Building your tree

You record only direct relationships — parent, child, sibling, spouse or partner. Everything else is derived from those.

You never add a cousin, a grandparent or a nephew directly. Add the link that connects them and the platform works out the rest, which is what keeps a large tree internally consistent.

• Step-relationships, adoption and fostering are recorded as their own relationship types rather than being flattened into biological ones.
• Multiple marriages and partnerships are supported, with their own date ranges.
• Half-siblings and step-siblings can be recorded as such, and also arise naturally from recording each parent separately.

The relatives page offers several views over the same data, because no single layout suits every question.

• By relationship — a categorised list, each entry marked Confirmed or Pending.
• Nuclear — parents, step-parents, siblings, spouses and children only.
• Extended — the nuclear family plus grandparents, uncles, aunts and grandchildren.
• Extended plus — adds the collateral branches: cousins, nieces and nephews.
• By generation — ancestors and descendants grouped by distance from the subject.
• Find — one kind of relative at a time, filtered by side of the family and distance.

The view you are looking at is kept in the address bar, so a particular view of a particular person can be bookmarked or sent to a relative.

The Find view on the relatives page answers questions a list cannot: who are this person's maternal great-uncles, or their second cousins once removed.

1. 1Choose a category — parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins, uncles and aunts, nieces and nephews, step-relations, or earlier ancestors and later descendants.
2. 2Narrow to the paternal or maternal side, or leave it as both.
3. 3For cousins, set the degree (first, second, third) and the removal — how many generations apart the two of you are.
4. 4Filter by gender where it helps tell two branches apart.

The tree page draws the same family six ways, and remembers which one you chose for next time.

• Graph — the pannable canvas, with everyone positioned by how they relate to the person at the centre.
• Pedigree — the same canvas, laid out as a conventional ancestor chart.
• Fan chart — many generations of ancestors compressed into one circle.
• Lineage — a single direct line, ancestor to descendant.
• List — a plain, scannable table.
• Timeline — the same people ordered by date rather than by relationship.

The generation depth applies to every view, because it decides how much of the family is fetched. On the canvas views you can also search within the tree: matches are highlighted in place rather than taking you to the site-wide search.

Two branches of a family each recording the same great-grandmother is normal, not a mistake. Either side can propose a merge.

1. 1Open either profile and choose to propose a merge with the other.
2. 2Both records are shown side by side, field by field.
3. 3Choose which value to keep where they disagree; conflicting entries are kept in the record, not discarded.
4. 4The owners of both profiles must agree before the merge completes.