Maternal Paternal Family Trees

Maternal Paternal Family Trees are set side-by-side so that you appear in common and between your parents and their family. Consider this a “marriage family tree“. By doing that you may view relatives on your mother’s or your father’s side. These are descendant living trees and intended for personal use as artwork for the walls of your home.

Family Tree Relationships
Your family tree relationships are easy to picture in a single view. Choose yourself or perhaps your children to set in the middle between two top-down family trees. Choosing this primary person sets up the limit and order for this descendant family tree picture frame. For example, I have chosen my children to be the “primary person”. My four children have lines or branches from them to me on the left, and from my wife on the right.

Paternal Family Trees
In the example above, my paternal grandparents appear in the tree on the left, and my wife’s paternal grandparents appear in tree on the right. Together they show the Frecker and Meng families back to our children’s great grandparents.

Paternal Family Trees
But our children have eight great grandparents (so do you). Yes, it takes two more trees. Taking this a bit further, another picture is drawn with our children in the middle, but this time, my maternal grandparents appear in the tree on the left and my wife’s maternal grandparents appear in the tree on the right. Together they show the Flood and Witherspoon families back to our children’s other set of great grandparents. See https://familytreetops.com/post-maternal-paternal-family-tree/

Who’s on First
Does this get confusing? Not really. This is a graphic form of organization for visual thinkers. What you call these trees, though, can be a little confusing, depending on who you are. To me and my wife, our surnames Meng and Frecker show our paternal families. But to our children, it is Mom and Dad. It’s helpful to think of Dad’s paternal or maternal side, and Mom’s paternal or maternal side. That’s why the grandparents graphic in https://familytreetops.com/post-math-of-genealogy/ is so awesome.