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Using these terms, you should be able to build your initial family tree quite quickly; and it should display all the information you’ve found when you were interviewing relatives and looking through collections of family heirlooms. There are bound to be some things that you don’t know yet – full names and biographical dates of more distant ancestors, for example – and you should add question marks against anything you’re not sure about. This is one of the main purposes of this first family tree – to show at a glance what you need to verify, check or research more fully. Don’t worry if it looks messy at this stage or a bit sparse – you’ll be tidying it up and adding new branches when you start your research away from the family.

One thing to decide upon is the presentation style of your family tree, bearing in mind there are several recognized ways of doing this and the final choice will be down to you, based on what you find easiest to work with and how much data you wish to include. Some trees will only show the direct line, whereas others are very large and sprawling, and include all the siblings in each generation and distant cousins.

In the past, genealogy was the preserve of the aristocracy – or those that aspired to higher social rank – who wished to prove their connections to illustrious forebears. They commissioned diagrams, or ‘pedigrees’, that were as much works of art as family trees, with coats of arms, heraldic beasts and key names circled. A pedigree that shows immediate ancestors as far back as the sixteen 2 x great-grandparents is known as a seize quartiers, whilst one that covers all thirty-two 3 x great-grandparents is known as a trent-deux quartiers. These linear trees start with the most recent generation at the bottom of the tree, and continue horizontally upwards, with each entry representing people further away in time from the person at the foot of the tree. However, only key relatives, rather than all 16 or 32 direct ancestors, are often shown as they often focused on connectivity to the great and the good, or key marriages, rather than completeness.

Today, family trees that only show a direct line are often drawn not from bottom to top, but from left to right, with the most recent person on the left and their ancestors spreading out from them to the right of the page. There are pedigree templates for trees in this format available from the Society of Genealogists and local Family History Societies that simply require you to write the names and relevant dates in the spaces provided on the form.

While family trees that show just your direct line are a quick and easy way to map your immediate heritage once you have worked back far enough, it makes sense to include your entire extended family to start with as they can provide clues to help you move back further. UK genealogists favour drop-line family trees for this purpose, and these are the most common format you are likely to come across in books. Essentially, they are a diagram that shows how everyone is related to one another; and most people start by placing their own data at the heart of their family tree – sensible really because, after all, they are the ones undertaking the journey and will therefore be describing the people they find in relation to themselves.

You should write your full name, which should be the name you were registered with at birth, rather than a nickname or surname you took later in life. Therefore married women should always be written onto the tree under their maiden name, not their married name. Underneath your name, write a ‘b.’ to signify ‘birth date’ and then write your date of birth after that. Draw a horizontal line above your name and a small vertical branch coming down from the line to connect your name to it – a bit like a large ‘T’ shape with extended horizontal arms. Any siblings you may have should have their names attached to the horizontal line in the same way, which effectively creates an entire branch for your generation. You should start with the eldest sibling first, whose name should be written to the left of the branch, and work along to the right so that if you were the third child, for example, you would appear third on the branch, and the youngest sibling’s name is positioned at the far right-hand end of the branch. Write every sibling’s date of birth in the same way you did for yourself. If any of them have died you should write a ‘d.’ underneath their birth date, followed by their date of death.

Above your generation’s branch you need to write your parents’ full names. Traditionally, the man’s name should be written on the left and the woman’s on the right. Leave enough space between them to put either ‘m.’ or ‘=’ to indicate their marriage, and write their date of marriage beneath this. Below the date of marriage you should draw a vertical line that connects their marriage to your generation’s horizontal branch, thus showing that you are all related by blood. You can use the same method to add your own marriage date and spouse’s name, and the marriages of your siblings if you wish. You may want to include subsequent generations after yours, such as your children, nieces and nephews, grandchildren and so on, in which case you will need to leave enough space below your generation to fit them in. Where space permits, each generation of children should be at roughly the same level on the tree – your nephews and nieces roughly alongside your children. However, if you are only creating a tree of your ancestors and not your descendants, then your name should be positioned towards the bottom of the page to allow more space for you to work back in time, up the page.

