Did you know you can view your family tree in different ways? Every genealogy company or software program calls them different things, but each may provide you with a way to make connections and tear down brick walls.
While the traditional family tree follows a linear path, alternative views offer different perspectives. In this blog post, I’ll explore several other ways to view a family tree and how they contribute to your genealogy research.
Descendant Family Tree:
The descendant family tree focuses on tracing the lineage of a specific individual or couple and their descendants. It displays the growth of a family, showing the spouses and all their children.
This view could be helpful if you think there is a gap in the information you have collected, such as missing children. Do you want to find living relatives? Descendancy research is the way to do that!
This is also helpful in organizing your research. Perhaps you have an ancestor who married several times with offspring from each spouse. With this layout, you can easily see the children who descended from each one.
Here are 4 reasons to use a descendancy view:
- Find Living Relatives: Tracing descendants helps you find living family members who might have extra information, photos, or family stories that can add to your research. You can use DNA to help with this or use documentary evidence.
- Open New Research Paths: Descendancy research can show you branches of the family you might have missed, giving you new directions to explore and possibly leading to valuable records.
- Break Through Brick Walls: If you’re stuck on an ancestor, exploring their descendants can uncover new information or connections to help you move forward.
- Double-Check Your Info: Following descendants allows you to verify the accuracy of the information in your family tree, making sure it’s correct.
Ancestor Family Tree:
In contrast to the descendency view, the ancestor family tree shows a clear and concise path of the lineage of a specific individual or couple and their ancestors. This view is an easy way to see the different lines of your family tree and perhaps help you decide who you want to research next.
You might notice naming patterns you didn’t see before and you can see at a glance the birth and death dates of your people to make sure everything makes sense. Below you can see the ancestor tree of Frederick Stabley and his wife, Emma Welty Stabley. If you want to see a bit more about Frederick and Emma, read my previous blog posts here and here.
Here are 4 reasons to use the ancestor view of your family tree:
- Trace Your Roots: The ancestor view helps you trace your lineage back through generations, giving you a clear picture of where your family came from.
- Understand Your Heritage: By focusing on ancestors, you get a better understanding of your family’s cultural, ethnic, and historical background.
- Build a Strong Foundation: Knowing your direct ancestors gives you a solid foundation to build your family tree, making sure the line is well-documented.
- Discover Family Patterns: Tracking ancestors can reveal patterns in your family, like occupations, places of residence, or even health conditions.
Fan Chart:
Out of all the different views, this is my favorite. A fan chart is a circular representation of your family. It allows you to see multiple generations at a glance, with an individual at the center and subsequent rings representing their ancestors or descendants.
This is also the best view to see the ancestors you haven’t discovered yet…those gaps in your family. Blank spaces jump out at you when using the fan chart. This view is also very compact. If you need to show several generations at one time for your next family reunion, this would be the best way to display your family tree.
Because this is my favorite view, here are 7 reasons to use it:
- It’s Visual: Fan charts give a clear and easy-to-understand visual picture of your ancestry, making it simpler to see how everyone is connected.
- Spot Gaps Quickly: The fan chart layout helps you quickly spot gaps or missing ancestors, showing you exactly where you need to focus your research efforts.
- Highlight Generations: This view emphasizes different generations, making it easy to see how many generations back you’ve traced your family.
- Simplify Complex Families: For families with lots of branches, a fan chart organizes information in a way that’s easier to follow and understand.
- Track Multiple Lines: You can see all your ancestral lines at once, helping you track multiple family lines without getting confused.
- Focus Your Research: The clear layout of a fan chart helps you focus on specific family lines, directing your research efforts more efficiently.
- Save Space: Fan charts are compact and space-efficient, fitting a lot of information into a small area, which is great for printing and display.
Genetic Family Tree:
With DNA testing and genetic genealogy, the genetic family tree focuses on tracing ancestral connections through shared DNA. In this tree, you will only add people you know are a genetic match to you.
This is a perfect way to organize all those matches on your match list and keep them in one place. Every genealogy company has a notes section associated with each person, so you can keep track of the amount of shared DNA along with the ancestor you both have in common.
Where Are These Views Located?
On Ancestry, you can pick the view you want to see from your family tree. Select the top icon from the left-hand side menu and choose from horizontal, vertical, or fan.
If you are a MyHeritage user, go to Family Tree and select My Family Tree. On the right-hand side you’ll see this menu to choose from:
MyHeritage also lets you see your family in a list view, which is far right choice.
Finally
As you can see, each view offers a different perspective of your family tree. Whether you use the descendant, ancestor, fan, or genetic family tree, try them all to see which one speaks to you. You never know what clue you may find just from seeing your family in a new way.
Genealogy tip: The real gift of viewing your family tree in different ways is the connections you may see that you didn’t see before.
Have you started a family tree, but find yourself hitting a brick wall? I love figuring out how to break through. Let me know how I can help.
