Who Do You Think You Are? Encyclopedia of Genealogy: The definitive reference guide to tracing your family history

Creating a Family Tree

A family tree is a diagram that shows at a glance how your relatives and ancestors are related to one another. This will become the foundation of your future work, a growing document that incorporates all the biographical information you uncover as you hunt for documentation in archives, libraries and museums. The importance of building a family tree from the instant you start your research at home has already been touched upon in Chapter 1 (#u70b89aa6-3278-5c96-9050-7c5fccbf1831), but you will learn here just how vital it is to keep updating your tree after every discovery so that you can see at a glance what your next research step should be.

People can get quite confused about drawing up a family tree, assuming it is a more complicated process than it really is. There are many software packages on the market that promise you an all-singing, all-dancing family tree with generational reports, photo uploads and print-outs. But if this is your first attempt to put a family tree together, it’s probably best to go back to basics until you’re more familiar with the procedure, and simply use a large piece of paper and a pencil.

‘A family tree shows how your ancestors are related to one another – and to you.’

This section will show you the various methods of writing family trees and the abbreviations and genealogical terminology used. Some of this may be familiar. If you’ve watched Who Do You Think You Are? regular graphics appear on screen to show you how, for example, John Hurt is related to Walter Lord Browne. Or you may have seen pedigrees published in books or newspapers that relate to the royal family or members of the aristocracy. Even though you may not have such distinguished roots, the principle behind a family tree’s construction remains the same.

However, before attempting to build your first family tree, it’s important to have a basic grasp of some of the terminology used, since you’ll need to describe how members of your family are related to one another.

Understanding Family Relationships

In essence, this will be your family tree, so anything you produce should start with you, with your name placed right at the centre of the blank piece of paper. Everyone else is therefore described in terms of their relationship to you. On this embryonic family tree, your parents’ names will be written above you; your brothers and sisters – known as your siblings – will be either side of you, also underneath your parents; and the names of any children you have will be written below you, with their children – your grandchildren – below them. Above each of your parents will be their parents – your four grandparents – and alongside each of your parents will be their siblings, your uncles and aunts.

Every group of people on the same horizontal line represents a separate generation. Most people are familiar with these terms, but these are all close family members, and you will be working many generations back into the past when it becomes harder to keep track of distant relationships; so listed below are some of the key words used to describe relatives from the extended family, and ancestors further back in time, which are perhaps less familiar.

Blood Relations

The direct line in your family tree is made up of all the people who have been biologically crucial to your creation. Therefore they would include your parents and your grandparents, but not any of their siblings and other descendants – these people are your extended family. Each time you move one generation further back, you need to add ‘great’ as a prefix. Therefore the parents of your grandparents are known as your great-grandparents, and the parents of your great-grandparents are your great-great-grandparents, and so on. Every time you search for another generation in your direct line you will be looking for twice the number of people as the generation that came after that. This is because you have two parents, who each have two parents, so that you have four grandparents. These four grandparents have two parents each, which means you have eight great-grandparents, and then sixteen great-great-grandparents. As you work further back than this, you might find it easier to shorten this description to ‘2 x great-grandparents’.

Extended Family by Blood

These are the people that are related to you by blood, but are not biologically crucial in your existence today. Where possible, you should include them in your family tree – particularly after your first phase of research – but you might want to focus on your direct ancestors and come back to them at a later date.

Nieces and Nephews

Your nieces and nephews are the children of your siblings. Niece is used to describe a female offspring and nephew to describe a male offspring. Any subsequent children of your nieces and nephews are known as your great-nieces and great-nephews, and another ‘great’ is added to the prefix each time another generation is born.

Uncles and Aunts

Your uncles and aunts are the siblings of your parents. The siblings of any previous generations in your direct line are described by adding ‘great’ as a prefix, and each generation you go back another ‘great’ is added. Therefore the siblings of your grandparents would be your great-uncles and great-aunts, and the siblings of your great-grandparents would be your great-great-uncles and great-great-aunts. Some people use the word ‘grand’ instead of ‘great’, and might describe these relations as ‘great-grand-uncles and aunts’.

‘This is your family tree, so everyone else is described in terms of their relationship to you.’

Cousins

Your cousins are the children of your aunts and uncles. These are known as your first cousins. Any subsequent descendants of your first cousins are indicated by how many generations they are ‘removed’ from you. If your first cousin has a child, this child is your ‘first cousin once removed’. If your first cousin then has a grandchild they would be your ‘first cousin twice removed’. First, second and third cousins can only be used to describe cousins of the same generation. Therefore, if you had a child, they would be second cousins with your first cousin’s child. This means that while you refer to that relation as your first cousin once removed, your child would call them their second cousin.

