Tips

Cousin Connecting Tip #2 – The Pedigree Chart

Hello again, Global Family!

Last week’s tip was the best one for any family history novice-talk to your family and take lots of notes! This week we’re going to do something with all those notes. Right now things can seem like a jumble but genealogists have some great charts they use to try to keep things straight. You can either sketch these out or print them off, but using a pedigree chart is great to visualize your tree, which can help when you are ready to move on to sharing your work with others. There are couple different styles:
 
This one is probably the most common used by researchers, a single sided chart. You put yourself in that first box (or whoever your beginning ancestor you’re researching is) and then the top line is always the father and the bottom is the mother. Once you reach the end of the page, you take that last person and start a new chart with them as the first person, then their parents, their parents’ parents,and and so on. 
And a double sided chart. Same idea, but you put yourself in the very middle, and one parent on either side:

There are a lot of places to download these, but here are a couple to get your started:
Got aunts’ and uncles’ and cousins’ information, too? Hold onto it-we’ve got a chart for that! We’ll wait to talk about it until next week. This week’s homework-put your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents into those charts we can work with them later!
Post by Abby Glann

Cousin Connecting Tip #1 – Start at the Very Beginning

Hello Cousins!
Many of you are excited to find your connection to AJ and the rest of the world, but just do not know where to start. Well, in the brilliant words of Maria von Trapp, “We’ll start at the very beginning. A very good place to start.” The very first thing you should do is grab a notebook and a pencil and go talk to your parents, grandparents, and great grandparents about your family. Ask them for names, dates, and places. Write it all down, including little stories and what seem like oddball facts. Parents aren’t around anymore? Try aunts, great aunts, uncles, and great uncles. Anyone who may have a bit of information.
Hang on to that notebook-we’re going to do so much more with it on our journey to cousinhood!
Post by Abby Glann

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