Create a Gorgeous, Custom Family Tree Chart in Minutes

Inspired by a genealogy friend, I tried something the other day that I must share with you. It's an easy way to create a stunning, one-of-a-kind family tree chart. I did it in two steps.

One platform did a beautiful job. Another invented an entire family.

Step #1: Print an Ancestor Chart as a PDF or Image

Decide which person you want to be the subject of your custom family tree chart. For this exercise, I'm choosing my grandfather, Adamo Leone. Here are the steps to follow:

• In your family tree software, select the person you want.
• Depending on your software, choose to create an ancestor or pedigree chart.
• Customize the chart as needed, but keep it simple. The websites we'll be using tend to make typos. You may choose to include:
  • name and lifespan
  • 3 generations of ancestors
  • their spouse
• When you're satisfied with the chart, print it as a PDF or an image.

If you can't generate an ancestor or pedigree chart from your family tree, you can create it as a text file. Here's a text format you can follow:

Generation 1: Your Subject's Name (dates) married Spouse's Name (dates)
Generation 2: Your Subject's Father (dates) married Mother (dates)
Generation 3: Your Subject's Paternal Grandparents; Maternal Grandparents
Generation 4: Your Subject's Paternal Great Grandparents (both sets); Maternal Great Grandparents (both sets)

Mine looks like this:

Generation 1: Adamo Leone (1891-1987) married Maria Carmina Sarracino (1899-1992)
Generation 2: Giovannangelo Leone (1850-1942) married Marianna Iammucci (1856-1929)
Generation 3: Nicola Domenico Leone (1796-) married Caterina Pisciotti (1819-); Antonio Luigi Maria Iammucci (1814-) married Annamaria Bozza (1815-)
Generation 4: Giuseppe Leone (1772-1830) married Maria Zarrelli (1772-1804); Giovanni Pisciotti (1793-1842) married Dorodea Petruccelli (1792-); Leonardo Iammucci (1783-1835) married Mariangela Palumbo (1784-1823); Antonio Bozza (1784-) married Angela Cece (1779-1850)

Now you're ready to generate your work of art.

These were my first attempts in NotebookLM, and I adore them.

Step #2: Ask for What You Want

Go to your platform of choice and drop the ancestor chart you created into the conversation. I'm using NotebookLM from Google because I've had good results.

Here's an example of what you can request. Tailor it to meets your needs. You may want to add a photo of your own to use as a background (although this didn't quite work in NotebookLM). Be sure to describe what you want in detail. And tell it what you want the title at the top of the chart to be. I didn't think to do that.

Based on this PDF, create a family tree diagram for Adamo Leone that uses the red, white, and green colors of the Italian flag. Use the photograph named baselice.jpg as a background image.

Give the website a bit of time to create your masterpiece.

After a couple of tries, I got a beautiful chart with no typos that looked the way I wanted. It never used the photo I supplied, but it did create something that matches the feeling of my photograph.

Try Out Other Platforms

Let's see how this works on a platform other than NotebookLM.

1. ChatGPT. I went to ChatGPT for the first time ever. I gave it the same PDF and photograph. I used the exact same prompt. IT MADE UP EVERYTHING. It used my photograph, so that's one good thing. But it made Adamo Leone the ancestor of a bunch of made-up people who are not in my family tree. It used the wrong dates for my grandfather. It said everyone in the chart died in Youngstown, Ohio. That's weird because Youngstown does appear in my family tree, but not for this side of my family.

Since ChatGPT offered me the option to correct the image, I typed in this:

In the PDF I supplied, Adamo Leone (1891-1987) is the descendant, but you made him the ancestor of a lot of people who do not exist. Can you make this an ancestor chart that matches the facts I provided?

More hallucinations. Who are these people? Well, that was the first and LAST time I'm going to use ChatGPT.

2. Copilot. I went to the AI platform I always use: Copilot from Microsoft. I've had sessions with Copilot where I asked a question and learned a lot about a topic. I've also asked Copilot to analyze photos for me, with great results.

