World’s Largest Family Tree Chart – designed by Legacy Family Tree

Comments (30)

• A few years ago I used FTM to make a pedigree chart for my dad who had Alzheimers disease. It was six ft. by 3ft with twelve generations starting with Dad. He hung it on his wall in the dining room, so everyone could see it. It made him so proud of his people, and he continued to study it until he could no longer read. Dad passed away last year, and Mother left it up because it meant so much to him. I suggest doing this for your oldest generations. They will be amazed and love you for it forever.

• Diane – it was multiple charts combined together – one linked to the next.

• My husband’s line merges into European royalty, and there it gets…interesting. One line supposedly ties back to Zeus, another to Adam. We created a chart for the fun of it, knowing it isn’t accurate after a point.
  It is hard to tell from the photo, but it looks like they weren’t going for the record of the largest family tree, but the largest chart ever printed. I believe it is designed to show the attempt of the family in the photo to connect themselves to the larger picture, including the biblical record starting with Adam moving down, and the family’s records moving up. I can’t tell from the photo if they show the two linking, though we know records are unreliable when they get that old anyway, so it is more symbolic, knowing there have to be links even if they weren’t recorded and preserved. Of course it is meant to be an advertisement of their printing services, but it is still a fun chart to look at. Wish I could have made it to the conference and seen it.

• Did you happen to take a picture of the back of the chart which really has the family names, etc? I had to stand on a very tall chair to get over the top of the people for the front of the chart, but when people are barely 5 Ft tall that is expected. It was great to visit for a minute at RootsTech 2016.

• So which chart option did he use? Or was it multiples pieced together?

• As much trouble as I have documenting some of my ancestors back to 1700 I wonder how someone does it to B.C.

• We have heard of large family trees in China. Paula Williams Madison told us at Roots Tech about her Chinese family tree that goes back to 1000 B.C. I wonder if some of these Chinese family trees would be larger.

• Thx Sharee, I’m going to try that@ my staples. Great idea.

• I produced a printed chart a few years ago with 9 generations and it was about 4 feet high by around 12 feet long. If I added just one more generation it would need to be about 40 feet long!

• I am a newbie to Legacy. I knew I could make as many generations on a chart with Family Tree Maker as I wanted so I looked at Legacy and followed the instructions given by Geoff Rasmussen. I have ancestors back to 1040. That is about 41 generations. For my tree that would be 469 letter size pages or 7 pages high by 67 pages long. My local Staples can plot a chart that is about 34 inches high by 8 feet long. On my tree that is about 6 generations. If you save the chart as a pdf it is saved as one page. You can take that to Staples and have it printed on their plotter. You are restricted only by the restrictions of the plotter at the store. So, the answer is: you can go back at least 41 generations.

• I wonder, what my tree would look like with all of the ancestors, cousins, etc.. because my tree goes back to 238 B. C. at 91 generations. I think that would really be a big family tree chart.

• I have trace some of my European ancestors back to the Kings of Franks 230BC
  Unbeliever!!
  JoeAger

• It isn’t a tree going backwards to Moses, it is a Biblical tree starting with Adam and Eve and working down to Christ.

• re the Dos program – the one that I had was called Family Roots and it printed on continuous paper with a dot matrix printer. I really liked its descendant charts – and nothing that I have used since comes close. I really miss it.

• What I find that makes no sense, is that when you look at the close up–with Doug and Geoff, notice that the “people” who appear to be working on the chart, are actually part of the photo. That would include 2-3 people at the bottom, and the one guy at the top of the ladder.
  Now what is the purpose of adding those to the photo–except to cover names, and get in the way of the public following a line to see if it in actuality makes sense, and does indeed run back to Moses. If Doug was somehow attempting to “show” how he put his chart together–it certainly wasn’t by hand, this most certainly is a computer-generated chart.
  I got very distracted, disappointed when I realized that there were people in the photo, because they served no purpose, except, in my mind, to cover up parts of the chart. Politics and business has shown us that covering up is generally not done for altruistic purposes. Those “photo people” really bother me.

• How many generations did his genealogy chart go back?
  My family tree goes back to France to the 1300’s
  I found many of our cousins in France and were able to find all that were in Cuba and obtained all of their literary birth, baptisms, marriage, death certificates, marriage contracts and testaments.
  We did it with the help of French people that are from the same area our family is from. They were able to obtain from the historical records the same information for our French family. The information is unbelievable. We can never repay them for everything they have done for us.

• This is AWESOME!!! Thank you Geoff for sharing it with those of us who could not make RootTech. Life is very sweet with you sharing yours!

• I would need a correction feature! Lol

• Love it! I’ve been trying to design a chart based on Harry Potter’s Marauder’s Map…The idea is we are never done finding ancestors, their cousins, and descendants….so I want to create a back ground tree with lots of room to add drop down, fold outs that can be added and if needed, easily corrected. I also thought it could have an arty, magical, and mystery finding feel to it. Lots of surprises as family members discover hidden areas of the family tree. This could be a great conversation starter or the basis for family history games…gets people engaged and interested. For those of us with lineages to the Mayflower and early Colonial times, we have recorded ancestries back to Biblical times.

• Fantastic!!

• Jessica – it was a lot of different sheets combined together.

• Well, it’s huge, but as a genealogical family tree, it is just nonsense.

• Is that all one sheet, or multiple sheets printed and merged together?

• You didn’t say how many generations it covers nor how many individual people (and I seriously doubt the researcher was actually able to take it back to Moses so it’s not clear what’s really being displayed). I’ve got 8 generations with more than 300 living cousins (that I’ve found so far) in each of the 3 branches I’ve researched so far. How large a chart would that take (and how would I go about getting it done)?

• Mike – click on the Legacy Charting button the My Toolbar tab.

• wonderful & amazing tree!
  I cant even find a place on legacy to make a tree?
  cheers Mike

• I am so jealous! Print mine like that!!!!

• One of my trees if I could get it printed would be close to 200 feet long by at least 5 feet wide. And since no one has a frame that big I will keep it in the computer. I do have a couple of trees in the 30 foot range which I managed to get printed.

• There was a DOS program years ago that did an excellent job of getting the most family tree data in the smallest space. Miss it.

• That’s twice the size mine would be if I could get it printed! Mine would be 15 feet by 3 feet in size 12 font. I toured my house one day with the steel tape measure and decided it wasn’t feasible! I don’t have enough wall space.