charting a family tree?

2 months ago

Anyone have advice for taking information scribbled on notebook paper and writing it on an official Family Tree? As in where do I find the charts to fill in?

The pretty charts online all show each person having two children. My Grandparents each had at least 8 siblings. I have the names of their parents and one of my great-great grandmothers but that is it so at the most there would be 7 generations. I have no desire to research further back even if records were available 'Near Kiev' where both Grandmas' were born.

Once I find a chart, hopefully on paper, to enter the information I will probably have more questions such as what to list about adopted children or common law marriages.

Featured Answer

Lars

2 months ago

If you can go far enough back, the chances of being related to royalty or nobility increase exponentially, although it is also less meaningful. A large percentage of people in Europe are descended from Charlemagne, for example.

I have cousins who took our family tree back that far and found ancestors that went back to an ancient Nordic king. Once they found an ancestor from the 10th century in England who was nobility, it was easier to trace his heritage back to Norway/Sweden because historical records had been preserved.

They used MyHeritage and posted results on Geni.com. I have not joined either of these sites, as my cousins have already done more work on it than I could ever want.

It's true that the number of ancestors increases exponentially as you go back in time, but only a fraction of those can be found, and in my case, the tree starts to get smaller in the 15th century, and for most of my ancestors on my mother's side, it is not possible to find information before the 19th or 18th century.

It helps if your ancestors owned land, and the more land the better. My father's family has owned a lot of land for centuries, but my mother's family never did, that I can tell. They may have owned small amounts, but not enough to be significant. It became apparent to me that my father's family would only marry people that were wealthy or owned a lot of land, and so a lot of their history has been preserved.

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Comments (9)

maddielee
2 months ago
Have you tried entering your information on an online Family Tree site? Ancestry has gotten expensive but you can print different trees.

This one isn’t as easy to use as Ancestry but its free.

https://www.familysearch.org/en/
Rho Dodendron thanked maddielee
pudgeder
2 months ago
Are you looking to fill in the charts yourself?

The National Genealogy website has some freebies

National Gerontological Society
Rho Dodendron thanked pudgeder
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Rho Dodendron
2 months ago
Thank you both for the advice. I had no idea whatsoever where to start.
vee_new
2 months ago
Rho, I have done quite a lot of family tree research both for my forebears here in England and in the US (my grandfather's side).

I would suggest you start on paper, a very large wide sheet with you at the bottom and work backwards (and sideways) to your parents/siblings, their parents and so on. You are bound to make mistakes, or find new/conflicting information etc and it is easier to correct on paper in the first instance.

I have a subscription to Ancestry but it is expensive. The advantage is that others can share information with you . . . but equally this information can be misleading or totally incorrect, often because others have found someone of the same name and added them to their family-tree, but the 'dates' or place of birth are quite wrong. This often leads to eg's of children being born after the death of their presumed mother or women who have apparently given birth to about 37 children.

I always avoid any 'trees' that start with pictures of heraldic crests or photos of Windsor Castle. It is most unlikely that you or I are related to Royalty/nobility. If we were we wouldn't be using an online ancestor-finder!

Good luck with your searches and remember keep it all on paper until you have all the relevant dates/names then find a site with plenty of 'squares' . . . or design one yourself using a basic 'Word' document or a publishing program.

Let us know how you get on.
Rho Dodendron thanked vee_new
claudia valentine
2 months ago
When you try to make a map of your ancestors, it gets top heavy very , very quickly.

Think about how each child had twice as many ancestors as do their parents. There are different ways to graph your ancestry.

I just got back to my Ancestry account after a good while of not using it. I am going to go ahead and save what info I have and I wont renew. It has gotten expensive and I think that I have gotten all that I want from it.

Family Search is the next one that I use.

How quickly we are all forgotten!
Rho Dodendron thanked claudia valentine
littlebug Zone 5 Missouri
2 months ago
Never underestimate major marketers. LOL
Rho Dodendron thanked littlebug Zone 5 Missouri
chisue
2 months ago
Names and dates are not very fun. My chart would be almost entirely 'footnotes' -- and 'photos' where possible. There would be a lot of squiggly lines with comments about inside and outside 'connections'; different colors for different kinds of connections would be good.
Rho Dodendron thanked chisue
ghoghunter
2 months ago
I belong to the Bucks County Genealogical Society. You don't need Bucks County PA ancestors to belong but we have a wonderful website and a special part is for beginners. This is a link to our beginners page. If you scroll all the way down you will find links to several charts you can print out and use. The Family Group sheet is great for including all the children in a family. You make a chart for each family group. The Pedigree chart is where you out your ancestors. All these are free. Here is the link. https://www.bucksgen.org/index.php/beginners
Rho Dodendron thanked ghoghunter