From the Ground Up: How to Make a Family Tree

How to Make a Family Tree

Making your family tree is a fun and interesting project. With access to the Internet and family information, you should be able to get started right away.  Start by gathering as much information as you can from family members.  It is always best to write things down in a central notebook that you can use for your entire information gathering.  Transfer the information into a computer file so that you have a backup of the information stored on your PC. 

Working Backwards

Start with yourself and work backwards in time.  The information that you need to make a family tree is the name of each person, their given name, their spouse's name, date of birth, date of marriage, and date of death.  For more advanced forms of the family tree you'll also need to know all the children of each couple and their dates of birth and death, along with their children.  You can see that this process can start to become cumbersome and time consuming. But it can also be fun and interesting to learn about your heritage as you make a family tree. 

Creating Charts

There are charts that you can fill in when you make a family tree.  You can often find charts online or in books.  In order to fill in the charts, you will need to have all the information ready to insert into the proper blanks.  The hardest part comes when you start to move back a couple of generations.  Most people's families immigrated to the country at some point.  It may be difficult though not impossible to trace the family tree back to the country of origin.  

A Work in Progress

When you decide to make a family tree, it usually becomes a work in progress.  You may want to keep the family tree online or on your computer so that you can easily add to it as you make new discoveries about your past.  There are many resources that can help with the process.  Subscriptions are available to several large family tree sites that maintain huge databases and access to many more.  While you may find some information this way, there are other ways of going about getting the information as well.  Using all the methods possible helps to ensure that you'll uncover as much information as you can. 

Searching Records

Public records are available that record major events in people's lives.  Birth records, marriage records, and death records are all important public records that are available.  As you move further back in time, however, these records are not as readily available.  Another place to look is through immigration records.  The family bible is one great source of information.  Years ago many families kept a bible where they recorded important information.  This included birth dates, death dates, names of children and all types of information about the family history that you can use when you make a family tree. If you have access to that piece of history, you'll often find much of what you need to make a family tree. Sofar this article about how to make a family tree.