There are a number of ways to format the information about your family obtained during research, of which the following are the most common:
- Genealogical tree
- Genealogical chart
- Family tree
You can create a family tree of your family both independently and with the help of professionals – depending on the extent of your research. According to its structure, the tree can be ascending (from descendants to ancestors) and descending. Among Russian families the first option is the most common: here the trunk of the tree is marked with a person from whom it is built, in the branch his parents are depicted, and on the smaller branches – grandparents. Thus, the ascending genealogical tree clearly demonstrates the connection of the current generation of the family with the previous ones. In the descending genealogical tree it is vice versa: the ancestor is located in the roots, and his descendants are in the crown. This option is especially useful when it comes to constructing a genealogical tree of a famous person or there is a desire to prove their relationship to a famous person.
Genealogical trees can also be divided into male and mixed. In the male, as the name implies, indicate only the ancestors in the male line with a mention of the name of their spouses, in mixed – all direct ancestors in both lines of descent.
In medieval Europe genealogical trees were traditionally painted in certain distinctive colors. For example, the names of men without offspring were often written on a red background, and married women on a purple one.
For those who want to do without special decorative elements, there are other graphic ways of depicting genealogies, one of which is a genealogical table. In the table, as in a tree, each generation is placed strictly on the same horizontal line, and the seniority of the persons in each goes from left to right.
There are three kinds of genealogical tables:
- Ascending and descending.
- Horizontal: the ancestor is on the left, his descendants are on the right (also ranked by seniority)
- Circle: in the center there is a person who makes up the tree, and around him are ancestors by father and mother.
Another variant of drawing up a family genealogy is the drawing up of a family tree. It consists of a list of information about descendants (descending list) or about ancestors (ascending list), broken into tribes. In contrast to genealogical tables and ancestry, which displays relationship graphically, the generic list usually is a numbered list of all members of the family, where information about each of them begins on a new line. The advantage of this type of layout is the free space to add biographical data about each name in the family: from place of birth to family rumors and legends.