Creating a Family Tree

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mimico_polak

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Has anyone created a family tree for their family? Looking into it right now as my parents would like one, and not sure what would be the best way to go about it.

Anyone know of any software that would be ideal for this? My mother has 9 siblings...and they all have a minimum of 2 kids, and they have a minimum of 2 kids so it gets pretty large pretty quick....and that's just my mother's side.

Thought about Excel, but haven't been able to get far with it. Powerpoint? Same issue. Thinking of breaking it down to each aunt/uncle and their offspring to make it more manageable, but it would be kind of cool to see a single page with everyone (I'd hazard a guess of close to 80-100 for mom's side branch alone. Dad's is maybe 15 or so.
 
Ask your elders. My brother-in-law is of Mennonite descent (although he's not practicing it) and the old folks did it all on paper.
 
Brian P said:
Ask your elders. My brother-in-law is of Mennonite descent (although he's not practicing it) and the old folks did it all on paper.
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I'll have to do some digging, as I believe someone started a tree over a decade ago but gave up because it was becoming too onerous and too many family members.
 
An old friend decided to trace his Irish roots and spent two months traveling Ireland. The first month was frustratingly spent looking for churches that were long gone due to fires.(candles) All records up in flames.
He then heard that the best kept records were to be found in pubs. The next month was spent pub crawling in search of his family tree. He did find great food and excellent drink. A couple of leads led him nowhere. Sobering up back home was difficult.
 
Wingboy said:
An old friend decided to trace his Irish roots and spent two months traveling Ireland. The first month was frustratingly spent looking for churches that were long gone due to fires.(candles) All records up in flames.
He then heard that the best kept records were to be found in pubs. The next month was spent pub crawling in search of his family tree. He did find great food and excellent drink. A couple of leads led him nowhere. Sobering up back home was difficult.
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I like this plan...but going to Poland in the near future is out....but the bars, food and women (don’t tell wife) are all great!
 
mimico_polak said:
Has anyone created a family tree for their family? Looking into it right now as my parents would like one, and not sure what would be the best way to go about it.

Anyone know of any software that would be ideal for this? My mother has 9 siblings...and they all have a minimum of 2 kids, and they have a minimum of 2 kids so it gets pretty large pretty quick....and that's just my mother's side.

Thought about Excel, but haven't been able to get far with it. Powerpoint? Same issue. Thinking of breaking it down to each aunt/uncle and their offspring to make it more manageable, but it would be kind of cool to see a single page with everyone (I'd hazard a guess of close to 80-100 for mom's side branch alone. Dad's is maybe 15 or so.
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I did ours on Ancestry.ca. Started out with about 150 dating from the late 1800s. We got that by talking to family elders. Within 6 months of joining Ancestry the tree mushroomed to well over a thousand going as far back as 1630. Today there are 4000+. Be prepared to uncover family secrets that can be tough to finesse.

It costs $12/mo if you do the 6 mo package. I did ours in 2015, now I revisit it every 2 years for a 6 month stint, gives me time to update and I usually find a few more connections..
 
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Perhaps an application that would allow you to create flowcharts would be best for your requirements in my opinion. Excel and ppt are not best suited. If you have office 365 subscription, you could look into MS Vizio, and create a flow chart for your family tree.

I use lucid charts to create flow diagrams for my official work, when the need arises. They have inbuilt templates that are quite useful.
 
Mad Mike said:
If you are looking for tools, suggest Family Tree Builder - Free genealogy program - MyHeritage

It's free, it also generated GED files, the standard interchange for all genealogy applications. Thank the Mormons.
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My mother in law researched genealogy as a career.
Her advice was to always start with the Mormons, and that was before the internet.
Their data is curated, up to date, searchable and FREE.

...they're afraid of inter-marriage in the Mormon church, they're sort of a closed society. They keep good records.
Mostly Europeon and America's, not so good for asian records.
 
mimico_polak said:
Has anyone created a family tree for their family? Looking into it right now as my parents would like one, and not sure what would be the best way to go about it.

Anyone know of any software that would be ideal for this? My mother has 9 siblings...and they all have a minimum of 2 kids, and they have a minimum of 2 kids so it gets pretty large pretty quick....and that's just my mother's side.

Thought about Excel, but haven't been able to get far with it. Powerpoint? Same issue. Thinking of breaking it down to each aunt/uncle and their offspring to make it more manageable, but it would be kind of cool to see a single page with everyone (I'd hazard a guess of close to 80-100 for mom's side branch alone. Dad's is maybe 15 or so.
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That's a great idea. My cousin started one for my dad's side of the family. He told me that for each generation you go back, the tree exponentially gets larger and you have to make a decision which fifth or sixth cousin 4th removed is no longer worth pursuing...

Also, living in North America and researching ethnic families (assuming you are Polish, right?) gets difficult accessing church or govt records on another continent. My family is 5th generation Malaysian but going further back and trying to dig up records in China, my cousin gave up. Even in this age of Big Data, I'm not sure paper records dating back 150 years ago get scanned in and digitized.

