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your own generation to put your parents’ siblings either side of their names, each set of their parents’ names above their branch, and keep repeating the process as far back as you can. The further back you work and the more siblings there are, the more difficult it can become to have them in age-descending order. You may find it more practical to put all your aunts and uncles, great-aunts and uncles and so on in age order but leave the name of the direct ancestor at one end of each branch so as to keep the diagram clear. If you do not know a woman’s maiden or unmarried name, leave her surname blank so that you can fill in the space when you discover it. The same rule should apply to any other details you are unsure of, such as dates of birth, marriage or death. These will give you points to work towards, so that every generation has a complete set of details whereby each person’s full name and their dates of birth, marriage and death are all known.

      Some genealogists include occupations on their trees simply by writing these underneath each person’s vital details. Having occupations displayed on your tree can help you to keep your work focused, so that if you are looking for a Jack Brown on the 1901 census you can use your tree as a reminder of his date of birth and marital status, and also of what job he should be described as holding. This can be of assistance if there are lots of people who have the same name in your tree but who can be distinguished by occupation. For example there may be a John Smith who was a woodcutter and a John Smith who was an engine driver. Alternatively, if a particular name was carried down through many generations you may find it useful to add a roman numeral after their name, indicating which generation they belong to. In this way the first William Perry, whose name was passed down to his son, then his grandson and great-grandson, would be known as William Perry I, his son would be William Perry II, his grandson would be William Perry III, and so on.

      A family tree is not always drawn in a diagram, but can also be written using indented paragraphs. This requires the use of many of the abbreviations listed in the box in Abbreviations in Family Trees to explain relationships in place of branches that would otherwise be drawn. Known as the ‘narrative indented pedigree’, this is not always the easiest method of reading a family tree as it can sometimes be confusing to follow, but it is the most straightforward way of typing up your tree if you are using a word-processing package to record your family tree, which does not allow you to draw branches very easily. It is also very handy to understand this method of describing a tree because some pedigree publications use this style, like Burke’s Peerage and Baronetage and Debrett’s Peerage and Baronetage (see Chapter 4). The indented pedigree starts with the earliest known ancestor and their marriage, and then lists the children from this marriage in age-descending order (although sometimes female children are listed after the male children instead). To list the children’s offspring an indented paragraph is added under each child’s name where their descendants’ details are written. Therefore a narrative indented pedigree might look like this:

       James Sherwood m. Alice Clarke. Had issue:

       John Sherwood b. 1648 and m. Jane Cecily. dsp.

       George Sherwood m. Carole Vine and had issue:

       Simon Sherwood b. 1672

       Joseph Sherwood b. 1675 and m. Mary Shanks 1699.

       He d. 1722 leaving issue:

       Katherine Sherwood b. 1702

       Grace Sherwood b. 1705

       Emily Sherwood

       Sarah Sherwood b. 1645.

       Faye Sherwood unm.

      This pedigree explains that James Sherwood married Alice Clarke and had four children, John, George, Sarah and Faye. John married Jane Cecily but he died without children. George married Carole Vine and had three children named Simon, Joseph and Emily. These were therefore James Sherwood’s grandchildren. His grandchild Joseph Sherwood married Mary Shanks in 1699 and died in 1722 leaving two daughters, Katherine and Grace, who would have been James Sherwood’s great-grandchildren.

      Irrespective of what style of family tree you eventually decide to use, it will hopefully grow too big for your original piece of paper, so you will probably need to break the tree into sections to make it more manageable. While it is nice to have your entire family tree on one piece of paper, you should be constantly referring to it to help organize your research, and for this reason it usually makes more sense to break it down into smaller branches, perhaps with your paternal side on one tree and maternal side on another. Some people find that smaller trees of individual generations are useful for taking to archives. These can then be updated regularly and annotated while you are in the archives, and the new information transferred to your master family tree at a convenient time.

Abbreviations in Family Trees

      Here are some examples of words and abbreviations used specifically in family trees:

      b. born

      m. or mar. married = married

      2. second marriage

      d. died

      ob. or obit. died

      d.s.p. or o.s.p. died childless

      d.v.p. or o.v.p. died before father

      1. left descendants

      bapt. or bp. baptized

      chr. christened

      bur. buried

      lic. licence (marriage licence)

      MI monumental inscription

      c. circa or about

      ? uncertain or unknown

      o.t.p. of this parish

      w. wife

      s. son

      s. and h. son and heir

      dau. daughter

      g.f. grandfather

      g.m. grandmother

      g.g.f. great-grandfather

      g.g.m. great-grandmother

      inf. infant

      spin. spinster (unmarried woman)

      bach. bachelor (unmarried man)

      unm. unmarried

      div. divorced

      wid. widow (a woman whose husband has died)

      wdr. widower (a man whose wife has died)

      mat. maternal or female side of the family

      pat. paternal or male side of the family

      Distaff female side of the family

      Spear male side of the family

      Online Family Trees

      Online family trees and family tree software packages are extremely helpful to collate your tree in its entirety so that you can share it with other family members, and to organize the end product of your research. Using these resources saves you the effort of constantly rewriting a large family tree if you run out of space or make mistakes,

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