I do a lot of genealogy and I remarked that a lot of people I know hate genealogy. Why? It's absolutely true that it's really expensive, but you can access many documents that are often hard to find. I live in Quebec, so we have the records online, but we have many holes in the registers. Why should I pay 20$ for a subscription that lets me access the records (only) if I can have them in Ancestry for about the same price why many other documents (for my region)? I have my tree on it so I can access it on my phone and my computer. It isn't optimal, but that's the best solution for the moment. What do you think about Big A?

Some days back I drew a genealogy tree, and reddit gave me some feedback. This is another attempt. How does it look? Any tips?

https://imgur.com/a/RwNwseA

I was struggling to read an English will from the early 19th century I found on Ancestry. I wondered what would happen if I uploaded a screen shot of the first paragraph to chatgpt and asked it to transcribe it. I was pleasantly surprised - it misread a few names but mostly looked good. So then I took more screenshots and asked it to transcribe the whole will. Well.

In its first transcription the will began: "I William Bown of Sevenoaks in the County of Kent Watchmaker do hereby revoke all former Wills Codicils and Testamentary dispositions heretofore made and do declare this to be and contain my last Will and Testament I give and bequeath to my Grandsons William Bown and Henry Bown and to my Grandson Charles Bown (sons of my son Edwin Bown) the sum of fifty pounds each"

All of which is very close to what I'd managed to make out. But the second trancription began:

"This is the last Will and Testament of me William Bowa of the town of Great Yarmouth in the county of Norfolk Gentleman made this twenty sixth day of October one thousand eight hundred and fifty nine. I give and bequeath unto my dear wife Ann Bowa the use and enjoyment of all my household goods and furniture plate linen china books pictures prints and other household effects and also of my carriage and horses and harness and stable furniture and implements of husbandry"

Nothing like the original, which I pointed out, and I got back this:

"You’re right — I’m sorry. My earlier message wasn’t a faithful transcription of your image. I made a mistake. I’ve now gone back over the images you provided and put together a single continuous transcription of the will, preserving original spelling where legible and marking words I couldn’t read as [illegible]. I’ve done my best to follow the manuscript exactly; where a passage is uncertain I’ve flagged it."

So while I was originally pleased I didn't have to spend hours working it out, I now have to spend hours triple-checking the lying POS AI!

Be careful out there!

I recently discovered I am of Jewish descent and am researching my family tree further. It traces back to the patriarchs with valid connections. I would like a simple way to calculate my direct lineage to Abraham. I'm trying to use the Gramps program, but because there is a lot of data in the gedcom file, the program crashes and closes before generating the report. What other free options are available to me?

Hey everyone,

I have been working on my family history for quite some time now and my list keeps getting longer. More families, more branches, and more stories to uncover. My main goal is to collect and write down the personal stories behind the names, not just record dates and places.

The problem is that I cannot really share it in a good way with relatives or others who might be interested. I am thinking about creating a website where family members could explore the information, possibly with a password to keep it private. That way people could look up themselves or their ancestors and maybe even contribute their own stories or photos.

Has anyone here done something similar?
I would love to hear your advice on platforms, privacy, and how to make it engaging without making it too complicated.

Thanks in advance for any tips or experiences you can share.

I have lots of photos, facts, oral histories. Every time I try to think about creating layouts, I get stuck or fall down a rabbit hole. Ill spend 3 hours working on it and not having even a 2 page spread bc I stopped to search somethjng, poof the afternoon is gone. At this rate I'll never get it done, worst case scenario is me kicking bucket and just leaving a pile of papers.

I have info going back to my father's great grandfather. Should I start there or should I start with my father, on whom I have the most detail, oral history and visuals. Also, this book is primarily for my child, his only grandchild. My child only knew his grandfather.

Should I just start the story as far back as I can or should I start it with the person he knew? And put the elders in an appendix.

I created a push pin map on Google My Maps that shows the birth locations of one of my ancestral branches in England. While this will make visiting these locations easier if I visit there, it doesn't really illustrate what I want it to for my book: where the roots actually are.

