EZITREE - Authors

EZITREE Family History Software Authors - Rex and Yvonne Toomey

Thank you for taking the time to find out about the author of EZITREE.

My name is Rex Toomey, and I am the author of the EZITREE Family History Software. After working as a Technical Analyst in the computer industry for 20 years with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and EDS (Australia) Pty Ltd, I retired in 2003 and shortly after, moved to Port Macquarie with my wife Yvonne.

I first become interested in family history at an early age when genealogical records were mostly un-indexed and generally difficult to access. I tried to record my family history using a number of manual systems with printed pages and 6 x 4 inch filing cards, but none met my needs.

In 1983, I purchased my first computer, a Commodore 64 without a storage device. It was real fun typing in the programs and running them, then loosing them program when the computer was turned off! Later on, I purchased a 1541 floppy disk drive so that I could save my programs. The first 'real' computer software that I purchased was Superbase 64, and using this program I wrote my first family history computer program. Later on, I upgraded to the Commodore 128, Superbase 128 and the 1571 floppy disk drive, which gave me more storage capacity and more features.

About 1987, I came up against the limits of the Commodore computer and changed over to an Intel-based XT. It arrived at my home in a number of boxes that I had fun unwrapping and building. I then started the task of re-writing what I had done on the Commodore, and putting it onto the XT computer, using database software called "Clipper - Summer '87". EZITREE IBM Versions 4 and 5 were the result of this re-write.

It was not long after this that I had the idea of making my computer program 'event-based'. What I had found in my research was that most programs of the time only catered for the basic events of birth, christening, marriage, death and burial. I had events for engagements, war service, education, house purchase, etc, that could only be stored as notes, but I wanted these to be fully searchable and be able to list them chronologically in a chart.

About 1993, I re-wrote EZITREE again, using Microsoft FoxPro for DOS as the database, and it became my first event-based family history software. This software also allowed me to build EZITREE as a 'Windows-like' program, whilst still running from DOS. It was not until1998, that I re-wrote most of EZITREE again, this time using Microsoft Visual FoxPro, and now EZITREE was finally a 'true' Windows program. Being Windows-based, I was able to have images, sound and video files included for the first time.

In the whole time that I have been developing EZITREE, my wife Yvonne has always been right beside me providing encouragement, support and advice. It is to her that I dedicate the program.

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Last Updated 23 Aug 2007