How to create a family tree?

Interest in the history of a kind existed among peopleat all times. But in different epochs different estates treated their own genealogy in different ways. The nobles traced their pedigree almost from the creation of the world and carefully stored any available documents and family relics. The merchantry imitated them, and often the merchant family represented several generations of a glorious and respected profession. In the "lower" estates - among the philistines and peasants - most often information was passed from generation to generation orally in the form of family traditions.

Under Soviet rule, people avoided advertisingnoble origin, and many bloodlines for this reason have sunk into oblivion. Intergenerational ties were interrupted everywhere. And it was only in our times that interest in the lives of previous generations broke out again. Many people are interested in the question - how to make a genealogical tree? Where to begin? What documents are needed? This article is intended to help in this painstaking and extraordinarily fascinating activity - compiling your own genealogy.

Before you create a family treeown family, it is necessary to collect as much information as possible from all possible sources. These sources can serve, in addition to the available official documents, old photographs, letters, diaries, publications in the press, as well as oral stories - memories of older relatives.

At the preparatory stage of the pedigree creationshould collect, review and streamline all existing documents. It is desirable to have a diary, which will be updated with new data. Documents (certificates of birth and marriage, diplomas, certificates, workbooks, etc.), photographs, letters, newspaper notes should be arranged in separate envelopes. Such an envelope or file must be made for each relative. Valuable documents for security are better to scan or remove from them photocopies, the originals put in a safe place.

For each member of the genus,sheet-questionnaire with a detailed list of data. First and foremost, the surname, name, patronymic, for women - surnames before marriage and in marriage, date and exact place of birth, date of death and burial place, title (if any), places of work (services) and profession, positions and ranks . It should be mentioned all the possible professional achievements, awards, published works and inventions.

Useful in the questionnaire of each member of the familyInclude information on religion, the date and place of baptism, class belonging, the origin of the spouses and their relatives, as well as the availability of real estate (house, estate), the places of residence in chronological order. The first name of the spouse, date, place of the wedding, birth and baptism of the children - all this information will be useful and necessary when considering the question of how to compile a family tree.

An invaluable source of information will be oralmemories of relatives. You can consistently interview the representatives of the older generation or organize a family meeting, timed to any important event in the life of the family. Having started talking about the events of the past days, you can get a lot of important information - relatives will recall the detailed details of past events, clarify and complement each other. In order not to lose information, often described chaotically and scrappy, it is most convenient to use a dictaphone. Later it is necessary to sort out the records, draw on paper and add to the available informal information about this or that relative.

After interviewing relatives, go foradditional information in public archives. These are, first of all, reading rooms of local libraries, where there are binderies of newspapers over the past years. Archival documents can also be found in museums and various departments. Having found the necessary information, ask to make a photocopy or a certified extract from the document. Keep in mind that there are specialists who know how to make a genealogical tree competently and with all the nuances in mind. For a fee, they will work on your archival application, which can be made in free form.

After gathering all the possible information, proceed to theregistration of search results on paper. Determine how to make a family tree - ascending (from descendants to ancestors) or descending (from ancestors to descendants). You can represent your own genus in the form of a tree whose trunk is a common ancestor of the genus, and the crown is the descendants. You can take the actor as the "trunk" - the compiler of the pedigree, and "branches" make his relatives on the paternal and maternal lines. The pedigree can also be made in the form of a table.

Variants of how to make a genealogicaltree, set. You can, for example, lead a genealogy (to trace only the lines of men - the successors of the genus, or only women), can be mixed. Graphic images can be vertical or horizontal, generations can be numbered for clarity. In recent years, there have also appeared pedigrees in the form of essays containing a text description of each person with the addition of the necessary materials (photos, letters, notes, etc.).