By Sanjay Bhagia · 1 November 2026
You don't need a subscription, a DNA test or a trip to an archive to start a family tree. You need a notebook, your relatives, and a little patience. Most families can get back to their great-grandparents from memory and the papers they already have. This guide shows how.
Where do you start a family tree?
With yourself. Write down your full name, your date and place of birth, and if you're married, your husband or wife and your children. Then go one generation up: your parents, with the same details. Then their parents. Work backwards from what you know to what you don't.
Fill in brothers and sisters as you go, at every generation. It's tempting to follow only the direct line, but aunts, uncles and cousins are often where the photos, papers and stories turned up. They're also who you'll be asking for help.
What should you record for each person?
- Full name, including middle names, a maiden name, nicknames, and other spellings. Names change with marriage, migration and the alphabet they're written in.
- Birth: date and place.
- Marriages: who, when and where. Some people marry more than once.
- Death: date and place, and where they're buried or remembered.
- Where they lived and what they did for a living.
- A story or two. How they met, why they moved, what people remember about them.
- A photo, if there is one.
- Where each fact came from. More on this below.
Record places as they were called at the time, with today's name next to it if it's changed: "Lyallpur (now Faisalabad), Punjab". Borders and names move, and the old name is often what appears on documents.
How should you write dates you're not sure of?
Write dates so they can't be misread. "03/04/1932" is 3 April in most of the world and 4 March in the United States. "3 Apr 1932" is clear everywhere.
For dates you don't know exactly:
- Use only what you know: "1932" or "Apr 1932" is fine on its own.
- Mark estimates as circa ("c. 1932" or "abt. 1932"): "about this year, but not sure".
- Use "before" or "after" when that's all you can say: "before 1947", because they were married by then.
- If a date came from a different calendar, note the original as well as your conversion.
Never round up to a precise date to make the chart look tidy. A made-up date gets copied and believed. An honest "c. 1930" invites someone who knows better to correct it.
Who should you ask?
Your oldest relatives first, while you can. Then aunts, uncles and older cousins, especially on branches you know least about. Family friends and neighbours can sometimes fill gaps too.
Ask open questions and bring old photos: they jog memories better than anything. Our list of questions to ask your grandparents works for any elder. Expect people to disagree about details. Write down both versions and who said each.
Where else can you find family history information?
Look at home first. Families keep more than they realise:
- Birth, marriage and death certificates
- Passports, visas and naturalisation papers
- Wedding cards, letters, diaries and address books
- Family bibles, religious records and the backs of photos
- School reports, work records and newspaper cuttings
- Gravestones and memorials
Beyond home, there are civil registration offices, national and local archives, religious registers, census records and old newspapers, depending on the country. Many of these are searchable online, some free (FamilySearch, for one) and some by subscription.
Why should you record your sources?
For every fact, note where it came from: "Grandma, 2026", "birth certificate", "gravestone at …". It takes seconds and saves hours. When two sources disagree, you can weigh them. When someone asks "how do we know that?", you can answer. A document written at the time usually beats a memory, but not always.
Should you use paper or software?
| Option | Good for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Paper chart or template | Starting out, interviews, and elders who prefer paper | Running out of space; one copy that can be lost |
| Spreadsheet | Lists of people, dates and sources | Hard to see how people connect |
| Genealogy software | Large trees, detailed research, printing charts | Usually one person's tree on one computer |
| Public online tree sites | Finding records and distant relatives | Your tree may be visible to strangers; check settings |
| A private family website | Sharing with relatives, who can add their own branches | Less suited to deep records research |
Many families use more than one: paper to start, then something shared. If you'll be moving between programs, check whether they read and write GEDCOM, the common exchange format for family trees. A free family tree template is a good way to start on paper.
How do you handle complicated families?
Every family has them: second marriages, half-brothers and sisters, adoptions, a child whose father isn't known, a relative nobody talks about. Record what's true, gently. A good tree can show a person with more than one marriage, and a child with only one known parent. If something is sensitive, talk to the people closest to it before you share it widely.
When you're not sure how two people connect, our guide to cousin relationships and the free relationship calculator help.
How do you share a family tree with your family?
A printed chart is lovely at a family gathering, but it's out of date the moment a baby is born. A shared tree, where relatives can see it and correct their own branches, stays alive. Whatever you use, be careful with living people: keep their birth dates and contact details off anything public, and ask before you add them.
Kumbaa is one way to do this privately. Each family gets its own private site, with a tree that holds photos and stories, dates that can be year-only or "circa", and relatives invited free, each able to edit their own branch. If you've already drawn a tree on paper or have one as a PDF, you can import it and check it before it's added. Kumbaa doesn't import GEDCOM files yet.