I’d like to tell you about a different kind of family tree program. While collecting the names and dates of different family members is incredibly useful, there’s so much more that goes into documenting a family’s history. An enhanced family tree program, in additional to a standard genealogical search, can help you get a more 3 dimensional picture of your family. It can help you leave a legacy that is rich with information about who your family was and is.

Our families influence us greatly. In fact, there may be no greater influence on us. Our families can set us on a road to success with a deep sense of love and belonging—as I hope yours did for you. They can also be well-meaning and perhaps good enough, not causing any real harm, and all manner of things in-between. In the extreme, our families can even cripple us and make the journey harder. Whatever we experienced growing up, we inherit patterns of behavior and personality traits that we carry with us our entire lives. We may not even realize where these traits originated or how they were passed on from generation to generation. But they often have a profound effect on our development and how our life has played out. These patterns do not get documented on a typical family tree program. But they don’t have to be left out.

After all, families teach us how to be members of society. They teach us how to operate in the world, as well as how to relate to others. By good or not-so-good example, our families teach us how to be a friend, community member, a spouse and a parent. They teach us work ethics, how to care. They teach us what it means to be religious and spiritual—or not. Sometimes we learn attitudes such as whether to approach the world in a positive or negative way. For example, were you taught that the world was out to help you, out to get you, a little of both? Our family of origin can influence how we see the world outside of our family and how we react to it. They teach us how to support or deny our gifts, wishes, dreams, circumstances. And whether we see family members frequently or if we haven’t been in contact with them for decades, they’re always there—inside us. We are carrying them into the future.

Family Tree Program: The Next Generation

That’s why an enhanced family tree program, in additional to a standard genealogical search, can help you document your family in a way that your grandchildren and great grandchildren can appreciate. It shows the strengths in a family, the challenges, and the gifts. An enhanced family tree program gives an up close and personal view of your family and documents emotional inheritances. With that in mind, I’d like to introduce you to The Family Time Capsule: Tools to Bring Your Family Tree to Life and Leave a Lasting Legacy. It is a comprehensive family tree program that will help you document your family tree in a way that will bring it to life. The Family Time Capsule could be the family tree program that you’ve been looking for–it will help you leave a legacy that lasts.

Family Tree Quotes for Genealogy Fans

1. Why waste your time and money looking up your family tree? Just go into politics and your opponents will do it for you!” ~ Mark Twain

2. Never destroy any aspect of personality, for what you think is the wild branch maybe the heart of the tree.” ~ Mrs. Henry George  (Agnes Demille’s grandmother)

3. To live in hearts we leave behind, is not to die.“  ~ Thomas Campbell

4. Like branches on a tree we grow in different directions, yet our roots remain as one. Each of our lives will always be a special part of the other. ~ Anonymous

5. The family. We were a strange little band of characters drudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another’s desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms … and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.” ~ Erma Bombeck

6. She who has no fools, knaves, or beggars in her family was begot by a flash of lightning.” ~ Old English Proverb

7. We need to haunt the house of history and listen anew to the ancestors’ wisdom.” - Maya Angelou

8. Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family; whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one!” ~ Jane Howard

9. We all grow up with the weight of history on us. Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies.” - Shirley Abbott

10. … no human being is master of their fate, and … we are all motivated far more than we care to admit by characteristics inherited from our ancestors which individual experiences of childhood can modify, repress, or enhance, but cannot erase.” ~ Agnes E. Meyer

Do You Have a Favorite Family Tree Quote?

I love quotes, so if you have a favorite family tree quote, please add it in the comment section. Also, if you’re looking for creative ways to explore your family tree, please check out The Family Time Capsule: Tools to Bring Your Family Tree to Life and Leave a Lasting Legacy™.

When following any family tree program, paying attention to birth order may open some new doors to understanding your more immediate family history. Though birth order characteristics are not set in stone, they can sometimes affect your personality and your life. If you are an eldest child, for example, you may feel special and responsible for your family’s welfare or for carrying on the family tradition. You may even feel that you have a call to greatness in life and you may, in one way or another, be the family hero or heroine. Some eldest children are perfectionists. Others are over-responsible and may feel the weight of the world on their shoulders. For what it’s worth, many doctors, scientists and lawyers are firstborns.
It must also be said that even though your birth order may explain how you fit in your family of origin or how you interact with your relatives and friends, it can never be a final determinant of anything. Culture, family, environment and life circumstances also have a profound effect on the kind of person we become. At best, the typical characteristics of birth order can give clues rather than hard evidence that we can add to the information we gather about our family tree.

One of the only family tree programs available that puts an emphasis on how birth order may affect our lives and the lives of those we love is Family Time Capsule: Tools to Bring Your Family Tree to Life and Leave a Lasting Legacy.

