Taking a peep on one’s ancestry can be so fascinating. Sometimes, you’ll know one person better is by tracing his roots. Who knows? You might have a celebrity for a cousin! You will eventually find out by drawing out a pedigree chart, or more popularly known as ‘the family tree.
The family tree is a chart that shows a certain organism’s (most commonly for humans, dogs and race horses) ancestors: its parents, children, descendants, and all of its relatives. This is mostly used for investigations that have something to do with genetics (finding long-lost brothers or sisters, heredity or heritage issues, etc.), pet breeding (knowing what breeds your dog can produce, breeding the right horses for the best race), or just plain curiosity, as some consider making these kinds of charts a hobby.
Depending on how a person’s documents are secured, mapping out one’s family tree can either be a tedious task, or a walk in the park. Lucky for people in this day and age, there are websites that are there to help you out with making your very own pedigree chart! Just be sure that you have the right data, or else, you’ll just mess it up. For people who want to do it the old-fashioned no-computers way, here are the steps on how to do it:
1. Organize every ounce of information that you will be using on the chart. Using index cards, write the name, date of birth, date of marriage, and if possible, date of death to each individual included in your family tree. Basically, it will include you, your parents (2), your grandparents (4) and great grandparents (8). If you have info about your greater grandparents, you may include them as well.
2. Arrange your index cards. Place your card on top, then your father’s, then your mother’s. Your grandfather’s will go next, then your grandmothers, so forth and so on until you have all cards in order.
3. Draw a box at the bottom center of your work board (be it a chalkboard, or a piece of paper), then write your name in it. Then you draw two smaller boxes a little above left and right of your name box. Write your father’s name in one box, and your mother’s name in the other. It also helps if you keep the males to the left and the females to the right, to avoid confusion.
4. Connect them with your box by drawing a line from their box to yours for each. Repeat the process for the grandparents, then the great grandparents. Make sure that you get the sides right. The father’s side to the mother’s side, as it gets a bit confusing when it comes to the great grandparents.
5. Once you’re done, write in every detail you’ve written down in your index cards to their rightful boxes. It can show the date of birth and death and other information you want to include. If you want to make it more personal, add some characteristic quirks like your mom’s favorite color or your dad’s greatest obsession!
You have two adversaries if you’re making your pedigree chart: confusion due to misarranged data, and information that aren’t well-researched. If you wish to do this accurately, make sure that you got the data and you got them right. The rest is solved by the 5-step method.