Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Answers > How Do You Represent Members of a Family Tree?

How Do You Represent Members of a Family Tree?

by Family Tree on January 26, 2012

INSTEAD OF drawing a rough picture of them, using symbols to represent each, or their actual photo. Is there another way to represent them to make my family tree visually pleasing?

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Maverick September 7, 2011 at 10:23 am

Typically a family tree is drawn with one name (not picture) at the very top, say your great grandfather. Assuming he married at some point, you have an equals sign next to him and the name of his wife next to that. (If me married multiple times you could add multiple equals signs.)
Then you have a line coming from that equals sign down to all his children, so if he had three children you’d have three lines from the equals sign going to each of the names of the children.
Again, if they married, equals signs, and more lines coming from them…

Until you end up with the latest generation at the bottom : you.

Typically this looks more like a pyramid than a tree, but it is possible to extend this further by adding brothers, sisters, aunts, parents of wives, and so forth, so actually the pyramid turns upside down because you have SO many relatives above you sat at the bottom of the diagram.

Normally this could be annotated with birth dates, death dates, marriage dates, etc, and could be updated with photos/portraits if they are available… though that is rare before the 1950s.

As for making it visually pleasing you could write in caligraphic style (special handwriting in ink), or add tree-like effects like branches and leaves, or highlight some special feature (like all the men in blue all women in red, or a specific line of people).

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