Family History

As your tree grows you'll find the other tree views in the Genes Reunited family tree, such as Full Tree, very useful as you can view your whole tree on the screen by zooming in and out. This enables you to grasp everyone's relationship to each other and still click on each person in your tree to view their full details. You can also use an Ancestor and Descendant display of your tree from any relative, letting you follow direct ancestors easily. There is a print function if you want to show your tree to other relatives although beware - when your tree grows above 200 relatives, printing out every branch of your tree isn't very environmentally friendly.

The family tree on Genes Reunited contains a timeline where you can add events in the life of your relative to build up a clearer picture of their life. Soon to be added to this tool is a selection of historical dates so that you can see your ancestor's birth, marriage, occupation and death within the context of when he or she lived. Learning about the life your ancestor lived and how the world around them shaped their experience is one of the most rewarding and often moving parts of family history.

TIP: You can add different partners and step children to your tree easily in the Immediate Family View. Use the Full Tree view to make sure you have added children to the correct couple. You can also add same-sex couples to your tree by selecting the correct gender when you add a partner.

TIP: Family trees, no matter what the size or shape, make great gifts for a family member and website www.genealogyprinters.com can take your tree and turn it into a high quality-print of any size.

Often you will find that one or two characters from your tree will intrigue you most as you search to understand how they coped with difficult situations as poverty or widowhood. Thinking about your great-grandmother and her ten children takes on a different perspective when you realise she didn't even have the right to vote. As well as building your tree on Genes Reunited, you can also view family trees of other members who share your ancestors. (There's more about this in the next section 'How to Search for your ancestors'). This means you can see how two trees connect and how you might be related to another member of Genes Reunited.

You can view other trees using the Immediate Family, Full, Ancestor or Descendant views, just like your own tree. For smaller trees the Full Tree view is perfect for moving around the tree and spotting where you have ancestors in common. You can then click on the relative that appears in this tree and your own and look at their details to confirm that they are the same person. You might discover that the other member has lots more information and photos about your ancestor. In addition they may well have more of your ancestor's children, parents and siblings in their tree than you do. If they are happy for you to copy parts of their tree, you can just click on a relative in their tree and press the copy button. Then, going back into your own family tree, you add the correct new relative box to your ancestor, for example 'Add Father' and then click paste to add the details into your tree. This is a great, quick way to grow your family tree.

TIP: If you've just been given access to a tree with several thousand relatives in it, there is a search box for you to enter the relative you think you have in common and zoom straight to that part of their tree.