How to draw family tree

Genealogical tree is called a graphical diagram depicting the structure of one family or genus. It contains data on the full names of family members, their dates of birth and death and marriage relations. In the old days, this scheme was depicted as a real tree, the roots of which is a single common ancestor, and branches and leaves to his descendants. To build a genealogical tree of his family is not difficult, you only need to have the necessary information about the life of a family and know the principles of the genealogical scheme.

You will need

• information about the life of my family, paper, pencils, pens, markers, ruler, computer software

Instruction

1. Draw a family tree, both manually and using computer programs. To create a family tree you will need paper (best to it was the large leaves of the type of drawing paper), pencils, markers and ruler. As well as basic information about life at least three generations of your relatives – parents, grandparents and great-grandparents.
2. As the most important information requires accurate full names, dates of birth and death. Traditionally, the family tree is always depicted from the bottom up, so that the oldest ancestor was the root of the tree. In practice it is very inconvenient, so modern genealogical diagram is usually drawn from top to bottom.
3. Preparing all the necessary materials, proceed to the drawing of the diagram. At the top of the sheet, preferably from the left side, write the name, surname and patronymic name of the oldest ancestor known to you. Specify the dates, if known. If you know who married your ancestor, write the name of his wife beside him on the same level and connect both with a dotted line. The dotted line in the genealogical schemes refers to the marriage bond.
4. Under the names of their ancestors, the founders write in a row the names of their children at a sufficient distance from each other. Do not forget to specify the exact dates of birth and death. Then connect the names of the parents and children a straight line. So you build the next generation series. Next to the names of the descendants include their marital relationships and spouse's names, if known.
5. Continue to draw a diagram of the generational ranks, until you reach his generation. The diagram can indicate himself, his spouse and their children. If desired, the male persons of your tree can be labelled with a square, female – circle, as is customary in standard genealogical diagrams.
6. Family tree can be build as well with a variety of computer programs, of which there is now quite a lot. Some of them can be downloaded for free on the Internet. For example, a very convenient widespread program Family Tree Builder. It can be found on the developers website at http://www.myheritage.com.
7. This program has a friendly interface and a large database, it also allows in addition to basic information about family members to contribute to the database any additional information in text form. Thus, each family member creates a kind of card that contains the basic, most essential information about his life.