I have written in the past about the "Presidential Family Forest," a CD-ROM database produced by Millisecond Publishing Company. This is a lineage-linked database that digitally connects people with each other. That particular CD-ROM disk contains information about all of the Presidents and Vice Presidents of the United States, along with that of their wives. It continues with information about other people who are related by birth or marriage (ancestors, descendants, and other relatives) to these people. The result is a fascinating study of the many intertwining relationships of these men and women.

Millisecond Publishing Company also produces other and larger databases. This week I had a chance to try a pre-release version of their latest project: the American & European Family Forest Millennium Edition. This CD-ROM disk continues in the same vein as the Presidential Family Forest, only it contains information about many thousands of more individuals. It is not limited to presidents and vice-presidents; it includes Americans from many walks of life. While the CD-ROM database focuses on Americans, many of the listings include ancestry traced into Europe. Therefore, you can also find many thousands of Europeans listed on this CD-ROM as well as Americans.

Lineage-linked and fully sourced, many ancestral lines on the American & European Family Forest Millennium Edition CD-ROM are covered back at least ten generations. A few claims go back more than sixty generations or 2,000 years. All claims need to be independently verified, however. Millisecond Publishing Company supplies the information "as is" and cites the sources where the information was found. However, the company cannot verify the accuracy of those sources. Most of the sources I found on the CD-ROM were secondary sources. Like all other genealogy information, the burden of proof rests on the shoulders of the individual researcher.

The American & European Family Forest Millennium Edition CD-ROM includes all the software needed to install and use the CD-ROM disk on Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, and Windows 2000. I installed it on a Windows 2000 Pro system and everything worked well, even though I was using a pre-release version of the product. While Millisecond Publishing has supplied the data, the American & European Family Forest Millennium Edition CD-ROM software is "Family Explorer" produced by Progeny Software. This is an excellent software choice, in my opinion. Unlike some other genealogy CD-ROM disks, this one is a true relational database. You can find information, print pedigree charts and print descendant charts from the information contained on the CD-ROM.

Installation was quick and simple. A minute or so after opening the package I was looking at genealogy data. I first entered my own surname and then clicked on "GO TO." Within two or three seconds I was looking at a list of 100 or so individuals. For more common surnames you will want to enter a first name as well. From the name list I clicked on a random individual’s listing; this displayed a details screen showing all the pertinent information about that person. Clicking on the "Sources" icon revealed the original source of that information. In this case, the source was a birth record listed in the "History & Genealogy of Montague Family" by George Wm. Montague, page 297. This book was about an entirely differently family, and I would not have known about the reference. Based upon the information on the American & European Family Forest Millennium Edition CD-ROM, I now know that I should rent a microfilm copy of the Montague book and look on page 297.

I clicked on "Ancestors," and a pedigree chart of the individual was then displayed. In this case, the individual’s great-grandmother was Hannah Montague, which explains why the person of another name was listed in the Montague family genealogy book. I also was able to print the pedigree chart, along with an hourglass report of ancestors and descendants, a family group sheet, a fan chart of ancestors, a descendants chart and more.

The American & European Family Forest Millennium Edition CD-ROM can produce very large pedigree box charts and descendants box charts. In theory, it can produce pedigree charts with more than one million boxes filled in. However, that number of individuals requires a very powerful computer with lots of memory. I guess it would also require a rather large printer! Don’t worry about it, however; you do not need to upgrade your computer. A normal Windows computer can easily produce reports of a few hundred or even a few thousand individuals.

I did a search for Samuel Finley Breese Morse, the inventor of the telegraph. The American & European Family Forest Millennium Edition only required a couple of seconds to produce a list of his six generations of known ancestors, including family names of Morse, Finley and Breese. A similar search on George Walker Bush, born in 1946 in New Haven, Connecticut, reveals thousands of ancestors. However, that report required more than 15 minutes to display on my 600-MHz Pentium III system running Windows 2000 with 128 megabytes of memory and a 32-speed CD-ROM drive. The time required on your computer will vary, depending upon the amount of memory available, the CD-ROM speed, and the processor speed.

The American & European Family Forest Millennium Edition is an interesting product, one that becomes addictive. It has many thousands of people in its database, and finding possible ancestors almost becomes a game. While it has the words "American & European" in its title, keep in mind that it focuses primarily on Americans and all of their ancestors, including those from Europe. You won’t find many twentieth-century Europeans listed.

The American & European Family Forest Millennium Edition CD-ROM costs $49.00 (U.S. funds) plus $4.95 for shipping and handling. It is available directly from Millisecond Publishing Company. For more information, look at: www.familyforest.com