Building a family tree

Like millions of people, I have been studying my family tree for the past twenty years, and have amassed a huge amount of information about my family.  I can bore for England on the subject of my ancestors… I don’t care what they were, but I am passionately interested in who they were, and I love nothing better than to spend a couple of dusty hours in the public indexes in the Metropolitan archives.

I have dabbled in various computer-based and online methods for making family trees.  Often they have the serious shortcoming that they expect you to have the same amount of information for all your ancestors, and anyone with experience will tell you it isn’t like that.  I don’t know even the name of my paternal great grandmother because my father’s mother died when he was a child and he has never had any contact with her family.  On the other hand, my maternal great grandmother was the ancestor I started my researches with twenty years ago, and as she was an interesting person, I have collected a lot of information and photographs about her.

When making a family tree diagram on the computer, it soon becomes very difficult to fit all the names across the screen.  So I had a brilliant idea.  I suddenly realized that I could bring my family tree into SL.  I could make an endlessly modable family tree with labels, information, pictures.  I’ve only just started it, on the wall of my house, but it is already far easier than trying to do the same thing in a family tree program or with a pencil and paper.

I am planning  to add pictures and information and build it up… I may even construct a stylized tree around it once I have it done.