This genealogy form creates an ancestral snapshot

This genealogy form, which is also known as a pedigree or lineage form, is one of the most widely used among researchers. It is not designed to hold all the information you have collected about your Irish ancestry.

Instead it provides a snapshot view of your direct ancestors going back over several generations. (As you can see from the illustration, the Toolkit form covers six generations.) There is no space on this type of form for siblings or multiple marriages.

They follow a standard, easy-to-read format which is recognised the world over – even by most family tree software programs.

Each chart begins with you, or the relative whose ancestry you are tracing, on the left. Information on the paternal line is entered on the upper half of the page. That for the maternal line is entered on the lower half.