Genealogy chart: types and how to read them

The word “genealogy” suggests a reading room and a magnifying glass. In practice a genealogy chart is just a diagram that answers the question “who is related to whom”, drawn so that someone outside the family can follow it.

What a genealogy chart shows

Each person is an element; the lines between them mean kinship — parent to child, spouse to spouse.

Three things a chart does well:

• Generations. You can see at a glance who is a contemporary and who is a generation older.
• Branches. You can see where a line continued and where it ended.
• Gaps. An empty space is a direct instruction about what to look for next.

That last point is underrated. While the information sits in a list, you cannot tell what is missing. Put it on a chart and the holes are obvious: your great-grandmother has no parents recorded, your grandfather has no birth year.

Chart types

Pedigree (ascending) chart

Starts with one person and works backwards: you → parents → grandparents → great-grandparents.

The number of people doubles each generation: 2, 4, 8, 16. This is the standard chart for researching your own origins and the right place to begin.

Descendant chart

Starts with a shared ancestor and works forwards through every descendant, generation by generation, down to the present day.

This is the chart families produce for a reunion. It answers “how exactly are we related”, and the answer is usually wider than anyone expected.

Fan chart

The subject at the centre with generations in concentric half-rings. Its advantage is density — more generations on one page than a rectangular chart allows. Its weakness is that it is hard to fill in by hand and, without dates, reads more as a decorative piece.

Hourglass chart

Ancestors above, descendants below, one person in the middle. This is how most digital trees are laid out, and it is the most practical format for a family archive: you do not have to choose a direction in advance, and the chart grows wherever the evidence takes you.

What belongs on each person

The minimum that makes a chart usable:

• full name, including maiden name for women;
• years of birth and death;
• place of birth and where they lived;
• for those who have passed, where they are buried.

Beyond that comes the part that makes the exercise worthwhile: a photograph, an occupation, a couple of stories. A chart of dates alone is accurate and lifeless. Two generations from now your descendants will care less about the dates than about what these people were like.

Building your own

An order of work that saves time:

1. Start with yourself and work upwards — parents, then their parents. Add side branches afterwards, or you will lose track of which line someone belongs to.
2. Interview older relatives before you write to an archive. Living memory disappears; records do not.
3. Note where each fact came from — a relative’s memory or a document. A year from now you will not remember which.
4. Do not invent dates. An empty field beats a wrong year, which will send you hunting for a record that was never there.

Drawing a chart by hand is possible, but every newly discovered relative breaks the layout. A digital chart rearranges itself: you state the relationships and the generations fall into place.

Bring the family into one chart

In iRitual the chart is built outward from you: add parents and grandparents and it lays itself out. Each person can hold photographs, stories and significant dates, and for those who have passed you can save the coordinates of the burial place.

The living and the departed stay in one chart, marked differently. Free, on iOS and Android.