Sample Family Tree Building Forms and Templates
by Ellis Keith
Who else has felt the pull of finding their family tree but feeling like the process might be a little overwhelming? Sometimes the family trees we’ve seen seem to be so complex that they’re hard to understand and we wonder if we could ever create one. Relax! Growing your family tree is easy when you use sample family tree forms and follow simple steps and a proven format.
Once you have identified the names and vital dates about your relatives, you might be wondering how to go about putting them in an organized way into a family tree that is easy to read and understand. It helps if you use a good example of someone else’s family tree as a guide. There are some sites on the internet that give you both examples and templates to use in constructing your own family tree. These templates make it easy to know where to put your own information, then your parents and each of the subsequent ancestors on your tree … as far back as you have names and information.
If you are just trying to put together a family tree to impress someone or out of a sense of obligation or even to give to a relative as a gift, then you might choose to have a professional genealogist build your family tree for you. There are a number of online websites where your can just send them the names and pictures of your ancestral relatives and they’ll charge you a fee and create a professional and impressive looking family tree.
That choice will indeed get the job done, but having someone else create your family masterpiece takes much of the fun out of it.
A lot of the fun in doing genealogy is in personally gathering and discovering the names and places about your ancestors. By going to google.com and doing a search, you can find a number of sites on the web that offer free templates for your ancestral chart (commonly referred to as a pedigree chart), and charts for recording the details of each family (commonly called Family Group Sheets). One site in that category that has a number of sample genealogy forms available to download is:
http://obituarieshelp.org/genealogy_forms_downloads.html The family tree chart has spots to put each individuals name, to whom they were married and when, as well as both birth and death information – both dates and places. This is one of the critical forms to use in the research process. It helps you keep your information organized, is easy to use for adding new information and gives a quick summary at a glance of what you have gathered so far.
Some of the other family tree templates may be fancier and more decorative but they still accomplish the same results. One of the sites that offers some sample family tree forms that are more elaborate is : http://www.thetreemaker.com/samples/family-tree-example.html This site offers differ options to choose from and most of them can make the resulting personal family tree both functional and visually impressive.
Another good site that offers a good free family tree template is:
http://genealogy.about.com/od/free_charts/ig/genealogy_charts/family_tree.htm They also have other forms to make your research easier here when building your family tree. They offer a number of different designs for your tree chart and one of the great things about these charts is that they can be filled out right there on the computer and then printed out. That feature can be particularly valuable to those with poor handwriting.
There’s at least one other good site that is worthy of mention in this brief article and that is: http://www.familytreemagazine.com/freeforms They have quite a good selection of charts and work sheets that can make your sleuthing a lot easier and more fun as you track down those elusive ancestors. Another reason to check out this site is that they have a good magazine that has a lot of information about different ways and places to proceed with researching your family tree.
So get started with your next step today. Often time involving the younger relatives helps them get a sense of who they are and ties them to the family unit and reinforces family values. Gather the clan or see them one by one but certainly, put a smile on your face, a twinkle in your eye and go find another branch on your own family tree today!
