How to Record Illegitimate People in a Family Tree

There are many ways to record a family tree or pedigree. Most are familiar with the tree as a symbol of a family that starts with one person and branches out to include other family members. With relationships becoming more complicated, it has become more important to standardize a system that allows descendants to understand family connections, such as the difference between a "legitimate" or "illegitimate" child, although it is important to recognize that the difference is not as important as it once was to establish heirs. The charting system that is used most frequently, especially in the scientific and medical community, is the genogram.

Things You'll Need

• Paper or genealogy software.

Instructions

1. In a genogram, a square is the symbol of a male and a circle is the symbol of a female, so the first step is to draw a square and circle to represent the parents.

2. Establish the relationship between the parents. In this case, the parents are not married so the "line" that connects the two would be a repeating horizontal pattern of one dash and two dots. If the parents are still together, that is all that is needed. If the parents are no longer together, draw a short backward slanting line through the relationship line to show they have separated.

3. Draw a solid vertical line down from the parental relationship line with either a square or circle at the end of it, depending on the gender of the child. If the couple has more than one child, the oldest is always on the left. If the child dies, an X is drawn through the child's symbol.

4. For more examples of genogram symbols, go to GenoPro's website.

Tips & Warnings

• Ancestry.com and Genealogy.com are good websites for genealogy research.

References

• GenoPro

Resources

• Ancestry.com
• Genealogy.com