I dropped the ancestor chart PDF and the photograph into the chat window and used the same prompt as before:

Based on this PDF, create a family tree diagram for Adamo Leone that uses the red, white, and green colors of the Italian flag. Use the photograph named baselice.jpg as a background image.

It asked me which format I want the result in, and if I want to add portraits to the chart. It said it would use a vertical format, so I asked it to use landscape. There was a button I had to click to get it to run this task.

After several minutes, it looked as if I could click to download the file, but there was nothing there. I asked Copilot, "Where's the PDF?" It asked me for the two input files again, my PDF and photograph. Then it said it was working on it. It listed the four steps it was going to follow. I stepped away and had breakfast. Copilot appeared to have quit after finishing the first step. I asked it what happened, and it told me it was ready to continue with steps 2–4.

I must say, Copilot doesn't usually give me such a hassle, but this is the hardest thing I've asked it to do. OK, steps 2–4 are complete. It's generating files for me to download.

It did what I asked, but I don't like it. The background image is very dark. It put in generation labels and a key that are making things look crowded. And I see at least one incorrect date.

The output does include an SVG file that I could edit if I had the right software. Even if I did, it seems like a lot of work when NotebookLM did such a beautiful job for me.

3. Claude. Now I'll have to try one more platform I was planning to avoid for the rest of my life: Claude. When I tried to create a chart without creating a free account, things did not go well. It created a chart using Courier font and ignoring the lifespan dates. It told me it can't use my photo as a background. But it complemented me on the choice of a photo that shows the Campania region of Italy.

Each AI platform has its strengths. I didn't find Claude's strengths.

I created a free account to see if it would treat me better. It did. Like Copilot, Claude made my background photo very dark. And it put each person's information in white text on a black background. It was all too hard to read.

I asked it to do three things:

1. fade the background instead of making it dark
2. remove the generation labels that were cluttering things up
3. put people's info in black text with a white background.

It did all that in no time. The output is an HTML file—a webpage that resizes as you change the size of your browser. There's a slight shadow that appears when you hover over any person.

I have more edits I'd like. The fonts are hard to read, the image is too faded, and it's upside-down for an ancestor chart. That's when I must have run into a free-account limit. It told me I'd have to start a new chat to do what I wanted. I started over and give it all the specific instructions I wanted it to follow. But it balked and said I gave it too many instructions. Because that's what computers say???

Instead of the text-based chart I wanted to test, I gave Claude the PDF version of the tree and the photograph. I said:

I want to generate a family tree chart from this PDF using this photo, as is, as a background. Do not include generation labels or a footer.

The progress report it was giving me was funny. It said things like "Planting family roots" and "Branching out generations". But it had a problem with the photograph this time, and it couldn't make all the ancestors fit on the page. It was a bust.

Farewell, Claude. We hardly knew ye.

Stick with the Winner

NotebookLM is the clear winner for this family tree project. But a free account limits you to generating three of these charts (which it calls infographics) a day. I wanted to test it using the text-based ancestor chart instead of a PDF, but I hit the daily limit. The next day I did use the text-based ancestor chart to create the image at the top of this article. Love it!

To make sure my text-based chart format is good, I asked NotebookLM to create a table based on the text. Is it OK to separate ancestor couples in the same generation with a semi-colon? It is. The table turned out correct.

I hope you'll have fun with this project. Give careful thought to what you want it to look like, and be specific in your request. Don't try to add to many generations. When you come up with a winning format, copy and save your request so you can use it for other family charts tomorrow.

How I Brought this Ambitious Genealogy Project to Life

Last week I wrote about a genealogy project we can all use to supply answers to our families' questions. I'm in touch with one group of cousins more than the others. So I decided that creating a "book of life" about our shared ancestors was the best place to start. We all call them Babanonno and Mamanonna—my maternal grandmother's parents.

A couple of weeks ago, for the first time, I saw what Google's NotebookLM can do to generate content. (Thanks, Liz!) I dropped the biography I wrote about my grandfather into a notebook. Then I let NotebookLM generate an infographic and a slide deck. The results were impressive, though not perfect.

