A schematic representation of family ties in the form of a conventional symbolic tree is the genealogical family tree. The pedigree can be built in the form of a table or a tree.

Reasons for drawing up a family tree

One of the most important stages is motivation. There are many reasons that motivate people to create family trees. Let's look at some of them:

Compilation methods

First of all, you need to choose a compilation method. Constructions with the discovery of various papers and folders with a group of relatives are a thing of the past. Now on the Internet there are many other methods and specialized programs that help to compile data about relatives and present them in a pleasant form. Using various online services, you can collect data about relatives. Then creating a family tree becomes simple. Such services have one drawback: the sites exist for approximately 5 years and there is a possibility of it disappearing from the Internet along with your data. There may be various reasons.

For more detailed work on the tree, it is more convenient to use programs, information and data from which you can archive, save, copy, process on any device and be independent of the Internet. There are paid and free programs.

One of these programs that received good feedback, is the “Tree of Life”, which reveals the technology of compiling a family tree.

Although in the free version this program has small limitations, it allows you to get acquainted with its actions: create a tree, calculate the relative degree, save information, videos, photos and other information about the lives of relatives. Install this program on your computer and start composing.

Program "Family Chronicle" will also help in compiling a family tree in the shape of a tree in a colorful way. There is also the possibility of saving photos and documents.

Do you want to create a pedigree in tabular, graphical form? Then the Geno Pro program will help you.

Step-by-step compilation

You need to create a family tree from yourself. Enter information about yourself and then about your closest relatives into the downloaded program. Photographs will help supplement the information provided.

Start organizing personal meetings with relatives, taking a voice recorder with you. A lot of information can be obtained through conversation. It is advisable to talk to each relative in private to avoid confusion. Visiting the oldest relatives should be the initial step, as their verbal recollections are invaluable.

It will be very convenient if you draw up a questionnaire before starting the conversation. What questions will be included there?

1. Last name, first name.
2. Birth metric.
3. Life events (weddings, birthdays, deaths).
4. Photographs (scanned or re-photographed vintage photographs from albums).
5. Place of Birth.
6. Professions.

You can also communicate with those who live in other places via Skype. This a good option because it will save time. If you lack data, you can always turn to the Internet. The interviewees themselves can also provide good assistance.

If certain relatives are no longer alive, archival employees will help. The information received must be thoroughly checked, since there are many namesakes.

Construction schemes

Thus, the material has been collected, and a family tree can be built. When using a specialized program, do as it tells you. If you want to do it yourself, think carefully about the work plan, since there are several types of construction.

So, to build it yourself, take whatman paper and place in the center the person for whom the tree is being compiled. Divide the sheet into two parts: the left (for relatives on the paternal side) and the right (for relatives on the maternal side). Under the names, glue an envelope and insert notes and additional photographs about this person.

When choosing a diagram in the form of a tree along an ascending line, the trunk will symbolize the main person, from whom branches will extend in different directions. An important concept is that the person represented in the diagram represents a separate branch of the family. Place the parents on the larger branches, and the grandparents on the smaller ones. It is possible to place a specific person on each piece of paper. There are no limits to the imagination when creating and decorating a tree. The main thing is to maintain the accuracy of the information.

Family tree: image options

There are several types of schemes family tree. This:

1. Butterfly is a convenient method for placing on the wall. The key figures are the spouses, whose parents are on the sides and the children are at the bottom.
2. Branches (ancestors). The key figure is your child, and all the ancestors you have found diverge from him. For indoors, it is the most popular scheme.
3. Roots (descendants). Such a scheme is a good gift relative The common ancestor is the key figure. In this diagram, all the brothers and sisters of the ancestor are clearly visible.
4. The hourglass will be a great gift for grandpa or grandma. The key figure is the grandmother or grandfather. You put their ancestors on top and their descendants on the bottom.
5. The fan is a convenient compressed form that does not take much time. Important parental connections are clearly visible here.

Questions about relatives and ancestors often arise in family circle when grandparents' memories of their childhood, parents and other relatives begin. How to make a family tree quickly and easily, without knowledge of genealogy?

