How to build a family tree together with your whole family: a step-by-step guide

Why you should not build a family tree alone

Everyone in a family knows only their own branch well. An aunt remembers the names of grandpa’s siblings, a cousin knows when the youngest grandchild was born, and grandma remembers what the neighbors in the old town were called. Whoever builds alone ends up with a partial tree, and it goes out of date fast: children are born, relatives marry, and new details come to light.

A shared tree turns the work into small pieces. Everyone fills in what they know, and whoever manages the tree only makes sure it stays tidy. It is also what keeps a tree alive for years.

Step 1: start with yourself and your parents

Do not try to go back six generations on day one. Start with the people you know: you, your partner, your children, your parents and siblings. Once the tree exists you can grow it from there.

In the 1family.Home family tree every person has a card with a photo, dates and an age, and all the relations between them sit on one board you can drag and zoom. After you mark "this is me", the tree opens centered on you every time.

For each person it is worth recording from the start:

• First and last name, and for women also the family name they were born with, because it decides which lineage they belong to
• A date of birth, even an approximate one
• Whether the person is living, and if deceased: the date of death and the burial place
• A place of birth and a place of residence
• One photo, even an old one

Step 2: add one generation at a time

The easy way is to go up first: parents, then grandparents, and only then sideways and down: siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins. Every card has a plus button, and with it you can add a father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, brother, sister, son, daughter, husband or wife in one tap, and see in advance what will be created.

The site also notices when you add someone with a name similar to a person already in the tree, and warns you before a duplicate is created. Duplicates are the most common mistake in a tree that several people edit.

Step 3: invite the family and decide who edits and who only views

This is where the tree becomes shared. The family admin invites relatives and chooses, for each member, whether they can only view, also edit, or have no access. The permission is set separately for each part of the site, so someone who sees the tree does not have to see the rest of the family’s information.

A rule of thumb that works: give edit permission to two or three people who really know the family, and let the other relatives view and comment. Grandparents can stay view-only and tell you what is missing, and the grandchildren add it.

Step 4: dates, ages and photos

You do not always know an exact date. You can enter an exact date, an approximate date, or just a year. The age is calculated automatically, and marked "about" when only the year is known, so there is no need to pretend to be certain.

Each person has a yearly gallery: one photo for every year, plus a birth photo and a half-year photo. When there is no profile photo, the latest yearly photo is shown. That is what turns a tree from a list of names into something you want to browse.

Step 5: get the relations right: partners, divorce and adoption

Real families are not always simple, and the tree does not have to be either. You can mark parenthood as biological, adoptive or foster. You can mark partners as married, partners, divorced, separated or widowed, with a wedding date and an end date. Siblings and half-siblings are detected automatically from shared parents.

The principle: record the relation as it really is, and the tree draws it.

Common mistakes

• Waiting to complete all the information before sending invitations, so the tree stays with one person
• Recording first names only, so after a few generations you cannot tell two people with the same name apart
• Mixing up the current family name with the name before marriage
• Not marking a date as approximate, so whoever checks later cannot tell what is certain and what is a guess
• Not adding the living relatives after adding everyone who has passed away
• Forgetting to back up. You can export the tree to a GEDCOM file that fits other genealogy software, and also to a full backup

Make the tree something alive

A tree that just sits in the corner gets forgotten. If you mark a person in the tree with the bell, their birthdays, anniversaries and memorial days appear automatically on the dates page and reach you as a reminder on the day itself.

From there you can move on to what is written nowhere: the life stories of your grandparents, kept in each person’s card, and finally a family book to print. The article how to record your grandparents’ life stories also has 20 interview questions.