This is one of my longer-term ongoing projects which rather consumed my life during the months of Covid-19 lockdown.

I think most people at some point or another get interested in their genealogy. I guess it’s just a human quality to want to know where you came from. And of course the lingering hopes that there is someone famous or notable in that long lineage. There is also, for some, the validation of oral traditions or family lore. It gives some unquantifiable feeling of knowing your place in the great human story. I hear sometimes the lingering qualities of ancestors which influence our personalities. My hot-blooded habit must be from my dad’s people - after all they came from Italy. And my love for the sea - well of course, now that I see that Scottish line, it all makes sense. These are some comforting feelings to know that maybe we are a sum of forces, driven by the culmination of ancestral history.

There is the other side as well which explains why I wanted to do this project. I love the idea of those people who’s lineage matters to them; like the royals of the old houses of Europe, who claim status through the strength of their ties to their family. I am charmed by their preoccupation with genealogy, and the power which it takes in their positions in life. For me I always imagined on the mantle piece above the fireplace in some Austrian schloss, or Belgian castle a great crafted family tree - set imposing for all family and guests to see; as a reminder that “This is who we are, and where we come from”. I’m sure that in reality these physical murals or tapestries are nowhere near as common as in my imagination. But the idea charmed me into making my own.

An important decision to note in this project as well stems from that vision in my head of the tapestry over the mantlepiece - namely that the tree is only as important as its strongest branches, and the lineages that recede into nowhere are not important to the story. I took this approach to my tree, both to recreate that vision in my head, and to give the tree a form beyond chaos.

In my research, unsurprisingly, I found very few examples of real royal family trees. Certainly there are diagrams - but not many real hand-painted or carved trees out there. a few nice examples i found to base my design off are shown below. The first is the dynastic tree of the Russian Tsars. The second is the tree of Louis III, Duke of Württemberg.

This is precisely the overly heraldic, opulent, and ostentatious design that I am aiming for in my family tree.

I started with research. Luckily for the research of most American ancestors, we can rely on a bit of work in establishing the first few generations from asking around, and then begin tracing those further back using resources provided by, who else but the church of the Latter Day Saints. The Mormons are well known in the U.S. for being more than a little obsessed by genealogy, and luckily for the rest of us, they made the enormous effort to digitize a majority of census records, marriage records, birth and death certificates, and a whole bunch of other documentation that is normally a pain to find manually. They then applied (I’m assuming) natural language processing to connect hand written names on these documents with possible matches. It is far from a perfect system, and requires a lot of manual work - but it takes care of a lot of library searching and document sifting. Building a family tree (when the system works) now requires the validation of the documents that have been processed, to see if the names on them are really connected with the right people. Links are created manually in the tree between generations based on these documents, and the documents stay associated with each name as metadata.

The other great thing about this system is that it’s free. Oh and sometimes you can hit the jackpot by making a connection to a family member that is also part of someone else’s family tree which has already been ‘completed’ - Thus all of the subsequent connections and members are added automatically to your tree, saving a whole lot of work.

I got lucky in this regard that for two major branches of my tree, someone had already completed the research, and my tree tripled in size without my input! (I did a fair bit of verifying the documents just in case).

Anyways, with all the links made to my satisfaction, I began arranging the major branches, trying to make the most efficient shape of tree possible. I started with sticky notes on a roll of studio paper so I could easily reposition everything. I got some canine assistance on this step as you can see below.

Next step was to transfer the positions of the names to my final canvas - a 4x8ft thin wooden board, and begin roughly sketching the form of the actual tree. I also sought out the family crests and heraldic emblems of the older branches of the family, as well as other interesting media to include in the final art piece.

Below you can see me removing the names and sketching the outline of the tree. I used chalk to make it all super visible without making any permanent markings on the board.

Next step was to paint the background on the tree, which will finally be semi-covered by the new brass name plates that I am constructing, as well as the painted family crests that will be added on top.

Painting is certainly not one of my artistic skills, so I was really winging it here. I think though that the tree mostly serves as a backdrop, so it doesn’t need to be super fancy.

As of summer 2020, thats where the project stands. I am working now on engraving all roughly 175 name tags on shiny brass plates. I would like to include a short description at least with names and dates for each. Furthermore for some ancestors where more information is known, the plates might include a short summary of their positions or stories, as well as crests or even portraits.

Updates to follow!