Why do you need to create a family tree?

This is one of the most important stages- motivation. He simply will not allow you to abandon compiling the tree after a couple of weeks, but to bring it to the end. There are several reasons that encourage people to think about drawing up a family tree:

• the desire to satisfy the inexplicable sentimentality that appears with age;
• make your children feel respect for their roots, relatives, family history and its customs;
• clearly show your children how large the number of relatives is on whom you can rely in difficult times;
• realize how big your family tree is, feel part large community having its own destiny and purpose;
• satisfy your curiosity about distant relationships with celebrities, find something interesting and mysterious in your roots and branches.

There is a possibility that you have other motives. Those who are involved in building a family tree professionally recommend not to start investigating their tree for belonging to noble families or classifying themselves as 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 case itself will quickly get boring and is unlikely to end successfully.

How to create a family tree

Paper structures, grouping of relatives, folders with papers are already becoming a thing of the past. Although there is sometimes a need to make some notes, it is best to use specialized programs that help conveniently arrange the found data about relatives and display them in a convenient and pleasant form. There are also various online services that can help you collect data about your relatives.

There are sites where trees are possible. With their help, deciding how to create a family tree becomes as simple as possible. Typically, free registration is required, information is entered for each relative, his family connections and photographs, and the service itself produces a graphical construction of the family tree. There are professional services like myheritage, with a large number of settings, which will not only show you how to create a family tree correctly, but will also analyze the surname, search through archives, etc. Online services are convenient for those who do not take the issue very seriously , or to build a simple tree and design it. According to statistics, websites “live” on average up to 5 years and for various reasons they can disappear from the information space along with your data.

For more in-depth work on your ancestry, it is best to use special programs, information from which can be saved, archived, duplicated and processed on any device and at the same time be independent of the Internet. Free programs, for the most part, are very simple, have little functionality and are convenient for simple constructions tree. More professional programs are usually paid, but with them the question of how to create a family tree is even very big family, is solved efficiently and conveniently. For example, the free version of the program has minor limitations, but allows you to get acquainted with its work. IN full version costs about 400 rubles. The amount is not very large, but it allows you to think about how serious you are about your work.

We begin the formation of the tree with ourselves

Once a tree building tool has been chosen, questions arise: how to create a family tree and where to start creating it? The easiest way is to start with yourself. In the program or service, enter information about yourself, then about your immediate circle - about everyone you know personally and about whom you have information. You insert photos of these people from your hard drive or, if they are not there, scan or re-photograph paper portraits from albums. Attach photos, make connections, enter comments (for example, a short biography) until your personal knowledge runs out.

We continue to form the tree

The next step is meeting with relatives. We arrange a meeting with relatives from the necessary “branches” of the tree, take a cake and a laptop (or better yet, a voice recorder). During the conversation, you can get a lot of information that fills in the gaps in the family tree. At the same time, you can make a big mistake by not visiting relatives, but collecting them a large number of in one place to survey. This usually leads to the fact that old people correct each other, cannot find agreement on different dates, argue about events and generally introduce significant chaos into the orderly scheme of your work. Therefore, for those thinking about how to quickly create a family tree, it is better not to take risks, but to talk with each relative separately.

Visit your oldest relatives first. They can tell you most about distant relatives, time periods, and if they are in a good position, they will allow you to use their rare photographs in albums.

It will be more convenient to conduct a conversation if, before starting it, you draw up a mini-questionnaire of 10-15 questions: first and last names, important dates of life (birth, wedding, life events, death), children and parents.