With the right tools and your own collection of family tree documents, you can create a "book of life" to share with your relatives.

Getting Started

Here's what I did to create content about my great grandparents—Giovanni and Maria Rosa:

1. Created a new notebook in NotebookLM.
2. Searched my computer for all the saved document images belonging to the couple. I dropped several images into the notebook as sources. These include:
   • birth and marriage records
   • censuses
   • a ship manifest
   • a photograph of the ship they took to New York
   • a photo of their grave marker
3. Used Family Historian software to create a descendant chart and family group sheets. Then I added them to the notebook as sources.
4. Created a Timeline Report in Family Tree Maker for both Giovanni and Maria Rosa. Saved them as PDF files, and added them to the notebook's sources.
5. Asked NotebookLM the following in its chat window. "Based on the Timeline Reports, use these 10 sources to tell me about the lives of Giovanni and Maria Rosa."

This produced a narrative of their lives. Here's a little snippet of the narrative. I like how it pulled certain facts from my sources to generate this summary of his employment:

Giovanni's work history reflected a variety of roles to support his large family. He was a bartender and saloon store-keeper in the early 1900s, a building painter for many years, and the proprietor of a beer garden by 1940.

Trying More Options

When you click the Reports option in NotebookLM, you need to choose a format type or create a custom report. I chose Biographical Narrative which produced a report that included historical context. I copied the result to a Word document.

I clicked the Mind Map option, which looks wonderful, but the text got cut off when I tried to download it as an image. I thought if I clicked on Giovanni's birth date in the Mind Map I could attach his birth record. Instead, it generated a new narrative for me, focusing on his birth and key events in his life. It points out that Giovanni's grave marker has a different date than his birth record. It's off by 4 days.

Next I clicked his wife Maria Rosa's name in the Mind Map. This generated a narrative about her immediate family. I did the same for each of Giovanni and Maria Rosa's children and copied them all into the same Word document.

It's important to review everything before putting it in your final product. Be sure to remove anything that's wrong or not what you want to share. For instance, I'll make the historical context more brief.

Then I tried the Slide Deck option. The deck looks wonderful, other than obvious errors in a map of the Bronx, New York. I downloaded the result as a PowerPoint file then saved that as a PDF.

Finally, I generated an Infographic, asking it to use exact dates for everyone's birth, marriage, and death. I also asked it to include the document images I uploaded when appropriate. While it looks beautiful, it didn't use my images, it used only a few exact dates, and it made several typos.

I spent decades working in marketing communications. So I can use this infographic as a guide and create my own. I can use the images I want, the dates I want, and not have typos. But I haven't tackled that yet.

I happen to have my own website and a long work history of creating and maintaining websites. It makes sense for me to take these materials and create web pages to display it all. I'm not including birth dates for anyone living. And I'm preventing search engines from crawling and indexing the pages.

While I took all the text and images to create a series of web pages, you can use paper printouts or whatever computer software you find most comfortable.

I shared the website link with my family, and right away they discovered a few things they didn't know:

• One of our great aunts didn't marry in the church, but in the courthouse.
• Some of the original, Italian first names of our ancestors had been unknown to some cousins.
• My mom didn't know about her father's unusual job in the 1950 census. None of us did!

Who's Next?

These steps are easy to reproduce when it's time to focus on another branch of the family. This project can get your relatives more excited about your family tree work. I like the idea of having a self-serve website that lets the cousins find the answers to their questions. And I can use their feedback to make this, and future websites, more useful to all my cousins.

Next up I need to do my mom's paternal grandparents, and both sets of my dad's grandparents. I've got the template now, so I can crank these out. How about you?

Looking for some more genealogy projects? Type project in this blog's search box, or click this link.

One Genealogy Project to Answer All the Questions

Since you became a genealogist, which questions does the family ask you the most? Is there a common thread to the questions? Here's what I've been hearing this month.

Dates, Dates, Dates!

