Now you can attach various aunts and uncles by marriage to their respective spouses with horizontal lines. Extend vertical lines from each horizontal line and extend them out to include each of your cousins. The format will become clear as you are creating a family tree for your particular family.

The structure and format for these trees should be fairly clear. Horizontal lines mean marriage. Vertical lines illustrate descent. Thus, various generations of your family will begin to demarcate themselves and you will be able to see how you are connected to all of them.

Creating a family tree is a fun little way to show depth of your known ancestors and breadth of your extended family. And as you fill in everyone you know, you can ask for more information from family members to find out new names and new people that will extend your family out that much more. And with each successive generation added from your family's history, you will be able to extend your family tree out to third, fourth, fifth cousins and beyond. Just start with who you know and you will soon learn things that you never imagined.

Family Bibles are akin to Holy Grail for those tracing family histories. As these were often large, decorative, sacred books, they were almost never discarded. Thus, people often used them to store important documents. It was like a large safe. Simply put those loan papers at Numbers 12, and they were safe. As well, people often listed ancestry and descendents in these books. The front page often contains a family tree that can be used to find relations that are not in one's family tree. And as Bible was passed down from generation to generation, it was filled out that much more, creating a complete history of family.

However, most important resource for tracing family histories should not be overlooked. That resource is, of course, family members. Surviving relations are a wealth of information. They want to talk about what they did, where they went, how they felt about things, and what was going on at time. They can call up stories that they have not had chance to tell, and they will sometimes remember things they forgot they knew as they tell their stories. Do not forget to ask your family members about family. They will be more than happy to help.

Tracing family histories can provide wonderful scenes, compelling dramas, and stories that are too strange to be untrue. When you compile history of your family, remember that you are learning about people. People who were just as full of life and vitality as you are. So feel free to tell their stories and don't forget to enjoy fact that you are letting your ancestors live their lives all over again.