Family trees represent generations in a tree structure, where you go back in time from the subject to the known ancestors. Commonly referred to as a pedigree or ancestry chart, these diagrams can be helpful in numerous ways. They can bring you closer to your family and allow you to make better decisions about your health.
There’s something unique about knowing your ancestors going back many generations. It helps you keep family traditions alive while creating a deeper understanding of who you are and opens the door for learning the stories of past relatives. While these are some of the few important reasons to build a family tree, there’s much more to cover.
This article will list five important reasons to have a family tree. Read to the end to get five good reasons to build your family tree, plus tips on finding distant and missing relatives.
Five Important Things About Family Trees You Didn’t Know
Below, you’ll discover five important things about family trees that can benefit you in different ways.
1. Brings You Closer to Your Family
From the moment you begin searching for family members to putting the names of all the individuals you did and didn’t know in your family tree, you will connect with your ancestry. Knowing the story of family members will bring you closer to them, building a stronger emotional connection.
As you search for family members, you’ll find out about relatives you didn’t know, learn their story, and preserve their legacy for future generations. You may even discover relatives who are alive and well today, all because you embarked on the journey to create your family tree.
2. Gives You a Strong Sense of Belonging
Family trees not only bring you closer to your family members but also instill a deep sense of belonging. By learning more about your family’s past, you’ll know who they are, where they came from, and what they did.
Knowing your roots will let you say I belong and help you learn where you come from. It will also allow you to uncover ethnic and cultural backgrounds that highlight the common traits between you and your ancestors.
3. Helps You Make Better Decisions About Your Health
Knowing why your ancestors died and what illnesses they had will reveal your potential health risks due to genetics. Family trees can be very helpful in a way that will help you make better decisions about your health to live a better life.
Presenting the medical information of past family members neatly in a family tree can also help your doctor make a more accurate risk assessment for your health.
4. Keeps Family Traditions Alive
As you learn about the lives of family members, you’ll discover common points they’ve had with each other and the traditions kept. This will enable you to maintain family traditions and rituals, whether a dish cooked on a special day or a grace said before dinner.
When you complete your family tree and resume these traditions, you’ll be the one who connected your ancestors with the future generations. It’s a well-worth effort that future generations will remember you for and appreciate.
5. Brings Generations Together
As mentioned in the example above, a family tree’s importance is bringing generations together. Through family trees, you not only recognize their existence but also tell their stories and teach family values kept for generations.
Besides, anyone in your family can use the family tree you created. Next time someone in the future generation needs to do the same, they will have yours to build on instead of starting from scratch, making your efforts recognized.
Finding Family Members for Your Family Tree
The importance of family trees is undeniable. If you’ve decided to build yours, the best way to begin your search is by using relatives as a source. This will help you create the basis of your family tree and learn new names to do further research.
Another resource for finding family members is people search sites, which are very helpful for finding lost relatives. These tools can help you find your relatives with only a click. You can simply search for yourself or other family members and get a list of dead and alive relatives.
This people search site works well for this purpose because it scans public records, including federal, state, and county records, to find your relatives. It can help you do more comprehensive research than searching for people on social media or digging through public records yourself.