Family Tree Forms
So you want to create your family tree but you feel that the task is too overwhelming for you. It might be that you’ve been looking at other family trees on the Internet and you find that they look complicated and hard to understand which puts you off starting your own. Well, don’t be disheartened; building your tree can be simple if you can find a format to follow.
After you’ve accumulated the names and dates of your immediate family, you need to know how to position them in a family tree format to ensure that they’re organised and easy to understand. I strongly recommend that you use an example (see below for where to get these) one to imitate.
There are many Internet sites that give different example forms for family trees, making the job so much easier and they allow you to arrange your information (that you may have spent a lot of time collating) in to something that makes you very proud of.
The form is designed to give you an example of where to place each person’s details and how to go down your line of ancestors taking it far as you are able. In addition, you do have the alternative of getting someone else to do this for you in a professional capacity but of course you would have to pay for their services.
Several web sites are available for you where you can provide them with your photographs or the details of the people you’d like on your tree. Charges vary dependant on the service you require but they can produce something that will be treasured, I’m sure. This can be a great idea if you are looking to give a special gift to someone or if you’d wish to hang your family tree on a wall at home. But, be warned, getting somebody else to create your masterpiece for you will take the fun and enjoyment away. Imagine the kick you will get when you see that special someone’s face light up when they see it and you can proudly tell them you did it all yourself or you did it with other family members – what price can you put on those special memoriest. On that point you will also discover sites on the Internet where you’ll be able to find the family tree forms that you can complete. They’re very easy to complete with your research information. Below I have listed some sites that provide these forms:
http://www.obituarieshelp.org/genealogy_forms_downloads.html.
http://www.thetreemaker.com/samples/family-tree-example.html
http://www.genealogy.about.com/od/free_charts/ig/genealogy_charts/family_tree.htm
http://www.familytreemagazine.com/freeforms
Some of the sites will allow you to freely download their forms whilst others do charge.
So, now you have no excuses – bring your family together and create that family tree you’ve always wanted. This is an outstanding way to teach the younger generations about who they are and where they came from.
You might be interested to know that my ebook “Tracing Your Family History – The Easy Way” provides you with all the forms you are likely to need. Why not take a look to see what else is included by clicking on the link opposite.
NB: I am in the process of writing a pdf document which will contain all of the forms you will need including US Census forms. This will be free for you to download as a way of saying thank you for reading by Blog so check back regularly for an update on progress..
Update: You can now download my pdf which contains the following forms:
- A Relationship Diagram
- A Research Log
- A Pedigree Chart
- A Family Group Sheet
- Blank US Federal Census forms from 1790 – 1930
You can download them here by right clicking and selecting ‘Save Link As’. I hope you find it useful.
Researching Your Family Tree
When researching your family tree you want to understand where you descend from, and who your ancestors were. This starts in what you might find an unusual place – it starts with you.
Exploring your family tree isn’t as arduous as might you think. It does however require both time and energy. This in no way should put you off because I think you will be very surprised at how much you actually enjoy yourself and how immersed you will become. The more you find out , the more you want to find out – it is self perpetuating and you will soon find you just can’t stop!
In order to acquire the story of your family correctly, you want to discover as much as you can about your immediate family.
Discovering history around your family is reasonably easy. You’ll need to chat with all or most of your senior relations as you can and you’ll want to do this fairly often. The reason I say this is because as much as we love them – not all our relations will feel the same excitement as you do - at first! The more you find out the more interested they will probably become. Another reason is that they tend to forget certain facts which will come back to them the more you talk things through – remember though, they may get tired easily and want to talk of other things.
The aim of these conversations is to get as much information as you can but before you go rushing off to speak to Grandma stop!. It will help if you sit down quietly at home first and try to capture all you know about the family yourself. To begin with get a decent lined pad and pencil and start writing things down about your father – jot down his full name, date of birth, mother’s maiden name, father’s name, siblings names, where he lived as a child, where he went to school, college, university, occupation, date of his marriage to your mother etc. Try to think of all the family stories you have heard as you were growing up which relate to your father and capture them for further research.
If you don’t know the answers to these questions yet – don’t worry – leave the line blank and move on to the next item. It is useful to follow the same pattern or template for all your family so that you know what questions to ask them later.
Once you have completed this for your father, you simply repeat the process for your mother on a seperate page in your notepad. Make sure that whenever you are capturing information about a female, you really must capture their maiden name – this is vital for future research.
I always put each individual on their own seperate page even though they will be included on their child’s page – you may think this is unnecessary duplication but it helps to identify any gaps you may have in your research because you are following the template we discussed earlier. It also keeps you focused on one individual at a time – it is so easy to get “side tracked” and you will be pleased you did this later on.
You will find that in no time at all you will have the names of your grandparents, your great grandparents, and so on. I am very pleased to say that I have gone back to the late 1570’s on a number of my family names. It is such a buzz!
Armed with the above information you can now think about the people you want to speak to. Naturally, you want to make sure all the information you think you know about the individual is accurate so go through it with them to make sure. Ask them if there is anything else that is relevant. There is far too much to cover in this one post about the interview process so I will do that in a seperate one shortly.
As you progress there may come a point when somebody doesn’t recollect the name of his or her grandparents, don’t worry too much. As I mentioned earlier it’s also very important to ask for information regarding maiden names and the names of any children.