Not sure what it's like for Polish families, but back then, it was not unusual for Chinese families to have 10 kids. Granted 2 or 3 died before age 5. :(

My cousin mapped it out on a large piece of paper that he scanned in in graphical format for the family, but he probably kept the data on some kind of spread sheet. This was back some time ago, there's probably specialized mapping SW for this now.

Good luck!
 
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Whatever you do, keep multiple copies. My great-aunt spent years compiling a family tree. As it was her work, she was the keeper of the book. As she got older, at some point she decided the book should go somewhere (no one knows where or why) and all the work was lost.
 
Its pretty interesting stuff , one side has been here since the Mayflower (seriously its been traced) and the other came in the Scottish displacements when sheep were better that tenant farmers and they were packaged off to the "Canadas" . 200 yrs on one side and 400 on the other. And yet they still like to put on kilts and pretend they are Scots, or Welsh, or Brit.... which ever fits the narrative.

We have had a couple trees done by various family including trips to Liverpool, lowland Scotland, Wales and oddly Belgium for research. Its a really deep rabbit hole.
Most to my recent history is more like a shrub than a tree
 
We hit the motherlode about two years ago. My parent's marriage broke up when I was a baby. My father moved to the other side of the planet and was never heard of again. Just before Christmas in my daughter did a Google search of my dad's name and came up with his obituary. She was able to trace a connection to a half brother and found they were looking for us for years. Some funny stories.

My heritages is 25% Polish, 25% Ukrainian and I thought 25% each Scottish and English. We were fortunate that the Scottish part was on my dad's side because the Scots keep good records. I can now trace that part of my heritage back to the early 1700s and there is no English blood.

On the Polish / Ukrainian side things are more confused. It was common knowledge in the family that my grandmother was Polish and my Grandfather Ukrainian and had come to Canada in the early 1900s with two children, having another seven here.

My grandfather was pretty close to illiterate in English and when asked the family name as each child was born he said the name with heavy accent. The English nurse wrote down what she though she heard. Therefore there are several spellings of the family name. FWIW, Mimico Polak's name is written one way but in English, pronounced quite differently.

Adding to the confusion for my daughter, my M-I-L was actually Russian but my F-I-L was Ukrainian. Since there was animosity between Ukrainians and Russians my M-I-L had passed herself of as Ukrainian for so long it was never came up in discussion. A couple of years ago the Russian connection was made in front of my daughter who had no previous knowledge of her Russian heritage.

The European connections are lost due to WWII. Both my in-laws went through the Nazi / Russian nightmare and lost all family connections. They tried everything including the Red Cross with no luck.

As mentioned, the Mormons and Ancestry.com are good starting points. Don't forget the church as they keep birth, marriage and death records. Relatives are a good source but take everything with a grain of salt. I had an aunt that used to make up crap just to get attention.

There are also DNA sites that track people and their route across the planet.

Privacy legislation may go against you depending on the jurisdiction. I was trying to find some stuff but many records are sealed to family only or only after the parties of interest are dead for X years.

Good luck.
 
crankcall said:
Its all quite fascinating , and as Nobbie notes, anecdotal family stories are often very accurate, or complete fabrications.
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Depends on how sober the tellers are at the time!

EDIT: @nobbie48 years ago my ex was 100% sure that my actual name translated to Albert in English....I called ******** on that one. She found some book on names and translations and lo and behold my name was actually translated to Albert. When I spent time in terrace airport waiting for my food I would always use Albert as it was a running joke with the crew, a good time, and the waitresses were so bad pronouncing my real name I just gave up.
 
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I have Viking relatives apparently. There was a DNA study done on some family members with the same surname lineage that traced things back aways. I guess it could also mean that my ancient relatives couldn’t run very fast too though.
 
jc100 said:
I have Viking relatives apparently. There was a DNA study done on some family members with the same surname lineage that traced things back aways. I guess it could also mean that my ancient relatives couldn’t run very fast too though.
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I got one of those DNA kits as a Christmas present. Mailed it on the 25th so I should know what I'm made of in about 6 weeks.
 
FWIW my family tree looks like a recipe for Christmas cake, full of fruits and nuts.

The weirdest thing was that when we compared notes my brothers on the other side of the world had the same interests, boats, planes and motorcycles. We had also gone through a lot of similar hardships.

On the other hand sometimes you don't want to find those lost cousins.
 
jc100 said:
I have Viking relatives apparently. There was a DNA study done on some family members with the same surname lineage that traced things back aways. I guess it could also mean that my ancient relatives couldn’t run very fast too though.
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half of the UK have a viking relative, draw a line down the middle of England, you'll notice the east side has a predominant number of towns and villages that end in 'by' , Appleby, Weatherby, ect. 'by' is the viking word for village.
During the 1200-1300 when the vikings occupied the East side of England there was a border where the Brits left the vikings alone and they did the same.
Stands to reason if you had the chance of throwing it to a short fat Brit with bad teeth or a blond Scandinavian gal , there would be some interbreeding.
 
My Aunt used Ancestory to trace some of our family tree. Irish and Welsh roots, but nothing exciting as i came from a small village in England,
However I always thought I was the first to come to Canada, but one of my cousins emigrated to Vancouver BC, he enlisted in the CEF and ended up being killed in the battle of vimy ridge aged 27, quite sad moving to one part of the world then being killed in Europe.
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