My three first cousins' mother and my mother are sisters. These siblings are eligible for dual citizenship, but I am not. Our Italian-born grandfather took his Oath of Allegiance become a U.S. citizen when their mother was a baby. My mother was negative three years old. They've been texting me because I have all the information they need. They asked me for:

• our shared grandparents' birth dates
• our grandparents' marriage date
• the birth and death dates of their father's three siblings

For me, it was a snap to find these dates in my family tree and text my cousins the answers.

The building blocks for this useful genealogy project include a family group sheet and a descendant chart.

How Old and Who?

While visiting my mother, she asked me how old her paternal grandmother was when she died. I pulled out my iPhone, found her in my tree on Ancestry.com, did the math, and said Marianna lived to be 73 years old. "But we have her photo," Mom said. "She looks so old!" It's true. By today's standards, Marianna looks very old in her studio portrait. "What was her husband's name?"

That question was interesting. My mother didn't know her grandparents' names. They never came to America, so she never met them. Yet to me, the family tree builder, not knowing their names is unthinkable.

Who, Where, and Why?

A few years ago I created a "book of life" for my mom's first cousin. She's the perfect recipient of a book of life because she's always had a deep interest in our ancestors. She texts me often with family tree questions, such as:

• What was Aunt Elsie's maiden name?
• What was Uncle Al's street address in Bridgeport?
• Where was my grandmother born?
• Do you have a photo of my grandmother's father?

She texted me when her newest great grandchild was born. "Add her to the family tree!" I love those texts.

She also asked the deepest question I've gotten about the family. She wondered why her Italian-born grandfather Giovanni chose to come to New York. Why there? The short answer is opportunity. I said he most likely followed someone from his town who'd made the trip and found work. That's the story with most of the immigrants I've researched. But here's what I learned from ship manifests. Her grandparents, Giovanni and Maria Rosa, followed Maria Rosa's parents and siblings. They settled in the Bronx, New York, a year earlier.

It was my earliest genealogy research that gave me the names and some of the dates for my closest ancestors. Then ship manifests for Giovanni, Maria Rosa, and her family identified their hometown. I found the town's vital records on the Antenati Portal. Then I filled the family tree with names and dates none of my relatives had ever known.

Those are the goodies we can share with all the cousins who show interest. The questions my family has are pretty basic stuff: names, dates, and places. Wouldn't it be nice to share your hard work with the people who'll care the most about your discoveries?

The Perfect Genealogy Project

I can answer the questions my relatives ask with standard genealogy reports. I can combine them in an electronic file or print them out and place them in a binder. When I created a book of life for my cousin in 2019, I focused more on her father and his family. (I'm related to this cousin through her mother.) But my cousins with questions descend from my great grandparents, Giovanni Sarracino and Maria Rosa Saviano.

I'd like to make a book of life for Giovanni and Maria Rosa, and share it with this core group of cousins. In that 2019 book of life, I used paper cut-outs to enlarge areas. And I printed some highlights on yellow paper to place on top of black-and-white documents. This time, I'll create everything in Photoshop, PowerPoint or something else, and save it as a digital file to share. I can get as colorful as I like.

Now I'd like you to choose a particular couple in your family tree. Which ancestral couple ties you to the cousins you're in touch with the most? Start pulling together the document images you've collected for the couple. These may include:

• birth, marriage, and death records
• ship manifests
• naturalization papers
• census pages
• draft registration cards
• obituaries

Next, turn to your family tree software. If your family tree is online only (don't get me started), check the website for the types of reports available. Take a look at:

• A family group sheet for the couple (they call it a family group record on FamilySearch.org). This will contain dates and places for the ancestral couple and their children.
• A descendant report or narrative. This puts the facts you've collected into more of a story format and can pack in a ton of information.
• A descendant outline. This will cover more people, offering all the names, dates, and places.

Now look at your family tree's chart capabilities. On Ancestry.com, be sure to check out the LifeStory tab of your ancestor's profile page. On FamilySearch.org, look at the customizable Time Line.

