The very first time I tried to make a family tree was overwhelming. Part of the problem was that I come from a huge family, and it was difficult for me to figure out just where to put all those relatives. The other problem was that, at the time, I knew almost nothing about how family trees were supposed to work.
Growing up, I knew that my family was much larger then the families of all my friends. I am one of four children. My mother is one of three children, and my father is one of five children. I know that one of my grandmothers said there were twelve kids in her family, and this was during The Great Depression! Most of my father’s siblings grew up, got married, and had several children of their own. One of my mom’s siblings had a few kids as well. This left me with more first cousins than I could easily keep track of. I have cousins that are ten years older than me, cousins I was old enough to babysit when they were little, and dozens of cousins in between. My first attempt at genealogy convinced me that I wouldn’t find a sheet of paper large enough to fit all my relatives onto. No, I was going to need an entire wall, where my redwood sized family tree could spread out and encompass us all!
Another thing that added to the complexity was that my family simply refused to stop growing. Many of my cousins had children of their own, and were continuing to have more. Confused about if these new members of the family were my first cousins, or second cousins, or third cousins, or none of the above, I had no idea where to put them on the family tree! I knew that a basic family tree connected spouses together with a line, and then connected all of their children together in the next line. But, this left me perplexed about how, or if, to include people whom my relatives did not marry, but did have children with. Adoption was another question in my mind. You see, both sides of my family tree include situations where a biological child of one family member was adopted by another relative. How does this fit into a family tree template? As I write this article, I realize that the children of many of my cousins are starting to have children of their own, adding to my genealogy work.
It is my understanding that most people use a family tree as a means of discovering ancestors whom they had not met, or who died before the genealogist was born. For me, creating a family tree is going to be quite a challenge, just to include my living relatives!