We continue to collect information

After we have collected data from everyone who was nearby, the next step is to communicate with those who live far away, in other cities and countries. The easiest way to communicate with them is by phone, Skype or via social media. After talking to them, you can ask them questions and briefly tell them how to create a family tree. They can build their own branch and send it to you to add to your big tree. This is very convenient, since it is quite difficult to do such work alone. Therefore, by getting your relatives interested in this process, you can make your work much easier. You can promise them a free copy of the tree when it is completed or the maximum possible has been collected

Working with archives and databases

The last step of collecting information is working with archives. After collecting all possible information from “living” sources and their memories, the next stage is working with paper and electronic archives. This work is especially useful in cases where the branch broke at some stage and it is unknown, for example, who the great-great-grandfather married, or on what front and when the great-grandfather died in the Finnish War, what awards the grandfather received during the war. Such information can be obtained from various archives or databases. Be sure to double-check the information, as there are often namesakes, even full namesakes of people, otherwise your search may go into other people’s “trees.”

Schemes for building a family tree

Once the information is collected, the question arises of how to create a family tree. The layout and placement may vary. The difference in the schemes is the person placed as the basis. You can build from a famous representative of the genus to the modern generation. This option more clearly shows the presence of children from this ancestor and their division into different family branches.

There are still options for how to create a family tree. An example of a standard scheme, the most common, is shown in the figure. The tree is usually built like this: you are at the bottom, your parents are above, then your grandparents, etc. The branches expand from bottom to top. Below are the children. You designate yourself as the basis.

Today, everyone has extensive opportunities to search and structure information about their ancestors and distant relatives. Exciting and very useful activity- develop a family tree. There are many tools to make this task easier.

Overview of genealogy programs

We present to your attention a catalog of free, shareware and paid programs with which you can create convenient family tree diagrams.

Personal Ancestral File

With convenient and accessible PAF software, it is possible to control sources. You won't be able to build attractive trees, but you can print reports. The user attaches a photo and a lot of important data. It has a lot of settings at its disposal. The program is aimed at beginners. True, to work with it you need to know English. The interface is not Russified. First, a central person is added, then branches are created and new blocks are filled with data about relatives. You can download the free PAF program here http://softobase.com/ru/personal-ancestral-file.

Genopro

Russian program with Unicode support and hotkeys suitable for inexperienced users. Distributed on a shareware basis. It builds not a tree, but a genogram. Free use is limited to 15 days, you can add no more than 25 people. To expand the functionality, the manufacturer recommends purchasing a license key. Built-in report generator. Data is edited in table format. It is convenient for the user to enter new information. You can indicate the nature of the relationship, for example, conflict or vice versa love. A backup copy of the tree is saved online. You can send the pedigree by e-mail or print the document. A definite plus is the ability to import data in the Gedcom format; it is supported by many similar programs; there are also TXT and XML formats. You can download Genopro for free here http://softobase.com/ru/genopro.

GenealogyJ

The free program displays reports and allows you to create a real family tree with an extensive description of each family member. Each tree is a separate file. First, the roots are selected, and the further scheme is built from them. The program is not easy for everyone to work with. Beginners will need instructions. Thanks to zooming, you can view large diagrams. You can download GenealogyJ here http://softobase.com/ru/genealogyj.

FamilyTreeBuilder

This program is linked to the MyHeritage website, where you can upload your tree. The product is shareware, and the free version has limited functionality. To an ordinary person it will be enough. The paid version opens up new opportunities - publication of 2500 names. Russian and very simple, one of the best, program. Each member of the family tree is supplemented with contacts, dates and photos. The pedigree in the form of an Excel table can be printed, and reports and graphs can also be created. Convenient formats and the ability to search for relatives in a huge database. The program contains reference materials. You can download FamilyTreeBuilder here http://softobase.com/ru/family-tree-builder.

Tree of Life

A common utility helps build a pedigree chart. The family tree displays family ties, patronymics, and multimedia content. It's easy to print out the tree as a diagram. Export and import of data is possible according to the Gedcom standard. The free version stores a maximum of 40 people. Unlimited functionality is available for 15 days. Inexpensive basic version. Convenient filters, thoughtful interface. You can download the Family Tree of Life here http://softobase.com/ru/drevo-zhizni.

List of other very good programs for collecting and organizing family information:

• SimTree;
• Gramps;
• GenealogMap;
• RootsMagic;
• Ages;
• GenBox;
• Kith and Kin Pro;
• Master Genealogist;
• AncestralQuest;
• Millennium Legacy;
• Family Historian.

