There was a time probably in elementary where students were once told to analyze the origins of one's family. This may date back to a time before the first settlers arrived in the new world. There are others who came from Eastern Europe or from Cuba in the 1970's before starting a new life in America.

Regardless where the person came from, the important thing is knowing the family's history in the past in order to analyze the present and prepare for the future. This is what people call the family tree.

A family tree is often shown in the form of a chart. This usually has the names and dates of the individuals. At times, even the occupation so one will be able to see if the people before were doctors, in the military or just ordinary citizens.

The tree starts off with two people meeting and then getting married. This could be the great grandparents who years later had children and grew up to also create another family and so on. Later on, the person will come into the picture and the family line will continue.

Tracing one's family tree is not easy. A lot of people need to be tracked down and each will provide pieces of information similar to someone who is making a jigsaw puzzle.

The first thing that needs to be done is to create a list of all the relatives in the family. Those who live nearby will the easiest to get in touch with for an interview. The person will just have to call up to set an appointment and then fire away.

There may be some who live in another country or out of state. Since it will be expensive to fly there, the questions will have to be done using the phone or sent via email.

There are some things that need to be asked so a list of questions needs to be prepared. The person should respect the decision of the relatives if there are some topics that need to be left out of the discussion.

The person can conduct an interview using some paper and pen, a tape recorder and a video recorder as long as it is ok with the relative. Upon meeting the relative, the name occupation, nickname, maiden names and places of birth and marriage should be written down on the logbook.

After writing the basic information down, the person can ask about childhood experiences, immigration history and life in the family. The individual should also observe the personality and the physical traits of the one being interviewed.

There may be some questions that were not written down but come up during the conversation so other information given should also be noted down. The person should be careful not to prove too much if this is something the relative does not want to talk about.

After gathering all the information, it is now time to collate the information. The person can use a chart to put up all the names. The year these people were born or when marriage took place should be written at the bottom to keep track of everybody on the list.

The genealogy tree will take a long time to make. This will all pay off when the person is able to understand the story and when the questions can be answered by the information given by the relatives.