drawing up family tree on paper??

[PaulStaffs]

Use numbers (maybe INDI numbers from a FH program) and an index - you can probably fit 50-100 nodes (people) of a tree on a sheet of A4. Or go back to the old genealogists system of cards - one card per person and one chart per family with links on the chart leading to different families. I still have my cards and pencil drawn charts from the 1980s but never use them - they became too painful to use too quickly!

Downside of paper records: Prone to error, difficult to change and not as easy to 'back up' as storing the info digitally.

[RobertCasey]

I have been doing family history research for forty years. Although I do not use charts for my genealogies, I started using Ventura Publisher 1.0 on my PC/XT which used XEROX's GEM operating which Microsoft later cloned into Windows. I documented all my family history in electronic versions of books. I have used this method to publish nine 600 page family history books. All these books not only include a surname index but also include geographical indices as well. Ventura Publisher allows generation of both HTML and Adobe Acrobat PDF files. I have even combined all nine books into one book that is over 6,000 pages. The PDF files can be sent directly to printers for paper based publications. So, charts may be nice but Ventura Publisher allows any size publication, allows both HTML and PDF output, having 75,000 index entries is no problem and when you are ready to publish your family history in paper, printers prefer PDF input (images can be merged as well).

http://www.rcasey.net/acrstrt2.htm

By migrating away from charts, a book like publication gives you a much more serious looking publication which will help in adding cousins since your publication looks like a book. On the down side, Ventura Publisher is not that user friendly (but has greatly improved over the years). Also, it is not a inexpensive product either but you can pick up older copies a very reasonable price. Ventura Publisher is the only software in existence that can properly handle this many index entries.

However, YDNA testing has really got me into charting again as charts are much more visual in nature. I use Adobe InDesign for creating box chart descendant charts. This is a manual method but allows you to add information that genealogy software packages do not handle well. I track how 520 testers of R-L226 is charted with this program. R-L226 is one of the three known older branches that are 90 % Irish (R-L226 is Dal Cais descendants and include all descendants of King Brian Boru). I can add YSNP branches, YSTR branches, common genealogical proven ancestors, score the accuracy of predicted testers by color coding and add the source of YSNP testing which can have many sources. And you can add hypertext links to your hearts desire. This can be updated daily and reposted daily at my web site as new test results are received:

http://www.rcasey.net/DNA/R_L226/Haplotrees/L226_Home.pdf

[bob1066]

The traditional tree format for displaying ancestry looks nice and gives information at a glance, provided it does not have too many entries, which can simply make it a confusing mess. Most people here seem to the information stored on computer in some way. A paper-based tree diagram is probably a little out-dated in the computer age, though, and something you would only do for the challenge and the aesthetics of it, not to make it easier to access the information, which could be got much quicker by accessing the database or whatever it is you have on the 'puter.

From an information science point of view, a genealogy tree is simple in concept. Each person is represented by a data node, and only needs to carry three pieces of information: an identifier (eg the person's name, or possibly with extra description to avoind ambiguity), and a pointer to the two parent nodes, one male and one female. Strictly speaking  this is all the information required, though in practice you would normally also have a pointer to a list of child nodes ( otherwise the only way to locate children would be to examine all other nodes to find those with that parent).

This is a standard exercise in computer science courses, and pretty easy to do. Writing an application to examine the tree, eg by searching for a particular name, highlighting it and bring up mother's name, grandfather's name, names of children etc would not be too difficult and I imagine there are hundreds of such applications around.

Actual human genealogy can have all sorts of complications that make it not a true tree. A "tree" in information science is defined by the fact the fact that there is only one path between any two given nodes. If you think about it, this corresponds precisely to botanical trees as they are found in your garden or in the forest. Human ancestry is not like this. Cousins, second cousins etc. can marry and have children. Any time you have a husband and wife who can trace a common ancestor, you no longer have a tree, you have a graph with loops. Showing these relationships on a two-dimensional piece of paper may not be easy, and sometimes it's not even possible to do it without lines crossing. All up I'd say the effort of putting it all on one sheet of paper is hardly worth it unless you are restricting yourself to maybe four or five generations.

[RobertCasey]

I agree that producing very large charts have limited advantages in today's computer age. However, there is one major exception - family reunions. Using your box descendant charts works better for this scenario as family members can add information much easier (and are less intimidated) by a box descendant chart from your friendly genealogical program.

The same goes for family group sheets. These are summaries of each family but are just not space efficient and do not allow for more information on your direct ancestors which require more information to show how you research proves these important families. The Register report available with most genealogy programs is the best summary (space wise for copying and eventually publication in paper form for preservation).

With the computer age, everyone seems to think that the electronic copies will survive but there is still nothing like having a paper copy in Salt Lake City LDS Library and the Library of Congress to preserve your research (or National Library of Ireland and regional libraries). Most of your printed copies sold to cousins eventually end up in land fills as the next generation clears out your house for resale. So preservation should be strongly considered as well.

Any manual large chart becomes extremely hard to make required updates to as well. Rather than doing this chart manually, you should consider a product like Adobe InDesign which you can create a huge chart which can be printed out in sections and taped together or is available in a PDF format that can be sent to cousins or viewed online. The online form will probably only be used by the next generation of researchers - so these large paper based documents have less likely to be preserved.

[Berlin-Bob]

a huge chart which can be printed out in sections and taped together

See my earlier reply (#42).  I found that handy at a recent family gathering as I only needed to fold out the appropriate sections (and once I had them interested, I unfolded the whole thing just for the fun of it )

Bob

[Robair]

Amy or Paul,

If you are still on this chat, the Powerpoint is a great idea, thanks and I'm making one - but how/where do I see the hyperlink it says I have inserted?   Rob

[juno]

20 yrs ago! I started with a box of  self adhesive labels, and a large sheet of poly....(what not?) glass.

Firstly I stuck on my fathers name and dates, entered on a label, at the bottom ,  then above him his father, and so on, until I had all the direct males entered in layers. Then I started to fill in the siblings. I didn't touch the spouses until i had this lot sorted into some order. (all the same surname).

I had the information I just didn't enter them until i had a basic male tree. Maybe it will work for someone else?

[trewinb]

I use both webbased family trees and a CAD paper version, which I update from time to time. The CAD drawing allows unlimited lateral and vertical extension, which I print out in A4 sheets as needed. It is completely scaleable and I can zoom in on an area that I am working on, or zoom out to see a more general relationship. On the greater tree I keep a red line through my direct ancestors so that I am not deluged by the lateral branches. Being graphic, I can drag and drop if modifications require more space. My drawing started as an Autocad project but since retirement I prefer a free to use (for non-business use) program called Projecad.

[Mart 'n' Al]

Three or 4 years ago when we started my family research the first thing I realised was that you don't just need one type of tree. Most of us are probably familiar with the family tree showing the kings and queens of England but of course they only show the line of prima geniture and possibly siblings of each monarch where as we are interested in a much wider as well as longer spread. The good thing about family history programs is that they all give options for printing trees in different fashions.

One wonderful thing that I saw once consisted of lots of little planks of wood about 6 inches long on which you write names of your family, and attach them to each other using cord, and the overall effect looks like the rigging on a ship.

Martin