I’m still struggling to learn about how The Master Genealogist (TMG) genealogy research and family history software program works. It’s not for the casual family history researcher. It is for the very serious genealogist, determined to dig into all the details of their family’s history and report on it accurately and comprehensively.

A problem I had at first was connecting a person’s life with the data TMG needed from me. A lifesaver came from Terry’s TMG Tips article, “TMG Basic Concepts - A Metaphor to Help Understand the Basics”.

…I hope to offer some basic concepts to aid users in visualizing how TMG manages their data, so that they can more quickly become comfortable in using the features of the program. This is not intended to be an accurate portrayal of the technical details of the program, but rather is intended to create a mental model to help the user to grasp what he or she needs to do to use the program effectively. In order to do that, I am using a ring binder metaphor to illustrate some of the program’s basic operations.

…In TMG, a person is only an ID number, nothing more (sorry - 1984 has come and gone ). So, using our metaphor, when we add a person, we are taking a blank piece of paper, writing an ID number in the upper left corner, and placing it in the ring binder. That’s all a “person” is in TMG.

…Everything you enter about a person is done by adding Tags. Everything! His or her name, birth and death information, parents, children, everything!

Once I understood that everyone is a number and everything about the person is a tag, it started to make sense. Starting with that information, I could begin to build information about the person’s life by adding “tags” with events and descriptions of their life.

Terry goes on to explain that once you have basic information about the person’s life entered in tags, it’s time to document their relationships. After all, no one is totally alone. Everyone comes with parents, and they come with parents, and you may have a spouse, and might even have children. You may even have brothers and sisters, and even if you don’t, your parents probably did. All of these people are connected, and the way to connect these relationships is through, you guessed it, more tags! Start to see the pattern?

I did. If you are struggling with the basic concepts of how The Master Genealogist program works, take time to study Terry’s TMG Tips for indepth information, tools, and tutorials to help you get started and learn more about how the program works.