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.

Instructions

1. Understand what constitutes a family tree. Most family trees are pedigrees that trace your ancestry. These contain the names of one's ancestors and their life span dates (from birth to death), and connect the ancestors according to how they are related to one another.

2. Understand the connections between ancestors. Horizontal lines indicate marriage, solid vertical lines indicate offspring, and dotted vertical lines indicate adopted children.

3. Understand how the family tree outlines and determines the relationships between family members. The family tree starts off with the earliest known couple. The husband is generally on the left side of a couple, while the wife is on the right side. They are connected by a horizontal line and the tree branches up to the child(ren) they either had or adopted with a solid or dotted vertical line(s). Their children's marriages are noted by a horizontal line and the children of those marriages are connected in the same fashion as above.

4. Understand how the relationships between family members determine what they call one another. The male and female parents of children are respectively called fathers and mothers, as connected to their children by vertical lines. Their male and female children are respectively called sons and daughters. If the parents' children married and had children, then the male and female children would be respectively called grandsons and granddaughters relative to their parents' parents. Male and female siblings of the same parents are respectively called brothers and sisters, whereas male and female siblings of one parent are called respectively half-brothers and half-sisters. The list continues to encompass aunts, uncles, siblings-in-law, cousins, half-cousins, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren, and so forth.