• A descendant chart can include all the cousins with whom you plan to share this project. But you may need to slice it up into printable sections. Geneanet.org has a descendant chart you can customize. FamilySearch.org has Person Details in the Print Options menu.
• A waterfall chart (in Family Historian software) or a horizontal hourglass chart (in Family Tree Maker) is like a descendant chart. The chart in Family Historian looks terrific—it's a thing of beauty. It has the main person (or couple) on the left, and each descendant generation in columns to the right. But you can customize it to flow right-to-left, top-to-bottom, or bottom-to-top if you prefer. The horizontal hourglass chart has the main person on the right and descendant generations to the left. (Choose 0 ancestors to focus on the descendants.)

Customize the charts and reports until you're happy with them. Save them as PDFs or images you can insert into this project. Now I'll refer you back to my "Book of Life" article for the creation process. If you'd like to go all digital like me, take all the pieces and use whichever software is comfortable for you. Oh! This is the perfect opportunity for me to try out NotebookLM from Google. Now I'm psyched to do this!

I've been working on this project, and I'll tell you exactly how I did it in next week's article. You need to try this!

Search by Town Alone for Unexpected Discoveries

On my last trip to Italy, I took tons of cemetery photos in my ancestral hometowns. At home I uploaded them to Find a Grave. Today I decided to see who might have had the same idea as me.

I started my search on Ancestry, choosing the database "Italy, Find a Grave® Index, 1800s-Current". I didn't enter any names or dates. Instead, I selected a town I haven't visited yet. Santa Paolina, in Avellino, Italy, was the birthplace of my 2nd great grandmother. She and her husband are my earliest immigrant ancestors, settling in New York City in 1898.

Last year I tried a wide search on Ancestry. (See "Use a Wide Search to Find New Connections".) I used Grandpa's hometown and focused on Ellis Island records. This yielded a ton of results because so many people from that town came to America.

This time I'm looking at Italian Find a Grave results and choosing a different town.

This search expanded a dead end in my family tree. They were in a town I couldn't have imagined.

There are two search results for Santa Paolina, and I have no faith in the first one. It claims this woman was born in Santa Paolina on 22 Nov 1869, but she wasn't. I checked all available birth records from the town. (See "How to Create Your Ancestral Hometown Database" to find out how I did that.) She wasn't born in Santa Paolina on that date or any documented date, even though her last name comes from the town.

The second result is for a woman who is in my family tree—Maria Felicia Spinelli. She was born in 1836 in Santa Paolina. When I followed the link to Find a Grave, I found the names of her husband and three children. I didn't know their names before because she married a man from another town and moved there. I never would have looked for her in a town that's a 90-minute drive away on today's roads. Unless she could afford to take the train, she may never have seen her family again.

This is the type of discovery I love. Most of the time it takes a DNA match's family tree to show me what happened to someone who left the towns I know. (See "Why Care About Your DNA Matches?") Using the Find a Grave entries as clues, I had no trouble at all locating:

1. Maria Felicia's marriage to Leonardo Capozzi in her adopted town of Faeto in 1856
2. her husband's birth in that town in 1832
3. their son Giovanni's birth in 1857 and death in 1860
4. their son Donato's birth and death in 1859
5. their son Donato's birth in 1860. Find a Grave says this son and two of his siblings died in Chicago, so that opens up more search possibilities.
6. their son Giovanni's birth in 1862 and death in 1864
7. their daughter Raffaela's birth in 1865. Her birth record includes an extra document saying she died in Faeto in 1948.
8. their son Vito Antonio's birth in 1869
9. their son Michele's birth in 1872

Here's an entire branch of someone's family, someone who may share DNA with me, that was hiding. I needed this one search result to break it all wide open.

But what is my relationship to Maria Felicia Spinelli? I've added a lot of Santa Paolina people to my family tree, but many of them are not my actual relatives. Maria Felicia has four different connections to me. She is the:

• niece of the wife of the husband of my 5th great aunt Maddalena Consolazio
• 1st cousin of the husband of my 1st cousin 5 times removed Carolina deGuglielmo
• 1st cousin of the wife of my 1st cousin 5 times removed Carmine Alessandro Ricciardelli
• 1st cousin of the wife of my 1st cousin 5 times removed Ponziano Luigi Ricciardelli

All four of those relationships involve my 2nd great grandmother, Colomba Consolazio, from Santa Paolina.