Review of sites for creating a family tree

myheritage website

Genway website

http://www.genway.ru/ - this Internet resource offers to create a real family value- family tree. Registered users can learn how to make a family tree online, communicate with other participants, and create a family history. It is also easy to combine trees, learn about the meaning of first and last names, and get information about the most interesting historical facts. There are many tree guardians on the site, become one of them.

Website rodovoederevo

http://www.rodovoederevo.ru/ - thanks to the site, users record the stories of their families, which people of new generations will definitely use. There is a family book and a calendar with holidays. It is especially interesting to meet the families of famous people, restore old ones and find new acquaintances. The tree is created online, each family member can make adjustments. To quickly determine the origin of a surname and find the most distant ancestors, you need to conduct a survey of relatives in the very old age. To work with the site, no preparation or special knowledge is required, and no payment is required.

Website vgd

http://www.vgd.ru/ is an online collection that is actively expanding. All registered users can find out the meaning of a surname and find relatives. The site stores large amounts of information about people who are in one way or another connected with the history of Russia. People of many nationalities who lived at different times may turn out to be your relatives. If you know anything about your ancestors, then this resource is for you. Find namesakes and your relatives. Interestingly, an example of a family tree is available to anyone who visits the site, without registration, via this link http://www.vgd.ru/generezis_content.html.

Website pomnirod

https://pomnirod.ru/ - with the help of this site you can leave a lot of information about yourself and loved ones for your descendants as a keepsake. Each user builds and stores a personal family tree on the site. To get started, you need to go through a simple registration procedure, fill out your profile and start building a tree. An intuitive interface will help you do everything right. Photos can be uploaded and shared, and distant relatives can be searched.

Below is a list of links to genealogical sites that contain a lot of interesting facts about our ancestors:

• http://www.genealogia.ru/;
• http://www.myheritage.com;
• http://rosgenea.ru/;
• http://www.familyspace.ru/;
• http://www.semyaonline.ru;
• http://www.1archive-online.com/;
• http://www.genway.ru;
• http://familygifts.ru;
• http://www.svrt.ru/;
• http://www.etimologiya.ru/;
• http://www.familii.ru/;
• http://geno.ru;
• http://www.okorneva.ru/.

How to develop and design a family tree?

Family tree as an interior detail

A relationship diagram with a photo can be a great decoration for a room. To do this, you will have to make a large tree on the wall and decorate it at your discretion. Various sources consider effective solutions, but we propose to get out of the situation in a special way: purchase vinyl stickers for wallpaper. There are beautiful options in the form of large trees. You can also depict vegetation using paints. Photos are pasted on Double-sided tape and carefully sign. To make the composition more attractive, it is worth choosing identical photo frames and immediately providing places for new members who may soon appear in the family.

Best Types of Family Trees

Create a composition on a large base made of cardboard, plywood, wallpaper or other material convenient for you. Here are good options for arranging photos on the diagram:

• butterfly scheme - a very good space-saving scheme, diverging to the sides, in the center there is a key pair and from them the branches of their ancestors go to the right and left;
• system of branches - in this scheme, the central place from below is occupied by the child, with branches of relatives stretching upward from him;
• root system - such a tree has a dominant in the form of a photo of a common ancestor, the branches of younger relatives are directed downward, in this diagram you can clearly draw cousins ​​and second cousins;
• the hourglass diagram is an ideal gift for grandparents, in this system they will be the key people in the center, their descendants will go up, and their ancestors - children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren - will go down;
• fan-shaped diagram - a fan-shaped display of the family tree takes up a minimum of space and allows you to clearly reflect the main parental connections.

Family tree for school

It is not so important which scheme for compiling a family tree is right for you, the main thing is that you will collect all the valuable data and make an invaluable gift to your generation and descendants. Of course, this matter requires an individual approach. Much depends on the purposes for which the relationship diagram is being developed. For a schoolchild, it will be enough to take a large Whatman paper and add yourself, sisters and brothers, parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-grandparents. You can also add uncles, aunts and other people known to the child. The description can be brief, for example, first and last name, profession, place of birth, photo and years of life. This is an acceptable option for a school.

