CREATING A FAMILY TREE

While you are gathering your family history data, it is useful to add it to a family tree as you go along. This will help you visualise the different generations, and show clearly what you have discovered and where data is missing. There are various ways to create family trees: you could simply write one yourself, or download one of the many templates from the internet, or create one online, using one of the genealogy databases, such as:

Ancestry

Find My Past [available at public libraries]

The Genealogist

Family Search [free]

Or you could buy one of the genealogy software programmes. All good programmes will allow you to create many different family trees if you wish, offer several types of charts and reports, and enable you to add notes and photographs. Some also have other features and some programmes offer a free trial period, so that you can try out the software for a limited time.

For Windows:

Legacy links to sites such as Ancestry and FamilySearch

Family Historian is easy to use

Family Tree Maker is the most popular and well-known

For Macs:

Family Tree Maker for Mac links to Ancestry

MacFamily Tree is user-friendly

Reunion connects to FamilySearch

You can then print out your family tree, although if it is extensive it may become difficult to read on home-printer A4 sized paper. It is often very useful to get a larger sized version printed by an online printer, which you can do by sending a pdf of your tree with the required size. Family trees can be printed out on A3 or up to A0 sized paper and then framed and kept for future generations to read