Genealogical Tree — What Is It, Why Compile It, Existing Species

Many are inter­est­ed in know­ing who his ances­tors were, what kind of fam­i­ly ties between them were? For this, a genealog­i­cal tree is com­piled. It is not the only, but a com­mon way to rep­re­sent a pedi­gree. You can cre­ate it your­self by find­ing out who your dis­tant rel­a­tives were.

What is a family tree?

Blood ties are stud­ied by the sci­ence of geneal­o­gy. When com­pil­ing a fam­i­ly tree, all ances­tors are indi­cat­ed in it, up to the old­est known of them. There are sev­er­al ways to com­pose it. The fam­i­ly tree is made up of leaves rep­re­sent­ing fam­i­ly mem­bers and branch­es rep­re­sent­ing fam­i­ly ties. In such a scheme, it is clear­ly vis­i­ble who belonged to whom from their ances­tors.

Why make a family tree?

It’s trendy to do it these days. Com­pil­ing a fam­i­ly tree of a fam­i­ly is inter­est­ing, know­ing one’s roots can con­tribute to self-knowl­edge. If it turns out that the ances­tors belonged to the nobil­i­ty, the aris­toc­ra­cy, the intel­li­gentsia, oth­er respect­ed class­es, then their descen­dants are proud of them. Real­iz­ing belong­ing to them, a per­son feels more con­fi­dent, his self-esteem increas­es.

In some fam­i­lies, geneal­o­gy is used to strength­en ties, improve rela­tion­ships, and the tree is com­piled joint­ly. This activ­i­ty is a com­mon inter­est that brings peo­ple togeth­er. The study and com­pi­la­tion of a pedi­gree helps to estab­lish fam­i­ly tra­di­tions, which are one of the foun­da­tions for strength­en­ing the cell of soci­ety. Involv­ing chil­dren in this process helps to dis­ci­pline them, to instill in them val­ues.

Types of family tree

There are sev­er­al ways to com­pose it:

1. On the side of the father or moth­er. Draw­ing up a fam­i­ly tree accord­ing to this scheme con­sists in enter­ing into it all rel­a­tives up to the old­est rep­re­sen­ta­tives known to their descen­dants.
2. down­ward view. The prin­ci­ple of place­ment of rel­a­tives pro­vides for the loca­tion of the old­est of the ances­tors in the low­er part of the fam­i­ly tree — near the roots. The dis­tant great-grand­chil­dren of this rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the genus will be at the top of the dia­gram in the form of thin branch­es or leaves.
3. ascend­ing way. The prin­ci­ple of con­struc­tion is oppo­site to the prin­ci­ple of com­po­si­tion of the top-down method. Such a scheme of geneal­o­gy based on the form of a trunk has a com­pil­er. The bot­tom two thick branch­es of the tree are his father and moth­er, fol­lowed by branch­es rep­re­sent­ing grand­par­ents. In the form of the thinnest branch­es and leaves, the old­est known ances­tors are indi­cat­ed.

How to find out the pedigree of a family?

In most cas­es, this is not easy to do, but there are ways to get the infor­ma­tion you need. If you decide to com­pile a fam­i­ly tree of the fam­i­ly, you can get the nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion about the ances­tors in the fol­low­ing ways:

1. Poll rel­a­tives. Ask your par­ents, grand­par­ents, who were the ances­tors. Try to find out as much as pos­si­ble about them, spec­i­fy­ing the last name, first name, patronymic, place and date of birth, and if the rel­a­tive died, then the date of death.
2. Con­tact­ing the archives. If you are com­pil­ing a fam­i­ly tree of a per­son, you may need addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion about rel­a­tives. It can be obtained from the archives. There you can also find con­fir­ma­tion of the data obtained by inter­view­ing rel­a­tives. The archive can pro­vide evi­dence that the appli­cant has fam­i­ly ties with one or anoth­er ances­tor.
3. Get­ting help in spe­cial­ized orga­ni­za­tions. There are com­pa­nies that make up the pedi­gree. They have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to receive archival data that is stored at the fed­er­al, region­al lev­el. It is impos­si­ble to obtain such infor­ma­tion on your own. They can help in this mat­ter at all stages of com­pil­ing a pedi­gree.

How to make a family tree?

When com­pil­ing it, a con­ve­nient scheme. How to make a fam­i­ly tree in terms of its design:

Genealogical tree — program

Pop­u­lar ser­vices are:

1. Fam­i­ly Tree Builder. This is a fam­i­ly tree pro­gram where you can add names, pho­tos, addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion about rel­a­tives.
2. Tree of Life. On the ser­vice, you can add pho­tos, text, video clips, sound­tracks.
3. Fam­i­ly Chron­i­cle. Cre­at­ing pho­to albums, edit­ing the biogra­phies of rel­a­tives, set­ting up noti­fi­ca­tions about impor­tant events in their lives are the main set of pro­gram func­tions.
4. Geno­pro. A genealog­i­cal (pedi­gree) tree on the ser­vice can be com­piled indi­cat­ing their data, impor­tant events in their lives. It is pos­si­ble to print the results.
5. Gramps. In the pro­gram, you can cre­ate tables, graphs, enter data, search for rel­a­tives using known para­me­ters.