A child can find it on the Internet or draw a template in the form of a tree on their own. Blank diagrams to fill in and others beautiful pictures with places for photos are freely available on the Internet. They just need to be printed on paper.

Home family tree

If you want to create a genealogical chart not for a school portfolio, but for long-term storage in a family archive or as a gift to a family member, then you will have to approach the matter much more deeply. Try to collect all the data together by listening to the oral memories of all close and distant relatives.

Fortunately, today almost everyone has the Internet and it is very easy to get in touch. There may be old documents at home, such as birth, death and marriage certificates. Old photos can also be very useful, on which you can often find memorable signatures, names, surnames and dates. To bring your idea to life creatively, look for samples on the Internet. This way, you'll get inspired and learn how others have approached this creative challenge.

An in-depth approach to genealogy

If you were unable to contact one of your relatives, especially older ones, via the Internet, then go visit them for a conversation. Such a visit will bring your relatives together; they will be very pleased with the fact of your attention. You can look at old photos together and chat about common ancestors.

A family does not always have complete information about distant ancestors. Don’t be too lazy to go to the archives at the place of residence of deceased relatives; there you can get a lot of important information and find relatives in unexpected places.

All data must be saved in a notepad, and it is better to immediately start by drawing branches on a draft. To do this, make an empty tree to fill in in Word and print the sheet. This will be your draft. Once all the information has been collected, begin transferring it to large diagram along with photos and detailed description each person.

If you have absolutely no time, but you are able to hire an agent, then entrust this matter to a specialist. For payment, your family's diagram will be recreated.

Making a family tree with your own hands is a fascinating and creative process in which you can involve many relatives. But still, a more professional and complete option is to use sites and programs where you can enter large amounts of information and find relatives in different parts of the world.

If you really want to do something useful and long-lasting, then drawing up a family tree- this is it. You yourself won’t notice how it will drag you in. You need to start making your family tree as early as possible, but still it's never too late. This is very important for every family, if the children are small, then this will be your gift for them, if they are already grown up, then you definitely need to involve them in this. Very nice option- make a gorgeous big tree right on your wall. If something bothers you, then you can do it at the dacha, where all your relatives often like to gather. Years will pass, and your grandchildren will undoubtedly continue the glorious tradition you started.

Traditions are a strong framework on which happy families are supported and which helps to develop in children a sense of belonging to their family.

Family tree in the interior

A very beautiful interior design, which turns into a real pride of the whole house - this is the creation family tree right on the wall. To do this, you need to hang the photo on the branches in accordance with the ancestral connections. You can buy adhesive colored film and cut out the trunk, branches and crowns from it.

Just draw a tree on the wall - it's not such a difficult task. When the paint is dry, hang photo frames in the same style on the branches

Here is another very stylish and strict version of a monochrome tree; you can draw it using a leaf stencil.

Fits very nicely into the interior, pay attention to the lighting and different sizes of photo frames

Using the “Butterfly” scheme you can fit a lot of photographs of ancestors, one of the most compact ways. An ordinary family (not a royal one :)) rarely has so many photographs of great-great-grandfathers, so the butterfly wings are smaller, and photographs of the children of the key couple are added below.

Convenient placement of photos at an angle, that’s how wide the crown of the HD is

And here is another interesting design using cut out circles from wallpaper from one collection.

How to create a family tree yourself

Online services for creating a family tree

Of the many sites I looked at, this one was my favorite. It is very easy to create an online family tree here and it turns into an interesting game, and the result is very beautiful. http://www.myheritage.com/

• I liked the quick registration
• Very clear functionality, easy to figure out how to fill out
• For free you can create a tree of 250 people (more than enough)
• We upload photographs of relatives to the album and there we display who is who, after which the photos are attached to the persons on the tree
• You receive the result in pdf format. To print the graph, click on the top right: options-additional-Print graph.
• You can print it on your home printer, or you can print it on a large poster.

