Throwback Thursday – Family Tree Maker 1.01

For this Throwback Thursday, I am digging into my collection, and in this case, it’s a look at what came in a boxed copy of Banner Blue Software’s Family Tree Maker I – or in my case, Family Tree Maker 1.01 (September, 1990) for MS-DOS/PCs (Windows was not yet popular). According to Kenneth L. Hess’s (creator/founder of Banner Blue) website (link), Family Tree Maker 1.01 actually came out in April of 1990. As far as I know, my boxed copy is complete – it’s possible the floppies were originally sealed in a plastic bag (I know my FTM 3.4 floppies were) and there may have been a cardboard spacer, but otherwise it looks complete.

It was programmed by Kenneth L. Hess and Hugo D. Paz with help from Brett A. Walter and James Peter Loan. Interestingly enough, speaking of “Blue”, Kenneth L. Hess went up into space on a Blue Origin rocket back in May of this year (link).

It was only out for DOS at this time. I was using Apple II’s in school, and at home a Commodore 64 and TI-99/4A, but I was using DOS a lot as well on PCs, and from looking at the screenshots (actually somebody hit “Print Screen” and then used those printed out on paper-images in the manual), it would have been easy to navigate around..

Note: the version I have is Family Tree Maker 1.01, and “1.01” would seem like a minor upgrade, but it might not have been – according to Hess’s website (link to 1.01 supplemental brochure) there were a lot of changes.

I’ll be using print-screen screenshots from the manual to illustrate the software, as I have not copied the files off of the floppies yet – I need to do it properly (I have a PC just for archiving old floppies, etc.), and make archival copies/images. I only want to do this once, as I’m not sure what condition the floppies are in (physically they look great). It can be real hit or miss with floppies from the 1980s/1990.

Family Tree Maker I for DOS came with some hefty requirements:

  • 384Kb of RAM (Memory) – the more RAM you had beyond 384Kb, the more names and genealogy data you could enter into each “card file” in the program (card file = database).
  • If you had 640Kb or more of RAM, you could enter approximately 1,000 names (or more) into each card file. If you’ve been doing genealogy for a few years, you probably have more than 1,000 names.

GEDCOM Support?

One interesting thing to note – This particular copy I have says in the user guide/manaul that it was issued as the Third Edition (September 1990). Wikipedia says that there was no GEDCOM support (link) for the FTM 1.x series. In the back of my manual, there is a Family Tree Maker Accessories Order Form (see a photo in the gallery below), and on that form, it has Laser Printer Fonts Diskette (not many people had laser printers at home in 1989 or 1990), a Parchment Paper Pack (75 sheets), and this:

Data Exchange Utility (GEDCOM & ASCII) – $29.95 (USD). $29.95 USD in 1990 is equivalent to about $71 here in 2024.

I may try and append the Wikipedia entry to mention it (which can be tough, as people love to revert changes) – I have seen this utility mentioned (I believe it came built-in with FTM 2.0), and given that this is the Third Edition, and that the order form existed, I don’t think they’d be playing games with such an expensive utility. People would be sending in their money, and they’d be a little displeased to send in such a large amount and then be told it didn’t exist. The fact that this wasn’t included in FTM 1.01 makes me think they were saving it for 2.0 or it was a late edition or more likely it was a 3rd-party utility (in 1989/1990, GEDCOM 4.0 was an actual standard at this point). I’m not sure though – FTM 2.0 would not come out for another four years (and GEDCOM 5.0 would be available by then), so saving it for a future upgrade while there were already genealogy programs out there that supported GEDCOM out of the box seems risky..

Not everybody had hard drives in their computers.

The manual also had a tutorial for those people who were running FTM off of floppies, because they’d didn’t have a hard drive. Yes, you read that right – in 1989/1990, not everybody with a PC (or the alternatives) had a hard drive, and so we had to play the floppy shuffle. This is where RAM became extremely important – if you had the lowest amount required, you could run into problems, as what you could hold in RAM while swapping out the main FTM program disk for a data disk was extremely limited. The instructions mention that you would place a write-protect tab on 5.25″ floppies, or push the write-protect tab up on 3.5″ floppies on your original FTM floppy so that it wasn’t overwritten or erased.

What about photos?

Photos weren’t really a thing in 1990 – most of us did not have access to the main commercially produced/consumer scanner – the Logitech ScanMan (came out in 1989 I believe). It was a very low-resolution grayscale scanner as well (but it was still a scanner!)

Instead, what you did in FTM was print out ancestor/descendant charts with a lot of room/lines left in between relatives (you could adjust this when you were going to print), and then you would physically attach photos to the printed family tree.

Why is there parchment paper?

Banner Blue included a few dozen sheets of pinned or continuously-fed simulated parchment paper for your dot-matrix printer to make some cool reports and family tree printouts. Banner Blue also included an order form that allowed you to order another 75 sheets of simulated parchment paper for $12.95 (around $30 today).

Speaking of printing out

Your main interface was what looked like a series of card files – if you wanted to see a true chart (ancestors, pedigree, etc.), you had to print it out (somebody correct me if I’m wrong). This makes sense – at the time, few DOS programs made us of a mouse, so the interfaces were made to be tabbed through, and a large diagram of people and how they related to one another was not the norm/easiest of tings for DOS programs (although some DOS programs did support such charts).

Registration, Address Changes?

Back then, if you wanted to receive news about major upgrades (specifically upgrade prices) or even simple fixes, you filled out a registration card and sent it through the mail. If you moved, you wanted them to know you did so that when they sent out information, you received it. Yeah, all done through physical “snail mail” and if you received an updated version of the software, it was sent on another floppy.

Physical Dimensions

The box itself was large measured approximately 12 inches by 10 inches (30cm x 25cm). The manual measured 11 inches by 9 inches (28cm x 23cm) and had around 150 pages (very well made). I’ve included a comparison photo showing a CD-ROM case of Family Tree Maker 2017 on top of the box.