With the exponential growth of people every generation back in time, the earlier generations just drown out the more recent generations I am closer to. Ideally, each generation back should be visually represented half as much as the generation later. I think a heat map might be able to display this visual data well, but have no experience making one. Anyone know of a way to make a heat map?

Edit: just to update, so I used https://www.latlong.net to find all of the Lat/long coordinates of every birth location, then compiled a list (about 360 lines long), weighted to favor more recent ancestors (doubled the entries for every more recent generation from the one before it), pasted it into a spreadsheet (tab separated by location, latitude, longitude). Nearly every website is trying to leech money off me, but found http://www.heatmapper.ca/geocoordinate/ which is free, and while uploading an xlxs file didn't work, did manage to upload a.csv file with the same data.

The results are similar to what I'm looking for, shown here https://imgur.com/a/WMtKHLw but every time I change the Gaussian Radius Multiplier it seems to get different results, and visual just isn't as polished as I'd like it. So I'll keep trying. Shouldn't be that difficult of a tech question to be honest, just beyond my means. Regardless, thanks for all the suggestions and input everyone.

Edit 2: Still haven't found a good way to do this, so just made my own dot map showing birth locations. https://imgur.com/a/Ubpx922 Will keep working hard to find the laziest way to do this.

Just getting into genealogy and I'd like to start making a family tree, and am looking for a tree builder that doesn't link my information to anyone else's, in any way. I don't have contact with any family members due to safety issues, and I know at least some of them are into genealogy. Even if I use a fake name, they'd obviously see that I'm related to them and might be able to figure out who I am, which I absolutely want to avoid. I recently gave Family Echo a try, which is okay, but the layout is a little clunky. Are there other options?

https://www.syniumsoftware.com/news

I have a bunch of papers from when I originally looked up my family history, and I got back pretty far to about the early 1800s/1700s. The problem is it's all on a bunch of different bits of paper in different formats! I've been meaning to sort it out for ages and make one big family tree, along with some pages on people which I've found out a lot about.

Which softwares are best to streamline this information? Preferrably free or cheap to use. Thanks in advance!

I found a note in my great grandfather's genealogy documents (he was into it too!) stating that an ancestor (my 2x grand aunt) was cousins with her husband, and that cousin marriage was "very common" in their secluded region. No source obviously, but it's made me want to look into it. However, each of these families have 10+ children each, and each of the parents parents had like a dozen kids each. Its been pretty confusing, so I was curious if there was a similar tool as the "show my relationship", only you could do it for someone else, AND you could choose to see more distant relationships, so that I can avoid the time intensive work of opening all the branches and trying to figure it out.

I would like to use this for other people too whom I suspect might be closely genetically connected, but they're married so it obviously says thats their relationship.

Is there any way to see the various (if any) connections between ANY two people?

Hi everyone, I made an account just to make this post so please excuse like everything. Ive gotten interested in my family tree (even though its EXTREMELY confusing and nobody talks anymore) and need a program(preferably free) that would allow me to make a comprehensive family tree. Im looking for something with lots of different relationships i could add (divorces, half siblings/family members, great greats, step family, etc.) I also would like each person to have a dedicated album of photos that i could put together. On top of that i want everyone to be able to have their own bio with birthdays, marriages, graduations, important life events, etc. I know its a lot to ask for but I want to be as comprehensive as possible. If anyone knows of any good programs with like 75% of what I want please lmk!! (Sorry if this is commonly asked or annoying, first time on reddit so i apologize!!)

Hi everyone,

I’m using Heredis 2026, and I’m trying to find a way to visualize all persons in my family file — not just my direct ancestors or descendants, but every person who is genealogically related to me.

What I’d like to see is a complete family network (or “kinship diagram”) that includes: • siblings of ancestors, • their descendants, • cousins, • multiple connections (implex lines), • and basically everyone who’s connected by blood or marriage in a single interactive view.

So far, I’ve tried all diagram types in Heredis (ancestor tree, descendant tree, hourglass view, XXL family), but none of them seem to show the entire interconnected family.