If you know your family has deep roots in one town, try searching for only the town in a limited database. This research technique can help if you think someone left their hometown. Or if you're wondering why their trail went cold. It can be a great way to find more family members. This works especially well with smaller towns. And it always helps if you're familiar with the last names from your ancestral towns. (To learn how to get familiar with the last names in a town, see "Searching for Family in a New Town Takes Practice".)

So, who's been hiding from you? Can you find them by their town?

What Makes You Crazy About Genealogy?

I watched "Psycho" the other night. Anthony Perkins, in the role of Norman Bates, said one thing that got me thinking. When talking about his taxidermy hobby, he said, "It's more than a hobby. A hobby's supposed to pass the time, not fill it."

If that's true, Norman, what should I call genealogy? I retired because work was cutting into my genealogy time. I spend about eight hours a day on my family tree. I don't pass the time with genealogy. I fill the time with genealogy. And I couldn't be happier.

Oh, so that's what Norman means to say. He devotes so much time to taxidermy, and cares about it so much, that it's more than a hobby. Hobby isn't a strong enough word. I'd say devotion is a better word. I have a strong devotion to genealogy. That's what drives me to achieve more and more each day.

Once you understand your motivation to do genealogy, your goals become clear. Let them drive your family tree research.

What Drives You?

If spending all your free time on your family tree sounds too much like work, there's one element you may be missing. Call it a goal, a motivation, or a purpose. It's a driving force that will keep you excited by your genealogy "hobby" every day.

My earliest family tree goal was to gather all the census records for my closest family. Then I discovered I could view vital records for my Italian ancestors. After exploring one of my ancestral hometowns, I had a new goal. I wanted to document and connect everyone from that town. After finishing with that town, I moved on to the next. I have a handful of towns where I can connect almost everyone.

Before I do, though, my number one goal now is to create all the source citations I skipped in my giddy excitement. I have a spreadsheet that still contains more than 40,220 people who have no source citations. The documents are all downloaded to my computer, so I went for it, adding facts without sources. But my mission is to create a family tree that will be a treasure for anyone with roots in my ancestral hometowns. And that requires source citations so they can go see the documents for themselves.

Define Your Genealogy Motivation

I became interested in my family tree while planning my honeymoon in Italy. I did make it to my paternal grandfather's hometown on that trip, but I didn't know where to look.

Walking around Grandpa's hometown, I felt a physical pull deep inside me. I needed to discover my ancestors. I wanted to know all their names. Once I discovered the availability of Italian vital records, I made myself an expert on their towns.

What question or desire got you interested in genealogy? There are many reasons people spend time and money on genealogy, including:

• Finding a missing ancestor or birth parent
• Discovering where the family came from
• Solving a case of misattributed parentage
• Applying for dual citizenship
• Proving or disproving family lore
• Working on a personal, never-ending puzzle
• Bringing history to life in a meaningful way
• Preserving family history for future generations
• Sharing your findings with distant cousins

Once you define your genealogy motivation, you're ready for the next step.

Set Your Goals

Now that you've put your finger on what motivates you, what goals do you need to reach?

If your motivation is to apply for dual citizenship, you need specific documents. You must discover the place and date of birth of the ancestor through which you will ask for citizenship. How can you break that goal down into steps? Let's say you don't know Grandpa's town of birth in the old country. You have to seek out as many of his records in his adopted country as you can. Many records may include his town of origin. Make a list of every type of record that should be available for him. Censuses, a ship manifest, naturalization papers, draft cards, an obituary, a death certificate. Your goal is to find them and learn all you can from them.

If your purpose is to discover your birth parent, you need to take at least one DNA test. Then upload it as many places as possible. You'll have to spend your time taking online webinars to learn discovery techniques. Then explore your closest DNA matches. You may need to create family trees for important DNA matches. On any given day, your goal can be to solve one more DNA match and see how they connect to any of your other matches.

