Learning how to make a family tree can be an easy and fun experience for everyone in the family.
You may be wondering how to make a genealogical tree, and in this article, we’ll tell you exactly what to do. You won
Learning how to make a family tree can be an easy and fun experience for everyone in the family.
You may be wondering how to make a genealogical tree, and in this article, we’ll tell you exactly what to do. You won’t need any specialized tree templates to make your tree chart, so don’t be afraid to dive right in.
What is A Family Tree?
A family history is a diagram which charts the familial relationships of each generation of a family. In essence, a family history tracks your family genealogy and is the way you make a family tree: who is related to who, and how. You could also call family history charts genealogical trees, but it doesn’t quite roll off the tongue as well.
A very small family history chart might be one node for a mother, another node for a father, and then above them, nodes for their children. Most families who make family history charts want to go a bit further than the obvious, though.
Complicated family history charts look more like tree charts than simple diagrams because they contain a lot of information. Each node of the family history chart shows who gave birth to that person and also any children that person subsequently had, and with who. If you’re trying to establish your family’s lineage past a couple of living generations, you’ll rapidly find that things get difficult.
How to Make a Family Tree
Making a family history chart can be as simple or as difficult as you choose to make it. Some families prefer to hunt down distant relatives in other countries, whereas others are content to account for everyone within two or three generations.
You’ll follow four main steps to make a family history chart: tallying your living relatives, figuring out where dead relatives should go, hunting down more detail on dead relatives if desired, and compiling all of the information together.
If you don’t have a poster board, pins, and boxes of old photos, you should probably assemble those before starting. You can also use a software program to keep track of your family’s genealogy if you prefer.
Account for Living Relatives
Accounting for living relatives is as easy as writing on an index card the name of the living family member, then pinning that index card to the board. Pinning a photograph to the index card on the board helps to see who is who at a glance.
Start from your immediate family first, then work your way outward. For everyone that has a maiden name or a nickname, you should write it on their index card. For now, pin older generations lower on the poster board and pin the younger generations above them.
As an example, let’s say your immediate family consists of your parents, you, your sibling, your spouse, and your two children. Your parents would each have a card, and have their index cards at the bottom. Above them should be your card, and next to your card should be your spouse.
At this point, you should work out a system for identifying the original bloodline of your family. Mark your spouse’s card to indicate that they weren’t a child of your parents, but rather a child of someone else’s parents—who you may or may not want to put on the tree. Put your sibling’s card next to your card, once again making sure that it’s clear that they’re your sibling and not your spouse.
Above you and your spouse, put a card for each of your children. Voila, you now have a simple family history chart which accounts for the founders of the family, their progeny, and then the latest generation as begat by those progenies. This basic family history chart will look more like a shrub, but it’s a start.
If you want to get fancy, you can write stuff like the country of origin or other data onto the index cards.
Interview Living Relatives About Dead Relatives
You probably want to take the family history chart way beyond a simple bush, though. To fill out the roots and branches of the family history chart, you’ll need to start including dead relatives, including those that you may not hear about much.
Interview your living relatives about the ones who have passed is a great starting point.
You’ve probably heard your parents or grandparents mention their lost siblings or parents in passing, but now it’s time to pin down those relationships. Ask questions until you have an index card for all of the siblings, parents, great-aunts, cousins, and others that you may have never heard of before.
A great question to start with is “who did Grandma like to tell stories about that you never met?” questions like these build the basis for the harder-to-reach roots of the family history chart. You may not necessarily have enough information to place the new entries correctly—sometimes it won’t be clear who was on what side of the family.
The important thing during this step is to assemble names, ranges of years, and geographical areas. If your dead relatives were particularly talkative, you might have a huge extension of you