5 Powerful Benefits of Building A Family Tree

Thanks to websites like Ancestry.com and 23andme.com, the concept of building a family tree has experienced a surge in popularity in recent years. It’s easier and more accessible than ever before to fill in the pieces of your family history and gain insight into the building blocks of who you are. In addition to being an incredible tool for discovering more about your lineage and family history, constructing a family tree offers a host of benefits for you, your immediate family and future generations. From enabling you to pay tribute and help establish a legacy for family members, to creating the foundation for new family lines, and learning about your genealogy, a family tree is a profoundly powerful tool that can hold tremendous significance.

If you are looking into constructing a family tree for yourself and/or loved ones, we will explore  what a building a family tree entails and some of the top benefits it offers you and your family, here. 

What is A Family Tree? 

Simply put, a family tree is a representation, usually in the form of a chart that depicts a person’s family line, dating as far back into their family history as their records enable. The  bottom of the family tree begins with you, your current generation and immediate family. Then you would begin to branch the lines upwards and outwards to represent your parents, their respective family lines and other close and distant relatives as you continue the search backwards into your family’s past. 

1. Pay Tribute and Build a Legacy for Loved Ones

Building a family tree for family members will help you pay homage to them, and establish a lasting legacy in their honor that will be of great value to your and future generations to come. After loved ones pass, a family tree will enable you to look back on them and remember them and their place in your family history. It also will enable you to create other tokens to recognize them by such as a memorial tribute video to be played at their funeral service. To learn more about how to pay homage to your loved one with a memorial video, check out our recent article.

Many times, in order to build a family tree, you will need to sit down with your loved ones and ask them questions to fill in the blanks of your family history. Ideally, before your loved ones pass you are able to take the time to learn this information from them by listening to their personal stories and memories. This information will help you gain insight into your ancestry, and genealogy as well as helpi provide crucial family history information to you and future generations. You may also ask for records to include in the family tree, such as passports and immigration papers if family members came over from a different country, or sentimental photos from meaningful life events such as graduations or weddings. Of course, the options are endless, but ultimately building a family tree helps you construct the foundation of loved ones’ life stories. 

2. A Meaningful Journey of Self-Discovery

Everyone wants to know who they are and where they came from to have a greater sense of belonging and gain more insight into their place in the world. Building a family tree helps you gain a deeper understanding of your ancestry by tracing your roots back through generations to develop a frame of reference for your current life through a larger context of time and place. It will also help you develop a stronger sense of self, connecting you on a deeper level with your family’s past, the family line that was directly responsible for making your birth possible as well as learning about who your ancestors were and where they came from. 

3. Offer Precious Pieces of Family History to Future Generations

Creating a family tree will be of tremendous value to you and your children and eventually, their children’s children and so on, as the family lines continue for generations to come. A family tree will enable you to answer questions for your children about you and your family and where you came from, as well as offer pertinent pieces of information about their family history for them and their children’s children to continue building the future lines of yours and their family tree. 

4. Learn Medical Information About Your Family 

As you are gathering information and records to build your family tree, you may also be able to gain insight into your family’s medical information and genes. This could help provide you and your family as well as future generations with crucial information about hereditary conditions, health risks and propensities that run in your family, to be equipped with more knowledge that will help you and your family live potentially healthier lives in the future. 

5. Connect With Long Lost and Distant Family Members

One of the most profound benefits of creating a family tree is being able to connect with long lost family members. You may discover family relations you didn’t know you had before such as distant cousins and relatives, and learn that your family is even larger than you had realized. Consequently, connecting with these family members will help glean further insight into your family history by learning about them and how they fit into your family lines and genealogy. In some instances, people have been able to find out that they had missing or estranged immediate family members, helping to deepen and restore connections between family members and even foster new ones.