Create a family tree
Name a tree and it is yours, private, and ready for the first person.
Nothing to read if you would rather watch
Watch how it works
16 short clips, recorded on the working site rather than drawn. No sound — every step is captioned, so they can be watched with the volume off.
The family in them is made up, and the photograph is a public archive picture. Nobody real is on screen.
Starting a tree
A tree is private the moment it exists, and stays that way until you publish it. The diagram draws itself; these two clips are how to make one and how to read it.
Read a big diagram
Pan, zoom, fit — and the narrower view for a family too wide for a screen.
Putting people in
A relative at a time: their name, the name the family actually uses for them, and a face to tell two of the same name apart.
Add a person
First name, last name, city. Everything else is folded away until you want it.
Record a Hmong or npe laus name
The name the family actually uses, kept beside the one on the documents.
Add a profile picture
One face per person — the thing that tells two relatives of the same name apart.
Correcting a mistake
Somebody written down under the wrong parents, entered twice, or removed when they should not have been. None of it is permanent.
Change where someone sits
Positions are not dragged — they are decided by who a person is connected to.
Remove a person
Taking someone out of the list, and what it warns you about before it does.
Undo a change
Everything that has been changed or removed, newest first, each with an Undo.
A whole family at once
Nobody wants to fill in the same form forty times. Both of these take a list and make people out of it.
Paste a list of names
The fastest way in: one person a line, with a city and a year if you have them.
Import a spreadsheet
Start from the example sheet, type your family over it, and upload it back.
Who else can see it
Three settings and two kinds of invitation. Addresses, phone numbers and private notes are outside all of them.
Choose who can see it
Three settings, and the middle one is the reason the site has a search at all.
Share it with a relative
A read-only link for the family, or a named invitation for somebody who will help.
Put them on the map
When a city was saved but no pin was found, this goes back and looks them up.
Finding relatives
The map, its filters, and the plain list — all three cover every published tree, by name, by clan, by city.
Search the map
Find a relative in every published tree by name, by clan, or by city.
Filter a map search
Narrow a search by first name, last name, age and place — then press Apply.
Find family by name
The same search without the map: a name, a place, or a clan, and who matches.
Still stuck?
The Vang family is a finished tree you can read without an account, and what stays yours sets out exactly which details are never shown to anybody else.