How to make a family tree, step by step

A family tree starts with you and works backwards one generation at a time: your parents, then their parents, then theirs. You need nothing to begin but what you already know and a few relatives to ask.

Start a tree as a guest: no account is needed for up to 50 people. Prefer paper? Print a free blank pedigree chart and fill it in by hand.

Step 1: decide who the tree is about

Most trees are about one person, usually you, and their ancestors: parents, grandparents and great-grandparents. That is a pedigree, and it is the easiest place to start because every person has exactly two parents to look for.

A tree can also start from an ancestor and come down to everyone descended from them, or take in the whole family, with brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins. Pick one to begin; you can widen it later. A family tree with aunts, uncles and cousins explains the difference.

Step 2: write down what you already know

Start with yourself, then your parents, then your grandparents. For each person note:

Their full name, and for a woman the surname she was born with as well as any married name.
When and where they were born, married and died, as far as you know. A year or "about 1940" is fine.
Who their parents were.

Leave a gap where you don't know something. A gap is something to look for; a guess written as a fact is something someone copies later.

Step 3: gather what is already in the house

Before you search anywhere else, look through what the family kept:

Birth, marriage and death certificates, and funeral cards
Family Bibles, which often list births and marriages on the front pages
Photographs, especially ones with names or dates written on the back
Letters, diaries, address books, military papers, passports and old newspapers

Each one is a source. Write down which document each fact came from, so you or a cousin can check it later.

Step 4: ask your relatives

The oldest relatives in the family know names and stories no record holds. Ask them early, and write down or record what they say. Questions to ask relatives for your family tree has a list to work from and tips for the conversation.

Step 5: put the people in a tree

On paper: a pedigree chart gives each ancestor a numbered box. You are number 1, your father 2 and your mother 3, and every father is twice his child's number. How the numbers work explains it, and the free blank charts have forms of four to seven generations to print.

Online with Draw My Tree:

Open Start a tree. Create starter tree gives you a small family to build on, You with a Mother and a Father, and puts you straight into typing your own name.
Select a person and fill in their name, dates and places in the side panel. Dates can be exact, a month, a year, or approximate ("about 1850", "before 1900").
Use the + on a card to add a parent, a partner or a child. Each new person is linked as you add them, and the tree redraws around them.
Write what you know of their life in their Story, and add each record to their Life timeline with its source.

If someone in the family already keeps a tree in Ancestry, MyHeritage, Family Tree Maker, RootsMagic or another program, ask them for a GEDCOM file instead of typing it all again. Import a GEDCOM explains how to get one out of each app.

Building your tree covers adding and linking people in more detail.

Step 6: fill the gaps with records

Once you have run out of what the family knows, the gaps point to the records to look for next: a census to find a family living together, a marriage record for a wife's maiden name, a death record or an obituary for a person's parents. Public libraries, county record offices, national archives and genealogy websites hold them, and many are free to search.

In Draw My Tree, the Insights panel lists who in the tree has no birth date, birthplace, death place or parents yet, so you can work through the gaps one by one. Pedigree collapse and research gaps has the details.

A family tree on paper is easier for relatives to read and correct. Draw My Tree draws the same people as a family tree, a pedigree chart, a fan chart or a timeline, and Print your family tree covers the formats and sizes. To let relatives see it and add what they know, share the tree.

Tips that save time later

Write dates as day, month in letters, then the year: 12 Mar 1871. "3/4/1871" means March in one country and April in another.
Write places smallest first, as they were named at the time: town, county, state or province, country.
Mark guesses as guesses: "abt. 1850", "prob." A blank is better than a wrong date.
Note the source of every fact, even if the source is "Grandma, 2026".
Work one line at a time. Finishing your mother's father's line before starting another keeps the research from scattering.

Frequently asked questions

How far back can I go? Most families can name three or four generations from memory and old papers. Records can often take a line back further, a century or two in many countries; how far depends on where the family lived and which records survive there.

Do I have to pay to make a family tree? No. The blank charts are free to print, and a Draw My Tree guest tree or free account costs nothing to build. Printing a tree at paper or poster size from Draw My Tree comes with a one-time Keepsake for that tree or the Family Plan; see Pricing.

What if I don't know who someone's parent was? Leave them out for now. In Draw My Tree, a child with only one recorded parent sits under an Unknown card that you can fill in later.