Archive for July 8th, 2009

Organizing Your Geneology Family Tree Materials

Building a geneology family tree can be a very tedious and oftentimes frustrating activity. If you do not learn how to organize the materials that you are gathering, you will end up with an accumulating pile of information that would be too difficult to sort out later on. The following are some tips that you can learn on how to generate a good and accurate geneology family tree.

How to Organize Your Geneology Family Tree

Although the activity is quite tiresome and frustrating, many pursue creating an accurate geneology tree and this can be a very rewarding experience. To save time and effort in completing this seemingly impossible task, the following organizing tips can be followed.

* Use a genealogy tree template when taking down notes and building up information. You can have more organizational leverage by making use of genealogy programs and software. You can either buy this software or download it through the net.

* You can develop your own spreadsheet or any tree system which you can use to build up your geneology family tree. For each separate family line or surname, a folder should be allocated. You can have your own filing system or categorize name according to your preference.

* In each surname folder, sub folders should be made that includes every family unit with a husband, wife and children. For each child that has married, another sub folder should be allocated. It is up to you to decide which kind of information should be included in these sub folders and this can include records, photos, newspaper clippings, military records, and birth, death and marriage documents.

* The following are some of the basic information that you should put in for every entry in your geneology family tree. This information should include: name of person, your relationship to the person, birth date, place of birth, father’s name, mother’s name, brothers’ names, sisters’ names, schools attended, occupation, business, affiliated organizations, where the person lived, spouses, date of marriage, how many children they had, names of children, children’s birthdays, death, cause of death.

* You should also maintain a record of the sources you visited to keep track what you have already tried and what is still pending. This can be a spreadsheet or database of books searched, newspapers, census records as well as people and contacts you have talked to. Include also sources where you did not get any useful information for reference purposes.

A person wanting to complete a comprehensive and accurate geneology family tree should be organized and consistent in his or her work. Information obtained should be immediately placed into your software, spreadsheet or database and properly categorized and indexed. This will save you with so much time in the process and can help you check and resolve any conflicts in information as you obtain them.