To describe the cousins of any previous generations to yourself, you should refer to them as the cousin of whichever person in your direct line they are of the same generation as. This means that the parent of your second cousin should be called your ‘parent’s first cousin’, and the grandparent of your third cousin would be your ‘grandparent’s first cousin’. The relationships between cousins is very confusing and you may find that in documents such as wills and census returns people use the word cousin to describe a distant relative without qualifying exactly how they are related. It will be your job to untangle this confusion!

Extended Family by Marriage

Families are complicated entities, and as well as direct blood relatives and their extended family you will quickly discover that there are other relationships that are more complicated to define – usually the result of divorce, subsequent remarriage and an associated second family. Here are some of the more useful terms that you may need to incorporate into your family tree.

In-laws

When one member of your family marries, they are related to their partner’s family as a result of the wedding. This relationship is said to be ‘in law’ due to the legally binding nature of the union. Thus the mother of the bride is the ‘mother-in-law’ of the groom, just as the father of the groom is the ‘father-in-law’ of the bride. If either the bride or the groom has siblings, then they become the sister- or brother-in-law of the other party.

Step-relations

The word ‘step’ is used to describe the relationship to a member of your family that occurs through a subsequent marriage by one (or indeed both) of your biological parents. Your stepfather would be your biological mother’s husband from a subsequent marriage, whilst your stepmother would be your biological father’s wife if he married again. If either of your step-parents had children from a relationship prior to marrying your biological parent, these children would be your step-brothers and stepsisters; whilst they would be described as your biological parent’s stepsons and stepdaughters.

Half-relations

The word ‘half’ is used to describe a relationship between children who share only one biological parent. For example, if your biological father or mother had a child with your step-parent, this child would be your half-brother or half-sister.

Drawing Your Family Tree

Using these terms, you should be able to build your initial family tree quite quickly; and it should display all the information you’ve found when you were interviewing relatives and looking through collections of family heirlooms. There are bound to be some things that you don’t know yet – full names and biographical dates of more distant ancestors, for example – and you should add question marks against anything you’re not sure about. This is one of the main purposes of this first family tree – to show at a glance what you need to verify, check or research more fully. Don’t worry if it looks messy at this stage or a bit sparse – you’ll be tidying it up and adding new branches when you start your research away from the family.

One thing to decide upon is the presentation style of your family tree, bearing in mind there are several recognized ways of doing this and the final choice will be down to you, based on what you find easiest to work with and how much data you wish to include. Some trees will only show the direct line, whereas others are very large and sprawling, and include all the siblings in each generation and distant cousins.

In the past, genealogy was the preserve of the aristocracy – or those that aspired to higher social rank – who wished to prove their connections to illustrious forebears. They commissioned diagrams, or ‘pedigrees’, that were as much works of art as family trees, with coats of arms, heraldic beasts and key names circled. A pedigree that shows immediate ancestors as far back as the sixteen 2 x great-grandparents is known as a seize quartiers, whilst one that covers all thirty-two 3 x great-grandparents is known as a trent-deux quartiers. These linear trees start with the most recent generation at the bottom of the tree, and continue horizontally upwards, with each entry representing people further away in time from the person at the foot of the tree. However, only key relatives, rather than all 16 or 32 direct ancestors, are often shown as they often focused on connectivity to the great and the good, or key marriages, rather than completeness.

Today, family trees that only show a direct line are often drawn not from bottom to top, but from left to right, with the most recent person on the left and their ancestors spreading out from them to the right of the page. There are pedigree templates for trees in this format available from the Society of Genealogists and local Family History Societies that simply require you to write the names and relevant dates in the spaces provided on the form.

While family trees that show just your direct line are a quick and easy way to map your immediate heritage once you have worked back far enough, it makes sense to include your entire extended family to start with as they can provide clues to help you move back further. UK genealogists favour drop-line family trees for this purpose, and these are the most common format you are likely to come across in books. Essentially, they are a diagram that shows how everyone is related to one another; and most people start by placing their own data at the heart of their family tree – sensible really because, after all, they are the ones undertaking the journey and will therefore be describing the people they find in relation to themselves.

You should write your full name, which should be the name you were registered with at birth, rather than a nickname or surname you took later in life. Therefore married women should always be written onto the tree under their maiden name, not their married name. Underneath your name, write a ‘b.’ to signify ‘birth date’ and then write your date of birth after that. Draw a horizontal line above your name and a small vertical branch coming down from the line to connect your name to it – a bit like a large ‘T’ shape with extended horizontal arms. Any siblings you may have should have their names attached to the horizontal line in the same way, which effectively creates an entire branch for your generation. You should start with the eldest sibling first, whose name should be written to the left of the branch, and work along to the right so that if you were the third child, for example, you would appear third on the branch, and the youngest sibling’s name is positioned at the far right-hand end of the branch. Write every sibling’s date of birth in the same way you did for yourself. If any of them have died you should write a ‘d.’ underneath their birth date, followed by their date of death.

