over a million Wills spanning the years 1384 to 1858, plus WW1 Campaign Medals, WWII Seaman's Medals and Famous people's Wills, including William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Sir Christopher Wren, Napoleon Bonaparte and Sir Francis Drake. All in all, this is an excellent service and provides a lot of interesting information as well as the assistance towards building up details of your family tree.

QL Genealogist (min 1920K required)
Review: QL World Jan'91, QL World Apr'92, QL Technical Review Vol 7, Quanta Oct'94
This is the pointer driven version of this very popular program for the budding family historian, which allows you to create a vast database of your family tree. It can produce a standard family tree diagram, and allows you to store details about each person, such as alternative spellings of names, parentage and children, details of events, such as births, deaths, marriages, baptisms and Wills. You can even link a text file or a picture with each person in the database. Research dates can be listed as approximate, before, after or invalid (to highlight where the dates were wrongly recorded in an original register). There are many other features which should meet the needs of all historians, and with a well written manual (including tutorial), this program should soon become a very useful tool in such research.

Sidewriter forms a useful complement to this program, allowing you to print family trees sideways on your printer

Released as freeware in 2016 to mark the 30th Anniversary of RWAP Software, QL Genealogist (and the sources) can be downloaded from the Sinclair QL Homepage.

The latest sources are also available on GitHub

QL Genealogy