Ask family members for information. If you’re making a family tree for a school project, your mother and father may be able to tell you everything you need to know about your family. For extensive family history projects, consider looking at a genealogy database. Sites like Familysearch. org have information about long lost relatives you may not have known you had. Be thorough. A family tree isn’t as useful when someone is accidentally left out. You might want to check with multiple sources to make sure your information is accurate.
Many people choose to go as far back as their great great grandparents and their siblings, or their great grandparents and their siblings. These are people you, your parents or your grandparents have met, so they are tied to you more closely than more distant relatives. If you have a large family with a lot of great aunts and uncles, cousins, and so on, you may have to end with a more recent generation to fit everyone on one page. If you have a smaller family you might be able to extend the tree to a more distant generation.
Art supply stores sell individual sheets of large paper. Choose one that is sturdy and attractive, such as watercolor paper. A more convenient option might be a piece of posterboard. This type of paper is also sold by the individual sheet, and it comes in a variety of colors. You can find it at drugstores. Plan to draw the family tree in pencil and trace over it with a nice ink pen or marker.
The place where you write your name is the beginning of the tree. If you write it at the bottom of the page, the branches will protrude upward. You could write it at the top of the page and have the rest flow downward, or write it on one side of the page and have the tree bloom out in the other direction. If you decide to go with an actual tree shape, go ahead and draw the outline of the tree in light pencil and position your name where you want it.
If you and your siblings have spouses or children, write them as well. Spouses’ names are written directly next to their partners, and the children’s names are written below their parents’ names. You can draw lines connecting parents to their children if you’d like. Tailor the tree to fit your family. If you have one parent, or more than two parents, fill them in as well. You can get creative with the drawing to include your step parents, step siblings, and anyone else who is part of your family. The most important aspect of a family tree is making sure everyone is included. To keep your tree well-organized, use a regular pattern for the order in which you list the siblings. For example, start with the oldest sibling on the left and then put all subsequent siblings to the right, or vice versa. Either way, keep it consistent throughout the tree.
Use different shapes for males and females. For example, you can use ovals for females and rectangles for males, or whatever other pattern you wish. This way, someone looking at your family tree can tell at a glance the gender of the different individuals. Use dashed lines for divorced couples. This way, you can still express the biological relationships between parents and their children, even when they are not married. Add dates of birth and (where applicable) death. This can add a lot of information to your tree and make it interesting to your friends and other family members. Add more biographical information for each individual, such as place of birth, maiden names, middle names, and so on.
