Imagine a jigsaw puzzle in a plain white box. a jigsaw puzzle with no edges or borders to start with. Your only clue is that the first seven pieces are put together for you, and you begin in the center of the puzzle. Imagine an infinite borderless jigsaw puzzle, that you keep adding pieces to, year after year, but it's never complete! As you work, a picture slowly begins to form. Far away places and people you never knew of, become visible as you carefully fit the pieces together.
Well, that's what genealogy is like!There's always that puzzle to come back to when you're ready to work on it! And when you're done working on it, your life becomes pieces of the puzzle for others to find and add! Your life is a never ending story.
So, what are the seven pieces that you start with? You start with you, and your parents, and your parents parents. If you don't have all seven pieces, that's okay, it might take a little longer to get a good start, but those are your foundation pieces.
Using a pedigree chart on a piece of paper that looks like this:
Write down all the information you have on these other six people, with you as the starting point. On this chart, the "home person" is Evan Hyrum Anderson. That's your place! Then, the entry above is his father, the beginning of the paternal line, James Oliver Anderson. add everything you know about your father, his birth date, place, his marriage date and place, and if he has passed, that date and place as well.
Then dropping down, do the same for your mother on the line below. This is the beginning of your maternal line. The maternal line follows each mother back in time, and if we could, would trace all the way back to the proverbial Eve! Likewise, your paternal line (or "top" line, follows all the males in the same way. Add your grandparents to your parents in the same way, and you're on your way to building your family tree!
All of the people on your pedigree chart with be a direct ancestor, your grandparents, your great grandparents, your 2nd great grandparents and so on. In only 6 generations you will have 62 grandparents in your tree. In 12 generations, you will have an astounding 1022 grand and great grandparents in your tree!! And as you go, you will add their children, and their children's children, your nieces, nephews, and cousins!
As you work to add pieces, your tree grows from the center, and over time, stories begin to appear. There is much work to be done, records to recored, books to read, and history to learn. But as you grow your puzzle, you will begin to learn who made you YOU!
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