How to Make a Family Tree Easily

After you have found your family members and have a lot of their vital record documents, you will want to make a family tree.

If you are computer illiterate or if you just do not like the pesky things, you can still do genealogy. There are companies who will take your data and make a beautiful chart or tree. Your choice and the size of the tree will determine how you will want it to be made.

It certainly is possible to hand letter in your ancestors and family in the slots provided by a commercial tree. If you have beautiful handwriting or can do caligraphy, you are in luck. Or you can draw one and put in slots for each member. There is a site called smartdraw.com where you may download a free example of a tree and make your own.

If you have a large family and a million little notes about each member, you will want to use a commercial software product to organize and keep track of all the members in your family. The software will also easily catch errors that you might make when entering data.

There are many software programs to choose from such as Family Tree Maker, made by ancestry.com; Legacy Family Tree Genealogy Software made by legacyfamilytree.com; Family Historian 4; Ancestral Quest Software' RootsMagic Software (has a free trial version); Family Tree Maker Builder, from My Heritage; Genbox Family History; and onegreatfamily.com.

Family Tree Maker, the number one selling software program for several years, offers many charts, tools to easily cite your sources and the ability to write your family history.

Legacy, running a close second to Family Tree Maker in popularity, offers a free download of the basic program and it is very powerful.

Legacy, using Microsoft Virtual Earth can pinpoint locations where your ancestors lived. The program will also create many charts, including ones for DNA, cite sources with templates, and make a beautiful tree. To get all these services, though, you need to buy the program.

I downloaded the free version of Legacy and it performs as it promises. Ancestral Quest offers reports, a tree and a family history book with the free basics version. I am as yet undecided which program to use to write the family book, although I have used Family Tree Maker for years.

Genealogy takes a lot of time. I think it is well worth the money spent to invest in a good software program and use all it offers. You can download the free offers and play around with them until you decide which one to use to make your priceless family tree.

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