Family Tree Chart Types Explained

"Family tree" usually brings one shape to mind, but genealogists actually use several different chart styles, each built to answer a different question. Here's what each one shows, and when it's the right one to use.

Pedigree chart — your ancestors

A pedigree chart starts with one person and branches backward: two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, doubling with each generation back. This is the chart most people picture first — it answers "where did I come from?"

Descendant chart — everyone who came from one person

Flip the direction: a descendant chart starts with one ancestor and branches forward through every child, grandchild, and beyond. This is the chart to use for something like "show everyone descended from my great-grandmother" — useful for reunions or tracing how large a family has grown from one root.

Fan chart — ancestors, laid out as an arc

A fan chart is a pedigree chart bent into a semicircle or full circle, with one person at the center point and generations fanning outward. It's popular for printing and framing, since it fits a lot of generations into a compact, visually striking shape rather than a chart that keeps getting wider with every row.

Hourglass chart — ancestors and descendants together

An hourglass chart puts one person in the middle, with ancestors branching upward and descendants branching downward — combining a pedigree and a descendant chart into one shape, centered on a single life. This works well for a chart built around one particularly significant relative, showing both where they came from and everyone who came after them.

Which one should you actually use?

• Researching where your family came from? Pedigree chart.
• Planning a reunion or tracking a large extended family? Descendant chart.
• Want something to print and frame? Fan chart.
• Focused on one particular relative's full story — before and after them? Hourglass chart.

A good family tree tool lets you view the same underlying data in more than one of these layouts, so you're not stuck picking just one shape for everything you build.