Interest in history has kinda existed in people at all times. But in different eras, different classes related to the compilation of their own pedigrees also in different ways. The nobles traced their genealogy almost from the creation of the world and carefully kept any available documents and family heirlooms. The merchants imitated them, and often the merchant family represented several generations of a glorious and respected profession. In the "lower" estates - among the townspeople and peasants - most often information was transmitted orally from generation to generation in the form of family traditions.
Under Soviet rule, people avoided advertising the noble origin, and for this reason many genealogies have sunk into oblivion. Intergenerational communications were interrupted everywhere. And only in our times did interest in the life of previous generations flare up again. Many are interested in the question - how to make a family tree? Where to begin? What documents are needed? This article is intended to help in this painstaking and unusually fascinating lesson - compiling your own pedigree.
Before compiling a family tree of your own family, you need to collect as much information as possible from all possible sources. These sources can serve, in addition to official documents, old photographs, letters, diaries, publications in the press, as well as oral stories - memories of older relatives.
At the preparatory stage of the creation of the pedigree should be brought together, consider and organize all existing documents. It is advisable to keep a diary, which will be updated with new data. Documents (birth and marriage certificates, diplomas, certificates, work books, etc.), photographs, letters, newspaper notes must be arranged in separate envelopes. Such an envelope or file must be placed on each relative. Valuable documents for safety are best scanned or photocopied from them, the originals removed in a safe place.
For each representative of the genus, a questionnaire should be made with a detailed list of data. This is, first of all, last name, first name, middle name, for women - last name before marriage and marriage, date and exact place of birth, date of death and place of burial, title (if any), place of work (service) and profession, positions and ranks . All possible professional achievements, awards, published works and inventions should be mentioned.
It is useful to include in the questionnaire of each representative of the clan information on religion, the date and place of baptism, estate, the origin of the spouses and their relatives, as well as on the availability of real estate (house, estate), and places of residence in chronological order. The premarital name of the spouse, date, place of marriage, birth and baptism of children - all this information will be useful and necessary when considering the question of how to compose a family tree.
An invaluable source of information will be the oral memories of relatives. You can successively interview representatives of the older generation or organize a family meeting, timed to coincide with any important event in the life of the family. Having started a conversation about the events of bygone days, you can get a lot of important information - relatives will remember the detailed details of past events, clarify and complement each other. In order not to lose information, often set out randomly and fragmentarily, it is most convenient to use a voice recorder. Later, you should sort the notes, make out on paper and add to the existing informal information about this or that relative.
After interviewing relatives, go to the public archives for more information. These are, first of all, the reading rooms of local libraries, where there are filings of newspapers over the past years. Archival documents can also be found in museums and various departments. Having found the necessary information, ask for a photocopy or a certified extract from the document. Keep in mind that there are specialists who know how to make a family tree competently and taking into account all the nuances. For a fee, they will work on your archive application, which can be prepared in free form.
Having collected all the possible information, proceed to the design of the search results on paper. Decide how to make the family tree - ascending (from descendants to ancestors) or descending (from ancestors to descendants). You can depict your own genus in the form of a tree whose trunk is the common ancestor-founder of the genus, and the crown is descendants. You can take the protagonist as the “trunk” - the compiler of the pedigree, and make his relatives on the paternal and maternal side “branches”. The pedigree can also be arranged in the form of a table.
There are many options for how to make a family tree . You can, for example, keep a pedigree by gender type (you can only trace the lines of men - continuers of the genus, or only women), you can mixed. Graphics can be vertical or horizontal, generations can be numbered for clarity. In recent years, pedigrees have also appeared in the form of essays containing a text description of each person with the addition of the necessary materials (photos, letters, notes, etc.).