Another excellent service designed to create a family tree on the site Canva.com:

Tree building programs

On this site you can download a high-quality program for compiling your family tree for free. Limit - 40 people, if you need more, payment is required.

Family tree image options

• Butterfly
• Branches (Ancestors)
• Roots (Descendants)
• Hourglass

1) Scheme - Butterfly

Convenient way to place on the wall. The spouses are the key figures, with their parents on the sides and their children at the bottom.

2) Branch Scheme (Ancestors)

The key figure is your child, the branches of the tree extend upward from him - all his ancestors that you could find. One of the most common schemes for decorating a room.

3) Roots (Descendants)

A good gift for your relative. Choose a common ancestor as the key figure. All first and second cousins ​​are clearly visible here.

4) Hourglass

This is a great gift for grandma or grandpa. Place them as a key figure (marked in yellow on the diagram). You display their ancestors at the top, and all their descendants at the bottom: children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

5) Fan

A very convenient concise form that does not take much time, the main parental connections are clearly visible.

What information about the person to provide?

• last name first name (there is no need to write the middle name, since you can always see who the father of this person is. Although for the most extreme persons - great-great-great-grandfathers, sometimes it is easier to write the First Name and Patronymic and close the question than to make another process upward)

• years of life

• photo (scan or simply re-photograph old photos from albums)

• city ​​where he was born (this is also useful so that if someone decides to dig deeper into the history, they will know where to look for birth metrics)

• What was your profession?

Where to get information

Call your grandmothers, or better yet, go see them! You open an old album, take a larger sheet of paper and make a rough draft of your family ties. Your dear old people will be very pleased with your visit, look through photo albums together, ask about your ancestors and, of course, write everything down, do not rely on your memory.

1. So, the most priceless- This oral memories all older relatives. We interview and record everything in a notebook.
2. We check the surviving documents (family archive), these can be birth certificates, marriage certificates, death certificates. We look through old photographs, looking for signatures on them.
3. We go to local and regional archives, trying to find data there. First we make a “tree trunk”, male line from grandfather to great-great-great-grandfather. Then side branches grow - their families, wives and children. Whatever we can find.

If you don’t want to do it yourself, then they are ready to find you anyone for money, now there are a lot of agencies doing this, prices start from $100 Try it, compiling your family tree is very addictive, it’s like putting together a very important mosaic and you will want to, like a detective or as a collector, in search of a previously unknown brand, he finds more and more facts about his ancestors and adds new information about them.

Looking through childhood photographs or listening to the stories of your parents, you may unwittingly become interested in your ancestry. Even in ancient times it was compiled in the form of a family tree: this convenient option presentation of information. Drawing up a family tree is even assigned in school for a lesson on the world around us or in kindergarten, so you need to know how to create a family tree with your own hands.

What is a family tree

The very concept of a “family tree” is a list of people who are related to each other. The listing occurs in a hierarchy based on the years of life of people and how they relate to each other. The tree trunk indicates the married couple at the head of the clan. Then place their children, grandchildren and cousins, sisters. The generations are at the same level. This option is classic, when the construction goes from ancestors to descendants.

In addition to the main option, how to draw Family Tree, there are several more:

1. On a personal note. Parents, grandparents, and other relatives act as branches. This is convenient because the entire family is indicated along the line of only one person. It will be difficult to supplement such a tree.
2. Family tree. In this case, relatives on the paternal or maternal side can be indicated separately, because the surnames of the spouses were different before marriage.

How to draw a tree using a template

There are many sites on the Internet in Russian and English languages, where you can find special family tree templates. After downloading and printing them, you just need to fill in the empty spaces with photographs of relatives according to the specified location. It will look more neat if you use Photoshop. To do this, you need to open the template in this program and insert photos there. The recommended layout format is png. This is an extension for pictures, which are very convenient to work with in Photoshop.

