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OK, so you have completed the first stage of the research into your family history. On the table in front of you are the results. Notebooks full of information gathered from your oldest relatives, copies of all the certificates recording the events of birth, marriage and death, and what about those fantastic old sepia coloured photographs they were able provide from their treasure boxes? All this and copies of official documents such as census returns and baptism records retrieved from various governmental sources and of course the uncertified data found on the internet. What are you going to do with it?

It depends really on why you decided to research your family's history in the first place. Did you just want to know where the family originated or was there a deeper reason? Perhaps you wanted know what country or other place of origin your ancestors came from. Maybe you were seeking someone famous or infamous! Whatever your reason you will certainly want know the precise relationship you have to the rest of those you now know went before you. To illustrate that relationship you will want to construct a family tree. This can take many forms but here are five suggestions. I have deliberately not included pedigree charts because generally speaking they do not form an attractive pattern, they are more suited to a facility of record than display.

If you want to use the finished tree as a framed illustration to hang on a wall there is a wide choice of diagrams available, all of which will form an intrinsic part of the genealogy package you will have installed if you have been using the internet. Some take the form of an oak tree, where the roots are your ancestors and the branches the descendants, others may take the shape of a fan or an hour-glass, all will allow room for names, dates of events, and some even provide space for thumb-nail photographs. If you have found a family crest or coat-of-arms it will make a superb centrepiece for the title. Having completed the tree print it on vellum coloured paper and use a type-face that isn't modern and you will have an illustration that will become the focus of discussion at every gathering held in the room.

Within your software package are a number of simpler family tree charts. They consist of horizontal lines joined by perpendicular strokes that connect each generation to the next. The lines can be arranged to show the history of the family in either ascendant or descendant order. The names of your forebears together

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