You need to retrace a family line as far back as you can go. To do this effectively, you need the individual full names of each child because you’ll hopefully encounter information from a census record which will include the names of any children living within the household at that point in time. By learning the children’s names you’ll be able to verify that you have found the correct family you’re looking for. In my case, I knew of a few names but found that the individual had nine other siblings!
It is most important that you collect all the dates and places where they might have resided as you can. This again will help to valid information for you.
Along with info that’s you get from interviewing you family members, make sure to ask if there are any documents and photographs that you can look at – take a digital camera so you can have your own copy. The type of documents that you need to collect are birth, marriage or death certificates, these are known as Vital records and they are ‘vital’ for your research. Images are also useful in a less apparent way. Occasionally pictures will bear dates, place or people’s names on the reverse of them. On that point there could be real clues in the images themselves. If you manage to find a photo of an ancestor on holiday visiting the White House which includes a date on the reverse that says 1896 you then know that they were living in the US at that time which in turn will help you to limit the timescales for their entry into the United States. Now that you’ve completed interviewing all of your relatives, you’ll then need to look for different avenues of information.
My most preferred method of research is by far; the internet. There is just such a huge amount of info online these days and literally thousands of websites. Some of these are free like this one and concentrate on teaching people how to do their research, others are family specific – then there are those where you can search their databases some are free and some charge a modest fee – these can be with a subscription based membership or pay as you go types. These sites offer you access to numerous other significant papers that are really tough to find otherwise.
Genealogy sites generally offer access to the census records going back to 1790 for the United States and 1841 in the UK, birth, marriage and death records plus Passenger Lists, Military Records and even Criminal Records to name but a few.
There are also many free sites you’ll be able to view to discover your family history. If you are very lucky, you might find one that relates to the surnames you are researching but so far I haven’t been that lucky! It is worth mentioning that you will need to validate any information that you aquire from a site such as these but it is a great way to move your research forward.
I use a number of paid sites which are specifically designed to provide vast databases of information which you can search over and over again as you increase the names in your family tree. These have allowed me to build quite a comprehensive family tree. I see it as a good investment that will last through a lifetimes of my children’s children. What price can you put on this?
An Introduction To Genealogy and Family History
Genealogy according to the dictionary is “the study of the history of families and the line of descent from their
ancestors”. Family history on the other hand is far more exciting, in my humble opinion!
This is where you learn all about the life and times of your relatives. If you are anything like me, you will find that it isn’t enough just to know about yourself and your immediate family. You want to know if you have anyone in “your line” that is
famous or maybe you have been inspired by the T.V. programs that show really interesting family histories. The possibility that you might have someone in your tree that was famous is just so intriguing. You may have asked older relations what they know – but you don’t know what to do with the information. Well don’t worry; most people don’t know this either!
At one time it was quite difficult doing genealogy as it was very time consuming as well as long winded – you needed to write copious letters and visit places possibly all over the country to get any kind of decent information and for those of us who are working this can be tough. But today the best place to start is the Internet.
There is so much information online these days that you can find out quite a lot in a short amount of time if you know where to look. These sites fall into a number of categories, ones like this one where the information is generally free and designed specifically to teach you how to do your research, those which are designed to display the research done for a certain family line (also usually free) and the third type which concentrate on providing huge databases full of fantastic information for you to search. Some of these are free whereas other sites charge a fee.
The most obvious places to look are sites specifically designed for this particular kind of research like Ancestry.com, Rootsweb.com or My Heritage.com. All of these are great sites, which offer many sources of information. You are able to look up birth records, marriage and death records as well as military records, census information, wills and even passenger lists and old tax information. Over the last few years, these sites have spent millions of dollars uploading millions of records from places that we would not have had easy access to a few years ago like Ellis Island records.
You will find that when you do a search, the trick is to filter out who is who! They will return hundreds of names and you will need to know just which ones are your relatives. Of course, you may be lucky and have a very unusual surname which makes life a lot easier, but don’t be put off if this does not apply to you. With just some basic information you can whittle the list down to a manageable size to work with. The more you know about the person you want to search for, the better your results will be.
If you like to get out and about, you can also do your research in the more traditional way by visiting the local Courthouse or Records Office. Like the websites mentioned above, you will be able to find birth records, marriage licenses or death certificates, not to mention divorce records. Other places to find this information is through your state department.
Quite often these documents contain links to more information and are a useful way of filling in the gaps that you might have in your research. These are useful and can aid in completing a better search experience on the net. In addition, there are less obvious places to search like a funeral home in the area that your ancestors lived along with cemeteries. I have spent many happy hours walking around cemeteries much to the disgust of my husband and two boys!
As well as providing a death record, some funeral homes can provide clues like a spouses name, children, or even parents names – you just never know what you might find.
Unlike some hobbies Genealogy or Family History is a hobby which is so exciting and rewarding for not just the person doing the work (labor of love rather than work), but to other family members and generations to come. I know that my mother loves to hear about what I have uncovered – sadly of late she has been very disappointed as I have spent little time on it recently whilst I get this site up and running.
One thing to keep in mind is that in years to come if someone in your family wants to continue with what you have built, it is so important that you provide them with the most accurate information possible. So make sure that all of your information is backed up with sources and copies of all the facts you have compiled.
