Where are the gaps in your family tree, and where to look next

Johanna, born around 1860, married in the village where her husband worked. That is where the line stops. No parents, no birthplace, no birth date. Most family trees have a Johanna. And most have more gaps than their maker knows about, because in a tree of four hundred people nobody sees them all.

The short answer

The gaps in a family tree come in four kinds: people without a birth date, without a surname, without any place, and people who are not linked to any family. You find them all at once by exporting your tree as a GEDCOM file and opening it in a reader that lists them. Then each kind of gap has its own record that usually fills it.

Find the gaps all at once

Export your tree as GEDCOM from the program or website you use. Not sure where the button is? Read how to export your family tree as a GEDCOM file.

Then drag the file into thememorypalace.ai/gedcom. You see how many people there are, how many generations, the longest line back, and four lists: who has no birth date, who has no surname, who has no place, and who is not connected to a family. Each list shows the names, so you can look them up in your own program. It is free and needs no account. The file is read in your browser and is not sent anywhere.

What usually fills each gap

Gap	Where to look first
No birth date	The baptism in the parish register. The marriage and death records, which often give an age and sometimes a birthplace.
No surname	Often a wife entered under her husband's name, or someone known only by a first name. The marriage record gives her own surname and usually her parents.
No place	Marriage records and census or population registers name where people were born or lived. A place is what tells you which archive to search.
Not linked to a family	Usually a person added during research and never connected, or a link lost in an import. Check whether they belong to a family already in the tree.

When the line really stops

If the record you need does not turn up, the problem is rarely that it does not exist. More often it is somewhere you have not looked yet.

• Work sideways. A brother's marriage record may name the parents that your ancestor's record leaves out. Godparents and witnesses are often relatives.
• Try other spellings. Clerks wrote what they heard. Peeters, Peters and Pieters can be the same family.
• Look one parish further. People married where the bride lived and worked where there was work. A neighbouring village or the nearest town is often the answer.
• Change the kind of record. Notarial deeds, military registers, newspapers and emigration lists name people who never appear in a civil record.

Where to find those records differs per country. Our guides for England and Wales, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany list the main sources.

The other kind of gap

A family tree can be complete on paper and still empty. Every date filled in, and not a single face. The gap nobody lists is the one between the name and the person: what she looked like, where she lived, what the family still tells about her. If you want to fill that one too, The Memory Palace reads your GEDCOM file and gives each person a place next to their photos and stories.