You may have thought about creating your family tree in the past, but never really got round to it as you didn’t have time, or you had more pressing concerns to deal with. However, there are a number of advantages to creating your family tree that you might not have considered.
Here are just a few of the advantages that come with creating your family tree.
Evidence
There are times when you may have to prove how you are related to individuals. A family tree is sometimes required for certain legal processes, such as when creating a Statutory Will. Other times it may be necessary to prove the next of kin for an individual. Whatever the situation, having a one can be extremely useful.
A link to your heritage
Creating a family tree can be an extremely interesting journey that can not only help you to find family members that you may have lost contact with over the years, but it can also help you to understand your own heritage a bit more.
Knowing where you come from, the stories about what your family did for your local community, how they came to settle there, what impact they had on the lives of those around them can bring you to understand your own life better.
Interesting Historical Footnotes
As you look through records and find family members that you never knew existed before, you can find interesting little historical connections in your family tree. Your great, great, great grandmother could have been a chambermaid serving Queen Victoria, you could discover that one of your relations was a public hangman, or you might find out that your third cousin, eight times removed lost all the family money in a game of cards with the Duke of Wellington and completely changed the course of your family’s fortune. There is no telling what you might discover.
Finding Family and Adding them to your Family Tree
One thing that is a real advantage to exploring your genealogy with a family tree is being able to find relatives that you may have never met, or even knew existed. When your grandmother’s sister moved to Newcastle when she was 15 and lost contact with everyone else in the family, no one knew what happened to her. Yet when creating a family tree, you might not only find out that your grandmother’s sister changed her name to Rita, became a successful playwright under the pen name of H R Smith, married a Captain in the Royal Navy, had six children, who each married and had three children of their own. Suddenly there is a world of new extended family members you might want to reach out to or even just let your grandmother know what happened to her sister.
Fun
Finally, the greatest advantage that comes with creating your family tree is fun. You can spend hours and hours looking into your family’s past and enjoy countless discovers. Yes, there are frustrating times when you get stuck, but we have a few tricks to help you find new routes of investigation.
Want to get started on your family tree? Get started today.