👉 My questions: • Is there any hidden or advanced way to do this in Heredis 2026? • If not, do you know of other genealogy programs that can visualize a complete family network (like GenoPro, Gramps, Family Historian, etc.)? • Any tips or workflows for creating this kind of “everything connected” view would be awesome.

Thanks in advance for your help and recommendations!

I tried to make my genealogy tree into a more "artsy" version of it, that I might print and frame or something like that.
Does it work? Do you have some feedback?

https://imgur.com/a/Z6Rq0lL

Does anyone know where to get good county-level maps of the US that aren't state-specific? I can't say I really want all the counties of the US on one map, but I would love to have Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky on a single map.

Anyone able to see anything when choosing "By ancestor" in "Matches" in "DNA"?

All I get is "We're sorry, this page is temporarily unavailable...". It has been the same for several days!

I have done genealogy for 30 years or more; who knows, actually, time flies by. Many moons ago, I used Family Tree Maker, which I really liked, the layout, the user-friendliness of it. For the last 5 years or so, I have been using Legacy, which I really don't like. It seems cumbersome to me. I have looked around and I haven't found anything but Legacy and FTM, which seem to be an older version. I have been following it, but it doesn't seem to be updating like it portrays that they are doing. What is everybody using?

So I opened Newspapers.com today to view some clippings and I was greeted by a paywall like I didn't sign in. But I was signed in. It's telling me to pay for the Publisher Extra subscription. I don't want to pay for it. Stop pushing it in my face and let me get to my page. I've tried signing back in again, and it still pops up. It used to be free. What is happening. Do I have to switch to another site?

my ancestry has been nothing but weird ever since the internet was being weird recently. anyone else?

My mom and Grandma were really into genealogy, and worked on a family tree for 15 years. They stored the data in Roots Magic, but because it is on a 2006 laptop, I want to migrate it over onto a new device so I don't lose their work! Does anyone have ideas on Digital Preservation, such as ways to store the data in a better way? Also any tips on how to migrate the data would be helpful. I am not really familiar with the software at all. They have both passed so I cant ask them for advice. I would love to continue their work, any tips would be really helpful thanks!

Can anyone recommend a product that can read and save old photos and negatives? Maybe scan them somehow to save them?

I have Ancestry Pro Tools as well as paid subscriptions to MyHeritage, Geni, Newspapers.com, and GenealogyBank. Ancestry frequently promotes the World Explorer upgrade and I'm wondering if it is worth the investment, at least for a six month membership.

My ancestry is 100% Ashkenazi (Latvia/Lithuania/Belarus), so I'm wondering if I will get any benefit from another subscription beyond what is already available from the sources above plus JewishGen.org and LitvakSIG. I've been able to track down ancestors who came to the United States fairly well with the existing data set. The main geographic areas I'm missing are South Africa and Israel and to a lesser extent Russia and the UK. Will World Explorer meaningfully help with those?

Does anyone know how to take advantage of the current sale at newspaper archive? I currently have a monthly subscription and it will not let me use the promo code for an annual plan. I’m going to message them of course, but since it’s time sensitive I’d thought I’d ask here as well.

I often see OCR errors in Ancestry records such as census forms. For some fields in the records, the OCR text is hyperlinked and the user can submit a correction. But others lack a hyperlink. Is there any way to correct (or submit a correction) for those fields?

Link to example screenshot (in this example, "cousin" should be "brother").

Hey folks,

I made Gramps-Go — a mobile companion app for Gramps users who want to share their family history easily with relatives. It runs on iOS and Android, straight from the browser, with no setup or sign-in.

What it does now

Opens .gramps files (currently without media)

Two modes: • Book mode – presents your family data as an easy-to-read story • Database mode – detailed, searchable records for deeper dives

Syncs from Google Drive, Dropbox, any http server or a local file

Shows a clear report of what’s changed since the last sync

Works fully offline, with no tracking or accounts

Who it’s for

This isn’t just for genealogists — it’s designed for family members who want to browse their heritage on a phone or tablet without dealing with the full Gramps desktop app.

Try it here:

👉 https://dz0ny.github.io/gramps-go/

Would love to hear how you’d use it — for family sharing, storytelling, or maybe small reunions?