How to make a family tree

How to draw a family tree? To do this, it is better to divide the work into several stages. The first step is to find out about all genetic relatives. This is the most critical stage, because the amount of information determines how complete the finished database will be. If you suddenly miss someone, the meaning of the tree will be partially lost. If the collection of information was successful, then all that remains is to choose the option of constructing a diagram - personally, from the founder of the clan, or several surnames at once.

How to make a family tree

Before you draw up your family tree, it is worth making a preliminary diagram of all relatives, distributing them by degree of relationship. The main thing is to decide how many generations back you plan to go. For those with a large family, it is better to limit yourself to immediate relatives and not include great-uncles and grandmothers, otherwise you can expand the family tree and make side branches in it. They will serve to record more distant relatives - cousins, grandparents.

There are a lot of concepts of kinship: in addition to blood, they reflect marriage or spiritual connections. In the first case, people have a common ancestor, in the second, they are married, and the third includes such forms of kinship as nepotism and twinning. The main one is blood – it has several degrees of relationship. One of them represents a generation, the chain of which already forms a line.

Such a chain includes as many degrees as there were births in the family, i.e. son or daughter – first degree, grandson or granddaughter – second, etc. Each of them must follow each other in order. It turns out that the construction proceeds across generations - from the oldest to the youngest, or vice versa, in the case of carrying out the scheme personally. All siblings and grandparents should be listed on the main branch, and first cousins ​​or second cousins ​​should be listed on the side branches. So the distance between relatives will reflect the distance of their relationship.

How to build a family tree

If a rough diagram with a list of relatives is ready, you need to decide how best to draw a family tree. There are several options here:

1. Classical, when the main bearer of the surname is indicated at the bottom of the trunk. In most cases, this is a married couple, such as grandparents or great-grandparents (you can go even further). Next, all their children, grandchildren and other relatives are indicated in order. It is better to place your own line on the main branch, i.e. the one by which you will come to your parents and specifically to yourself. In the lateral branches there will be cousins ​​and second cousins.
2. Personal tree. In this option, you yourself are the basis, i.e. family tree compiler. Next come the parents, grandparents on both lines, etc. This will be the main branch. On the side ones it is worth reflecting the parents’ sisters or brothers, their children, grandchildren, etc.
3. Family tree. This option is the most voluminous of all. Several names can be listed here. Of interest to the compiler himself is tracing the line of the father and mother. Before marriage they had different surnames, but in relation to their children they have the same degree of kinship. For this reason, it is interesting to compose a tree so that one half of the branches reflects the relatives of the father, and the other - the mother.

How to make a family tree on a computer

There are special programs for compiling a family tree. Some of them are online services where you can order or create a blank sample with space for photographs for free. All that remains is to add pictures, download and, if necessary, print. Another option is to download a graphic editor to your computer and work in it. Among such programs are SimTree, RootsMagic, GenoPro, Family Tree Builder, GRAMPS. The Russian analogue is the “Tree of Life”.

Each program has a set of specific functions that help you draw and then print a tree. Most of them already have example templates that you need to fill out. They are a table with cells or a picture. Some applications even offer to attach not only photos, but also audio or video recordings. For each family member, you are asked to fill out a questionnaire, which contains basic information about him, down to a description of his appearance or interesting biographical facts.

How to draw a family tree

You need to start with how many and what generations you plan to draw. This is necessary to know in advance the number of branches of the tree. After this stage, use the instructions on how to draw a family tree:

1. Draw a thick trunk, using a soft pencil so that you can erase the excess.
2. Depending on the type of tree, make an inscription at the base of the trunk, where you indicate the full name of one or more people. These could be parents, grandparents, or your child or yourself.
3. Next, draw branches a little higher for the rest of the relatives. Position them correctly - so that each next generation is slightly higher than the previous one.
4. Draw as many branches as you know of other relatives. Consider the size of your sheet so that all the relationships you want to indicate fit.
5. After you finish placing all your relatives, erase the extra lines and circle the ones you need thicker. At the end of the design, use colored pencils to make the drawing brighter.

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