Family tree creation is a hobby that's being taken up by many people today and it's likely that if you're reading this article, you're one of them.
The reasons for its popularity are simple.
The world has become so vast that we have become disconnected.
Families have moved.
Optional migration is at its highest today.
Forced migration has happened in the past, and even continues to happen today because of wars, famines and other catastrophes.
Families are dislocated.
Most of us feel the need to know who else was there before us, where they lived and how they lived.
We want to know their contribution in our being here today.
Family tree creation is the only way that we can do that.
It helps us to trace our roots, to trace members of our families who lived before us and to know if we can find them or at least their descendants.
Since genealogy started to become popular, many people have been re-united just by searching for genealogical records.
Families that separated hundreds of years ago have been able to find each other because someone took it upon them self to investigate their family's history and find the information.
Some of us want to investigate our family's history and create a family tree simply out of curiosity.
Our families may never have been displaced, but people moved around to get married, for occupational reasons or just to relocate.
We want to get to know them and who they were.
Because of technology, building a family tree is much easier today than it ever was.
All you need is the will to do it, and then to set aside some time devoted to investigating your genealogy.
Online resources exist that make it really easy to get the information that you need.
To help you find your family tree online there are databases that hold vast amounts of information on individuals, where they lived and what they did and most of these resources are free.
All you have to do is type in the names of the person that you're looking for and you're able to find them so long as they were once recorded.
In most developed countries, because records of families were kept from a long time ago, you will usually be able to trace one of your family members through these databases.
Finding even one person from your family is significant because from there, you should be able to trace many more.
Finding an old uncle could mean that you get to know who he was married to, who his children were and on and on down the line until the present-day.
It is very exciting to come across a surprising piece of information on the Internet about your great-grandmother or great-great grandfather! Once you find information on these online databases, you need to find suitable software that you can work with.
So long as it can connect directly to these genealogy databases, you will be able to download and upload data directly into the software.
There is software that's available for free and there is some that you have to buy, and the difference is usually in the amount of functionality and flexibility that the software offers.
If you are doing a large project that will need lots of detail, you might want to consider buying more specialized software that will allow you to make your family tree as detailed as possible.
Family tree creation is a search for who we are, and the revelations usually tell us a lot about ourselves.
It's also a great way to meet descendants of older relatives that you never knew about and to get to know about their lives, and this way, your family tree keeps growing.