If you want to take a trip down memory lane and gather information on all your family members, this guide is just for you. We’ve detailed out the different steps involved in drawing a family tree and also highlighted how you can search for unknown family members and know more about who they were and what they meant to the family.
But how does one go about making or drawing a family tree? In today’s world, most of us live a life where we are close only to a select few people. Distant cousins and other members of the family might not be familiar with us and vice versa. In fact, we don’t even meet so many people from our grandparents’ generation because of our lifestyle and several other reasons.
Making a family tree is an interesting personal project you can take up if you want to know about your entire family across several generations. Although most people go to their grandparents, some people might want to include more people and document their family’s rich history and legacy.
Research Family Members
Start simple and talk to your relatives. For instance, about your generation, you might know certain cousins who will know others. So ensure you get all those details with a few conversations. Ensure you note everything down so that you don’t forget anything. This is especially important if your family is big.
Researching family members is easy when it comes to your generation or your parents’ generation, but beyond that, it becomes slightly difficult. This is mostly because the previous generation and the generations before did not always have accessible means to document pictures and details about birth, death, and more. So, retrieving such data would be pretty difficult as you go farther from your generation.
Talk to Your Near Ones
Once you’ve documented all the necessary info on your current generation, start talking to your parents about their generation. Go with the same drill and follow the same process you followed with your generation. When it comes to your parents, you might have to work a little to connect with their siblings and their offspring. If you’re lucky, you might know about them through your cousins themselves, but if not, you’ll need to do some work.
After you have listed everyone in your mother and father’s generation, go to the next part of the tree. Now, this is where things get slightly complex. There’s a slight probability that you might not be able to have a conversation with your parents for several reasons. They might have either passed, or they might not be in touch with you, and so on. However, you might know little about your grandparents from your parents. So, how do you proceed? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.
Search with People Legacy Aggregator Platform
People Legacy is a platform where you can find out details about your ancestors. All you need to do is type in their full name and the place where they passed away, and you’ll have an exhaustive list of people who passed in a cemetery there.
People Legacy works across the United States and is connected with every cemetery and provides all burial records through yesteryear sources. The platform is apt for anyone looking to know about immediate and extended family members, birth dates, relatives, and more. In fact, you’ll also know about when their relatives have passed and where they have been buried. So, if you feel like you want to visit those places, you can do so without any hassle.
The website has records that date back at least till the 1800s, so if you’re looking to trace your family tree until then, it will be simple for you to do so. Above and beyond this, you can also know more about the background of the members as the platform is connected to Veripages, from where you can retrieve more info.
Search on Peoplelegacy.com
Check out the instructions to research your family tree on this website.
- Visit the website www.peoplelegacy.com
- On the home page, enter first name, last name, and city/state.
- Click the “search” icon.
Draw the Family Tree
Now that you have all the information in hand, you can start drawing/making your family tree. You can use different tools depending on where and how you want the tree to be documented. If it is purely for documentation purposes, you can use professional tools like EDrawMind, which is used to create mind maps. This is perhaps the most interesting part, as you can play around a lot with the different pieces of information you have received through your research.
If you want it to be more picturesque and you plan to showcase it somewhere, you can play with drawings, aesthetics, and a whole lot more. The possibilities are truly infinite and depend on your creativity and imagination.
To get started, you must write down all the names of your generation, which includes yourself and your cousins. Now, you can mention their details such as birth date, death anniversary, marriage date, and more. Once you are done with this, you can move toward your parents’ generation. Follow the same exercise and continue to populate the tree. Ensure your parents’ generation is above yours. Otherwise, the tree will be upside down. Many first-timers tend to make this error, but you can avoid it by following this guide. After the second generation is done, move on to the third and then the fourth.
As mentioned earlier, most people stop after documenting details about their great-grandparents. However, you can continue if you want to know more and go back as much as you can. Another interesting thing you can add to your tree is pictures. Now, you might be able to get pictures of people till your grandparents’ generation, but after that, you might mostly get portraits (if any) or no pictures at all. But don’t worry, that’s alright.
Conclusion
Thus, with the above steps, you will be able to make and draw a comprehensive family tree. The process is quite fascinating as you know more about where you come from and draw quite a few insights about yourself from the people who came before you. So enjoy it.
FAQs
How to draw a family tree?
You can start by collecting all the necessary info about people from all generations you want to cover in the tree. Once you have that, you can start using digital tools or on paper as well and make your family tree.
What tools can I use to draw my family tree?
If you want to create a family tree, you can use physical mediums such as paper and canvases to make it look artistic. However, if you’re trying to document family history in the long run, tools such as EDrawMind and other mind-mapping platforms can be helpful.
How to get information about grandparents?
Numerous aggregator platforms, such as People Legacy, provide information on when your grandparents and other relatives were born and passed away. You can look those up and find what you need. GNVFFSSB103811550
Kathleen was a freelance writer for about 20 years. For the past several years, she has served as a volunteer public relations and writer for People Legacy. When she isn't writing, she enjoys spending time with her family, doing genealogy research and traveling.
