Genealogy Websites and Technical Reference Resources

Barry & Associates, Inc., founded by Douglas K. Barry, formerly provided consulting in advanced software architecture and now, after his retirement, maintains five free genealogy websites along with technical publications and historical reference material from his consulting days.

The Genealogy Websites

Family Tree Searcher. This is an easy way to research your ancestor at the major genealogy websites that have family trees. You only need to enter your ancestor information once to search all the websites.
Free Genealogy Search Advice. Get free genealogy search advice based on what you already know about an ancestor. The Free Online Genealogy Search Advisor asks a series of questions about your ancestor and uses your answers to suggest records and research approaches to try next.
Free Genealogy Search Help for Google. This free genealogy tool helps you construct focused Google searches for an ancestor. Enter what you know about the ancestor and close family members—including names, locations, and relationships—and the site will create a series of Google searches designed to reduce irrelevant results and uncover useful genealogy leads.
Genealogy Fast Track. These decision charts help beginning genealogists answer a basic question: What should I research next? Starting with what you already know about your family, the charts point to practical next steps and useful genealogy resources.
The Computerized Ancestor. This is a free searchable genealogy database containing information on people drawn from more than 840,000 family group sheets.

Background

The genealogy websites listed above grew out of my genealogy hobby. As I became fairly good at searching the various websites that have family trees, friends and relatives asked me to give them suggestions for doing similar searches. Instead of telling them how to search for family trees at various sites, I decided to create a website that made it easier to search for family trees. I created that website in early 1997 and it is the Family Tree Searcher. I eventually created five genealogy-related websites.

I provided consulting services in enterprise architecture with an emphasis in service-oriented architecture, database systems, and object technology for over 26 years. During that time, I was a regular speaker at industry conferences, served as the executive director of an object database standards organization, wrote articles for industry magazines and had a regular column in one magazine for a while, wrote two books, and edited several other books.

I closed my consulting practice in March 2019. It was time to move on to what I refer to as the "third third of my life." I am leaving my primary technical website up. This is Service Architecture. That website has some unique information on web services, service-oriented architectures and cloud computing that some may find useful.

In my consulting practice, I gave advice on advanced software technology and pretty much stopped programming for others in the mid-1980s. Nevertheless, I enjoy the practice of programming and programmed these genealogy websites for the sheer pleasure of programming. The genealogy websites listed above also reflect my technical background in database construction, query formulation, and artificial intelligence.

Some sections of this website describe Barry & Associates' former consulting practice and are retained for historical and professional-background purposes. The consulting practice closed in March 2019.