Above your generation’s branch you need to write your parents’ full names. Traditionally, the man’s name should be written on the left and the woman’s on the right. Leave enough space between them to put either ‘m.’ or ‘=’ to indicate their marriage, and write their date of marriage beneath this. Below the date of marriage you should draw a vertical line that connects their marriage to your generation’s horizontal branch, thus showing that you are all related by blood. You can use the same method to add your own marriage date and spouse’s name, and the marriages of your siblings if you wish. You may want to include subsequent generations after yours, such as your children, nieces and nephews, grandchildren and so on, in which case you will need to leave enough space below your generation to fit them in. Where space permits, each generation of children should be at roughly the same level on the tree – your nephews and nieces roughly alongside your children. However, if you are only creating a tree of your ancestors and not your descendants, then your name should be positioned towards the bottom of the page to allow more space for you to work back in time, up the page.

You may come across trees that depict relationships between parents and a child using a dotted vertical line rather than a solid one. This can be used for various circumstances. In the past when illegitimacy was deemed to be a problem, particularly for wealthy families for reasons of inheritance, a dotted line might indicate that a child was born out of wedlock or as the result of an affair. It can also be used to highlight a non-blood relationship between parent and child in cases of adoption.

‘It is vital to keep updating your tree after every discovery so that you can see at a glance what your next research step should be.’

You can now repeat the process you used for your own generation to put your parents’ siblings either side of their names, each set of their parents’ names above their branch, and keep repeating the process as far back as you can. The further back you work and the more siblings there are, the more difficult it can become to have them in age-descending order. You may find it more practical to put all your aunts and uncles, great-aunts and uncles and so on in age order but leave the name of the direct ancestor at one end of each branch so as to keep the diagram clear. If you do not know a woman’s maiden or unmarried name, leave her surname blank so that you can fill in the space when you discover it. The same rule should apply to any other details you are unsure of, such as dates of birth, marriage or death. These will give you points to work towards, so that every generation has a complete set of details whereby each person’s full name and their dates of birth, marriage and death are all known.

Some genealogists include occupations on their trees simply by writing these underneath each person’s vital details. Having occupations displayed on your tree can help you to keep your work focused, so that if you are looking for a Jack Brown on the 1901 census you can use your tree as a reminder of his date of birth and marital status, and also of what job he should be described as holding. This can be of assistance if there are lots of people who have the same name in your tree but who can be distinguished by occupation. For example there may be a John Smith who was a woodcutter and a John Smith who was an engine driver. Alternatively, if a particular name was carried down through many generations you may find it useful to add a roman numeral after their name, indicating which generation they belong to. In this way the first William Perry, whose name was passed down to his son, then his grandson and great-grandson, would be known as William Perry I, his son would be William Perry II, his grandson would be William Perry III, and so on.

A family tree is not always drawn in a diagram, but can also be written using indented paragraphs. This requires the use of many of the abbreviations listed in the box in Abbreviations in Family Trees (#ulink_f09910a4-9a88-5a37-8821-177ed67eed18) to explain relationships in place of branches that would otherwise be drawn. Known as the ‘narrative indented pedigree’, this is not always the easiest method of reading a family tree as it can sometimes be confusing to follow, but it is the most straightforward way of typing up your tree if you are using a word-processing package to record your family tree, which does not allow you to draw branches very easily. It is also very handy to understand this method of describing a tree because some pedigree publications use this style, like Burke’s Peerage and Baronetage and Debrett’s Peerage and Baronetage (see Chapter 4 (#uf395f683-f0fe-5edb-bb72-522f40562e30)). The indented pedigree starts with the earliest known ancestor and their marriage, and then lists the children from this marriage in age-descending order (although sometimes female children are listed after the male children instead). To list the children’s offspring an indented paragraph is added under each child’s name where their descendants’ details are written. Therefore a narrative indented pedigree might look like this:

James Sherwood m. Alice Clarke. Had issue:

John Sherwood b. 1648 and m. Jane Cecily. dsp.

George Sherwood m. Carole Vine and had issue:

Simon Sherwood b. 1672

Joseph Sherwood b. 1675 and m. Mary Shanks 1699.

He d. 1722 leaving issue:

Katherine Sherwood b. 1702

Grace Sherwood b. 1705