How to make a family tree. Step-by-step instruction

Often questions about relatives and ancestors arise in the family circle, when memories of grandparents begin about their childhood, parents and other relatives. How to make a family tree quickly and simply, without knowledge of genealogy?

What is it necessary to compile a family tree

This is one of the most important stages - motivation. He just does not allow you to abandon the compilation of the tree in a couple of weeks, and bring it to the end. There are several reasons that encourage people to think about making a family tree:

• The desire to satisfy the inexplicable sentimentality that appears with age;
• To give to feel to their children respect for their roots, relatives, family history and its customs;
• To visually show their children how large the number of relatives on whom you can rely in a difficult moment;
• To realize how great your family tree is, to feel part of a large community that has its own destiny and destiny;
• Satisfy your curiosity about having a distant relationship with celebrities, find something interesting and mysterious in your roots and branches.

There is a possibility that you have other motives. Those who are engaged in building a family tree professionally, recommend not to start an investigation of their tree on the subject of belonging to noble families or to identify themselves with the descendants of famous historical figures. Usually, this does not lead to anything good, since these searches will cost a lot of money, the evidence will be inconclusive, and the matter itself will quickly get bored and is unlikely to end successfully.

With the help of what make up the family tree

Paper constructions, grouping of relatives, folders with papers are already receding into the past. Although there is sometimes a need to make some kind of recordings, it is best to use specialized programs that help to conveniently compile the found data about relatives and bring them out in a convenient and pleasant way. There are also various online services that can help in collecting data about their relatives.

There are sites in which online creation of a family tree is possible. With their help, the decision of the question of how to create a family tree becomes as simple as possible. Usually you need a free registration, information entry for each relative, his family ties and photos, and the service itself produces a graphic construction of the family tree. There are professional services like myheritage, with a lot of settings that will not only show how to make a family tree correctly, but also analyze the name, search for archives, etc. Online services are convenient for those who approach the issue not very seriously , Or to build a simple tree and its design. According to statistics, sites on average "live" to 5 years and for various reasons can disappear from the information space along with your data.

For more in-depth work on your pedigree, it's best to use special programs, information from which you can save, archive, duplicate and process on any device and at the same time be independent of the Web. Free programs, for the most part, are very simple, have little functionality and are convenient for simple tree building. More professional programs are usually paid, but with them the question of how to compile the family family tree, even a very large family, is solved qualitatively and conveniently. For example, the "Tree of Life" program in the free version has small limitations, but allows you to get acquainted with its work. The full version costs about 400 rubles. The amount is not very large, but allows you to think about how seriously you are set to work.

Start forming the tree with yourself

After the tree construction tool is selected, questions arise: how to compile the family tree and how to start creating it? The easiest way is to start with yourself. In the program or service, enter information about yourself, then about your nearest environment - about everyone you know personally and about whom you own information. Photos of these people are inserted from the hard disk or, if they are not there, scan or re-photograph the paper portraits from the albums. Attach photos, establish links, enter comments (for example, a brief biography), until personal knowledge runs out.

We continue to form the tree

The next step is a meeting with relatives. We agree on a meeting with relatives from the necessary "branches" of the tree, we take a cake and a laptop (or, better, a dictophone). During the conversation, you can get a lot of information, filling in the spaces in the family tree. At the same time, it is possible to make a big mistake without going to relatives, and collecting a large number of them in one place to interview. Usually this leads to the fact that old people correct each other, can not find agreement in different dates, argue about events and generally bring substantial chaos into a coherent scheme of your work. Therefore, thinking about how to make a family tree quickly, it is better not to take risks, but to talk with each relative separately.

Initially visit the most elderly relatives. They can tell the most about the distant relatives, time intervals, and with a good location will be allowed to use their rare photos in the albums.

It will be more convenient to hold a conversation if you prepare a mini-questionnaire for 10-15 questions before it starts: names and important dates (birth, wedding, life events, death), children and parents.

We continue to collect information

After we collected data from everyone who was nearby, the next stage will be communication with those who live far away, in other cities and countries. With them, the easiest way to communicate on the phone, Skype or via social networks. After talking with them, you can ask them and briefly tell them how to make a family tree. They can build their own branch and send it to you to add it to your big tree. This is very convenient, since it is quite difficult to do this alone. Therefore, having interested your relatives with this process, you can greatly facilitate your work. You can promise them a free copy of the tree, when it is completed or the greatest possible amount of information will be collected .

Working with archives and databases

The last step in collecting information is working with archives. After collecting all possible information from the "living" sources and their memories, the next step is working with paper and electronic archives. This work is especially useful in cases when the twig was cut off at some stage and it is not known, for example, on whom the great-grandfather married or on what front and when the great-grandfather died in the Finnish war, what rewards the grandfather received during the war. Such information can be obtained in various archives or databases. Be sure to double-check the information, because often there are namesakes, even full namesakes of people, otherwise your search can go to other people's "trees".

Layout of the family tree

When the information is collected, the question arises as to how to compile the family tree. The layout and layout can be different. The difference in the schemes is the person placed as the basis. You can build from a well-known representative of the genus to the modern generation. This option clearly shows the presence of this ancestor of children and their division into different family branches.

There are other options, how to make a family tree. An example of the standard scheme, the most common, is shown in the figure. The tree is usually built like this: below you are located, your parents stand higher, then your grandparents, etc. The branches expand from the bottom up. Below are the children. You designate yourself as the basis.