How to create a family tree step by step

To create a family tree sounds like a big project. In reality it starts with a sheet of paper and three generations you know almost entirely by heart. From there the tree grows, generation by generation, with every conversation and every record.

This guide shows step by step how to build a family tree yourself, with which papers and which tools, and which mistakes you can spare yourself.

Ancestor chart or descendant chart?

• Ancestor chart: you come first, followed by parents, grandparents and great-grandparents. Each generation doubles: 2, 4, 8, 16. The usual starting point if you want to know where you come from.
• Descendant chart: one ancestor or couple is at the top, below them all children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Just right for a family reunion.

In an ancestor chart each person has a fixed number: you are 1, your father 2, your mother 3. The father of a person with number n has number 2n, the mother 2n+1.

Step 1: start with yourself

Write down what you know for certain: your full name, date and place of birth. Then the same for your parents, with the date and place of their marriage, and for your grandparents, as far as you know. Leave gaps open rather than guessing.

Always record women under their maiden name. Otherwise you will later lose exactly the trail that leads to the next family.

Step 2: ask the older generation

What is in the records stays in the archives. What your parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents know disappears with them. So ask early: about names and birthplaces, about brothers and sisters who died young, about moves, occupations and religion. Religion later decides which church registers you search.

Record the conversations with your phone, ideally with old photos on the table. Our free sheet of twenty questions to ask your parents can be printed and taken along. More tips in how to interview older family members.

Step 3: gather the family documents

In many families there is more than you think in a drawer at your parents' or grandparents'. Ask specifically for:

• The family register book (Familienstammbuch): with the marriage and the births of the children, often with both spouses' parents.
• The ancestry pass (Ahnenpass): from the 1930s, it often reaches back to the grandparents or further. A document from a dark time, but a valuable source.
• Memorial cards and death notices: with dates of birth and death, sometimes with a photo.
• Letters, school reports, military papers and labelled photos.

Photograph or scan everything. How to store and digitise papers is explained in how to keep and digitise old letters, diaries and documents.

Step 4: note the source of every fact

Almost every beginner skips this step. With every date and every place, write down where it comes from: "birth certificate, civil registry, number and year", "family register book", "according to grandmother, conversation 2026". That way in five years you still know what is proven and what was only told.

Step 5: paper, template or software?

For the first three or four generations, a family tree template on paper is enough. After that, paper becomes hard to follow, and there is hardly room for sources.

• Genealogy programs on the computer: Gramps is free and open source, Legacy has a free basic version (in English), Ages! and Ahnenblatt 4 are paid. All of them read and write GEDCOM.
• Online family trees and family tree apps: practical, because the family can look along. Make sure you can get the tree out again as GEDCOM and that it is not public without your say.

If you want to build a family tree for free, a free program and freely accessible archive portals take you a long way.

Step 6: save it in GEDCOM format

GEDCOM is the common exchange format for family trees; the usual versions are 5.5.1 and 7.0. Once your tree is a GEDCOM file, you are not tied to any program and can exchange it with relatives. Which version to choose is explained in GEDCOM 5.5.1 or 7.0.

With our free GEDCOM viewer you see how many generations a file holds and where the gaps are. The GEDCOM checker finds the wrong character set, garbled letters, broken links and impossible dates. Both run in the browser, without an account, and the file never leaves your device.

Step 7: grow generation by generation

Always work back from one proven person to the next, never the other way round. Your grandparents' marriage certificate, for example, often names the parents of both partners, and that gives you the next generation.

In Germany, civil registry offices have kept registers in Prussia since 1 October 1874, in the whole German Reich since 1 January 1876, and left of the Rhine since as early as 1798. Before that, church registers are the most important source. Where to find which record is set out in starting a family tree in Germany: where to find the records. How to plan your search is explained in ancestry research: getting started and sources. Stuck? Read gaps in your family tree: where to search next.

Typical mistakes when creating a family tree

• Mixing up identical names. In a village, several men were often called Johann Schmidt. Check parents, spouse and place before you take two entries for the same person.
• Copying dates without a source. Dates copied from other people's online trees look certain, but often are not. Treat them only as a hint.
• Standardising spellings. Meier, Mayer and Meyer can be the same family. Note the spelling used in the source.
• Confusing baptism and birth. Church registers often give only the date of baptism.
• Wanting everything at once. Work through one line after another.

Keeping the family tree alive

A family tree is never finished. Children are born, relatives find new photos, a record disproves an old assumption.

• Share it. People who look along recognise faces, correct dates and add stories.
• Give the names faces. A photo per person turns a list into a family. See how to date an old photograph.
• Print it. Our free ancestor chart tool turns a GEDCOM file into an ancestor chart of four or five generations, to print, as a PDF or as an SVG.
• Keep more than one copy. As a GEDCOM file on the computer, on an external drive and online.

Creating your family tree with The Memory Palace

The Memory Palace is a private 3D palace for your family's history, on iPhone, iPad, Android and in the browser, in English and four other languages, with data stored in the EU.

• GEDCOM in and out. Build the family tree in the app or bring your GEDCOM file, and take it out again in the same format.
• Three views. Tree view, fan chart and descendants view, with a photo per person.
• Sharing via a link. Relatives open the family tree through a link you send them.
• A wing per branch of the family, a room per person or couple. A suggestion; you decide. The photos hang on the walls with a name and a year, next to them stories and voice recordings.
• Private until you invite. Invited relatives can add their own photos, stories and recordings.
• Take everything with you at any time. A full export as a ZIP file, also on the free plan.

Want to see what it looks like first? Walk through an example palace, without an account.

Related guides

• Tracing your family history: a beginner's guide
• How to open a GEDCOM file without software
• How to preserve your family history and pass it on