Family Tree Program: Notable First Born Children

George Washington
Maya Angelou
Winston Churchill
Bill Clinton
Brad Pitt
Shirley Chisholm
Reese Witherspoon
Barack Obama
Susan Sarandon (oldest of 9)
Walter Cronkite
Dan Rather
Harrison Ford
Rush Limbaugh
Hilary Clinton
Sylvester Stallone
Oprah Winfrey (may also be considered an only child)

Look for blog posts in the future that will highlight notable middle, youngest and only children and their characteristics. Meanwhile, what’s your birth order in your family? I’d love to hear from you. And if you haven’t already, please check out my $9.99 ebook with complete, easy to follow guidance on building your own family time capsule and legacy.

Many people are fascinated with their family tree. After all, everyone wonders about their ancestors and also about who will come after them. There’s usually at least one family historian in every family. For me, it’s my mom. She knows more about my dad’s family than he does! When you want to trace family tree there are a ton of resources available in the form of cemetery records, courthouse records, immigration records, etc.  Also, if you do an internet search you can easily find the genealogical society’s for your state, as most states have one. They will have a lot of resources, including people you can hire to do research.

One thing you won’t find much of when you trace family tree is information beyond names, dates and other minimal facts about your ancestors. If you are really lucky, they will have kept a written journal of their daily lives so you can learn about what their lives were like, their personality, their likes, their activities, values, etc. Or maybe someone even wrote a memoir! But for most of us, we are lucky to have one photograph of a great grandparent with maybe their names and dates on the back. And that’s all we know!

Trace Family Tree: Beyond the Basics

This is what is so important about you putting together something like a genogram and other documents that you can leave behind for your children, grandchildren and beyond. They will have the blessing of knowing so much more about you and your relatives. You can leave them a lot of insight into the strengths, vulnerabilities, the challenges and successes of your family. It’s not as simple as taking some videos. You’ll want to ask a lot of good questions of yourself, as well as your parents and grandparents, if they are still alive, along with siblings. To trace family tree you’ll want a qualified guide and one way to get that now is with the Family Time Capsule.

As you start your search on how to find family history programs, I want to remind you of a very important point. Your family history consists of many elements. There is of course the names of your family members and the dates of their births, marriages and deaths. But there is a lot more information you would like to have and include in the process of documenting your family.

Unfortunately, if you go back further than your grandparents, it gets very difficult to find detailed information, unless you are among the lucky few whose ancestors kept written journals.

How to find family history, going deeper

In addition to your regular family tree, one thing you may want to create is a genogram. A genogram is similar to a family tree but goes deeper in that it shows a person’s family relationships including psychological patterns and family stories. Genograms are not difficult to create once you have some basic instruction and they are truly fascinating. With a genogram, your children, grandchildren and other descendants will have a much clearer understanding of the strengths and dynamics of your family. It is an incredibly gift and becomes part of your lasting legacy.

How to find family history and leave a lasting legacy

The Family Time Capsule audio program includes a transcript of the 3 CDs and worksheets that make it easy to create not only a genogram but a very in-depth document of your family. You will learn a great deal about yourself and other family members as you put together your family time capsule. One solution on how to find family history is to use the simple but powerful tools in the Family Time Capsule program.

Free Family Tree Reviews

If you are interested in creating and exploring your family tree and are looking for free family tree sites and information, I want to share some thoughts with you here. One good site is familysearch.org. You need to have some information about who you are looking for, but I was able to find my father, for example.

Another free family tree site is myheritage.com. This site lets you build out your family tree online using their family tree builder software. They claim to have over 17 million family trees, so it’s worth checking out.

Another great site for free family tree creation is geni.com. This site has won numerous awards and I found it to have excellent features and usability.

Free family tree reviews, part two

One key aspect that’s overlooked by many free family tree resources is going beyond the names and dates of the people in your family tree. The Family Time Capsule audio program is for the historians and storytellers in your family who are into genealogy and family trees. These are the people who go in search of a good mystery and who want to document their findings and are curious about their inner workings. They want to know what makes their families work and they want to learn from that and also be able to pass down this information as part of their legacy. The program was created by Susan Gabriel, M.Ed, a former marriage and family therapist who got fascinated with family history and stories.  If you are looking for free family tree sites and programs, this might be a great gift for the family historian in your family

Free family tree reviews, part three

Please let me know of other resources you have found for creating a free family tree.

Family Time Capsule: Tools to Bring Your Family Tree to Life and Leave a Lasting Legacy™

The Family Time Capsule program

This home study audio program is for the historians and storytellers in your family who are into genealogy and family trees and family history. Those people who go in search of a good mystery and who want to document their findings. It’s for someone who doesn’t just want to know what time it is, they want to know what makes the clock tick. They are curious about inner workings. They are interested in what makes their families work and they want to learn from that and also be able to pass down this information as part of their legacy.

Family Time Capsule: Tools to Bring your Family Tree to Life & Leave a Lasting Legacy offers step by step instruction on how to make the family tree come to life in a meaningful, insightful and interesting way.

Read more about how to bring your family tree to life!