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Family Tree

    Family Tree Editor's Picks

    • How Does Family Tree Software Work?

      Family tree software allows the genealogy enthusiast to efficiently organize his family history information. The pedigree data that was once painstakingly gathered by pen and paper in the pre-computer er can now be entered into the computer just once. From that information family trees and reports can be instantly generated. The... more »

    • How to View a Family Tree

      A family tree is useless unless you know how to interpret and read the information on it; but when you do, family trees become efficient, easy ways to map a family's genealogy. The tree can begin from the top or from the bottom of a page, and branches out from one couple to their children to their children's children and so forth. more »

    • How Does a Family Tree Help Children Understand Their Ancestors?

      A family tree gives children a visual aid to assist in understanding family relationships and the role of ancestors in their genealogy. As children mature, they begin to ask questions about family members and their relationships to those people. Figuring out your relationship to each person can be confusing for those children with... more »

    • How to Make a Family Tree Outline

      A family tree provides a simple way to track your family history and keep a record of new descendants. You can create a family tree outline on a computer, or using nothing more than a pencil and a piece of paper. Learn how to map out your family tree and record all your relatives on it. This way you'll never forget where you came... more »

    • How Does a Family Tree Work?

      A family tree is what is commonly referred to as a collection of a person's ancestors or relatives. Creating your family tree or charting your family's history can be as simple as starting a generation or two back and charting the branches going forward or to tracing your lineage back many generations. The popular interest in... more »

    Family Tree Quick Guides

    • Discovering Your Family History

      Researching your family history is a fun way to find out where you came from. Did you come from...

    • Searching for Family

      Whether separated by adoption or disaster, searching for a lost family member can be a difficult...

    • Get the Family Together

      We so rarely get a chance to sit down and enjoy time with our families. Instead, we’re often...

    • Starting Kindergarten

      Kindergarten is the place where imaginations are strengthened, new friends are made, and...

    Family Tree Articles

    Wikipedia

    Family tree

    A family tree is a chart representing family relationships in a conventional tree structure. The more detailed family trees used in medicine, genealogy, and social work are known as genograms.

    Family tree representations
    Genealogical data can be represented in several formats, for example as a pedigree or ancestor chart. Family trees are often presented with the oldest generations at the top and the newer generations at the bottom. An ancestry chart, which is a tree showing the ancestors of an individual, will more closely resemble a tree in shape, being wider at the top than the bottom. In some ancestry charts, an individual appears on the left and his or her ancestors appear to the right. A descendancy chart, which depicts all the descendants of an individual will be narrowest at the top.

    Family trees can have many themes. One might encompass all direct descendants of a single figure, or all known ancestors of a living person. Another might include all members of a particular surname (e.g. male-line descendants). Yet another approach is to construct a tree including all holders of a certain office, such as kings of Germany. This relies on dynastic marriage to hold together the links between dynasties.

    The image of the tree probably originated with one in medieval art of the Tree of Jesse, used to illustrate the Genealogy of Christ in terms of a prophecy of Isaiah (Isaiah, 11, 1). Possibly the first non-Biblical use, and the first to show full family relationships rather than a purely patrilineal scheme, was that involving family trees of the classical gods in Boccaccios Genealogia deorum gentilium (On the Genealogy of the Gods of the Gentiles), whose first version dates to 1360.

    The longest family tree in the world today is that of the Chinese philosopher and educator Confucius (551-479 BC), and he is the descendant of King Tang(1675 BC-1646 BC). The tree spans more than 80 generations, and includes more than 2 million members. An i read more at » http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family+tree

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