You may come across trees that depict relationships between parents and a child using a dotted vertical line rather than a solid one. This can be used for various circumstances. In the past when illegitimacy was deemed to be a problem, particularly for wealthy families for reasons of inheritance, a dotted line might indicate that a child was born out of wedlock or as the result of an affair. It can also be used to highlight a non-blood relationship between parent and child in cases of adoption.

‘It is vital to keep updating your tree after every discovery so that you can see at a glance what your next research step should be.’

You can now repeat the process you used for your own generation to put your parents’ siblings either side of their names, each set of their parents’ names above their branch, and keep repeating the process as far back as you can. The further back you work and the more siblings there are, the more difficult it can become to have them in age-descending order. You may find it more practical to put all your aunts and uncles, great-aunts and uncles and so on in age order but leave the name of the direct ancestor at one end of each branch so as to keep the diagram clear. If you do not know a woman’s maiden or unmarried name, leave her surname blank so that you can fill in the space when you discover it. The same rule should apply to any other details you are unsure of, such as dates of birth, marriage or death. These will give you points to work towards, so that every generation has a complete set of details whereby each person’s full name and their dates of birth, marriage and death are all known.

Some genealogists include occupations on their trees simply by writing these underneath each person’s vital details. Having occupations displayed on your tree can help you to keep your work focused, so that if you are looking for a Jack Brown on the 1901 census you can use your tree as a reminder of his date of birth and marital status, and also of what job he should be described as holding. This can be of assistance if there are lots of people who have the same name in your tree but who can be distinguished by occupation. For example there may be a John Smith who was a woodcutter and a John Smith who was an engine driver. Alternatively, if a particular name was carried down through many generations you may find it useful to add a roman numeral after their name, indicating which generation they belong to. In this way the first William Perry, whose name was passed down to his son, then his grandson and great-grandson, would be known as William Perry I, his son would be William Perry II, his grandson would be William Perry III, and so on.

A family tree is not always drawn in a diagram, but can also be written using indented paragraphs. This requires the use of many of the abbreviations listed in the box in Abbreviations in Family Trees to explain relationships in place of branches that would otherwise be drawn. Known as the ‘narrative indented pedigree’, this is not always the easiest method of reading a family tree as it can sometimes be confusing to follow, but it is the most straightforward way of typing up your tree if you are using a word-processing package to record your family tree, which does not allow you to draw branches very easily. It is also very handy to understand this method of describing a tree because some pedigree publications use this style, like Burke’s Peerage and Baronetage and Debrett’s Peerage and Baronetage (see Chapter 4). The indented pedigree starts with the earliest known ancestor and their marriage, and then lists the children from this marriage in age-descending order (although sometimes female children are listed after the male children instead). To list the children’s offspring an indented paragraph is added under each child’s name where their descendants’ details are written. Therefore a narrative indented pedigree might look like this:

James Sherwood m. Alice Clarke. Had issue:

John Sherwood b. 1648 and m. Jane Cecily. dsp.

George Sherwood m. Carole Vine and had issue:

Simon Sherwood b. 1672

Joseph Sherwood b. 1675 and m. Mary Shanks 1699.

He d. 1722 leaving issue:

Katherine Sherwood b. 1702

Grace Sherwood b. 1705

Emily Sherwood

Sarah Sherwood b. 1645.

Faye Sherwood unm.

This pedigree explains that James Sherwood married Alice Clarke and had four children, John, George, Sarah and Faye. John married Jane Cecily but he died without children. George married Carole Vine and had three children named Simon, Joseph and Emily. These were therefore James Sherwood’s grandchildren. His grandchild Joseph Sherwood married Mary Shanks in 1699 and died in 1722 leaving two daughters, Katherine and Grace, who would have been James Sherwood’s great-grandchildren.

Irrespective of what style of family tree you eventually decide to use, it will hopefully grow too big for your original piece of paper, so you will probably need to break the tree into sections to make it more manageable. While it is nice to have your entire family tree on one piece of paper, you should be constantly referring to it to help organize your research, and for this reason it usually makes more sense to break it down into smaller branches, perhaps with your paternal side on one tree and maternal side on another. Some people find that smaller trees of individual generations are useful for taking to archives. These can then be updated regularly and annotated while you are in the archives, and the new information transferred to your master family tree at a convenient time.