If your motivation is the never-ending puzzle, you'll never lack something to do. Your goals can be to document all your ancestor's siblings. Then find out who they married and document their families. Then move up a generation and do the same thing. If I hadn't found all the siblings, I wouldn't be able to see that my paternal grandparents were third cousins.

If your purpose is to help your distant cousins, publish your family tree online. Make your family tree as reliable and accurate as possible. Your individual goals can be to:

• Check your tree for errors and correct them
• Make sure your facts have source citations that any interested party can verify
• Seek out new record collections that may hold information for you
• Maintain a consistent, professional style in how you present names, dates, and places

Track Your Progress

Almost two years ago, I used Family Tree Analyzer to spot everyone in my family tree who had no source citations. About 87% of my people had no source citations. It was more than 70,000 people. Today I've got that number down to 40,220. It could take me another two years to finish this important project! And that's why I push myself so hard. My daily goal is to remove 100 people from that list. I've had days where I completed citations for more than 150 people. Those days usually end with a sore wrist from working my mouse so hard.

The point is, I always know where I stand with this goal. Seeing that huge number of unsourced people go down each day drives me to do more.

Does your family tree pass the time or fill the time? Are you lacking motivation? Would you be more productive if you had specific goals? Being productive makes me feel fulfilled. It can do the same for you.

And why was Norman Bates so devoted to his craft of taxidermy? Ask his mother's 10-year-old corpse.

This Free, Elegant GEDCOM Analyzer Is a Wonder

How does your family tree measure up? When I tried out Ancestry Pro Tools almost two years ago, I didn't care about its Tree Checker feature. I had free Family Tree Analyzer software to help me find all kinds of mistakes.

Even without subscribing to Pro Tools, my tree on Ancestry has a rating of 8.3 ("Very good"). What's keeping me from scoring a 10? A few data errors, lots of missing source citations, and what they think are 10,398 duplicate people. (They're not.)

But I found a new tool for improving your family tree rating called GEDminer that's outstanding! You've got to take a look at this thing. There's nothing to download, but you need to export your family tree's GEDCOM file first.

The instant, deep analysis of your family tree is worth a ton, but this genealogy tool is free.

GEDminer is a web-based program that's a very friendly way to see how your family tree measures up. If you're skeptical or want to see it in action first, you can view an analysis of their sample GEDCOM. Please understand your file is NOT uploaded to a server. The data processing happens in your web browser, and all the results go POOF! when you close your browser. (Your data may stay in your computer's cache memory for a while.)

Go to https://gedminer.com and drop your GEDCOM file in the box on the webpage. (The link to see sample data is beneath the box.) I dropped in my latest GEDCOM with 85,360 people. I know I'm missing tons of source citations—I'm always working on that. So where do I stand?

• My Tree Health Score is 75.33%. It says that's better than 55.56% of other users.
• I scored 74.09% in Completeness (defined as names, dates & places filled in). When I click on Completeness, it breaks this down into terrifying numbers:
  • 50,805 non-living people missing a death place
  • 47,995 non-living people missing a death date
  • 10,007 people missing a birth place. I have been putting a state or county into the birth and death place fields when I see they're empty. I have a long way to go.
• I scored 52.42% in Sourcing. This says I still have 40,616 people with no source citations. The spreadsheet I'm using for this huge task agrees!
• I scored 99.9% on Consistency (defined as free of errors & warnings). It lists 5 people with "data errors" for me to fix, but these are only a taste. They include people who were too old or young when their child was born. But the full, detailed list of data errors is in the next section.

Beneath these scores is a section called Quick Wins. This tells me my family tree has:

• 23 data errors (I worked on it and got it down to three errors, two of which are supported by the documents: an 88-year-old father and a 56-year-old mother.)
• 10,007 people without a birth place (I got it down to 9,953.)
• 40,616 unsourced people

The last two are also found above in the Tree Health Score section. But under Quick Wins, you can click these problem types and go to a new page filled with the exact details.

Click a type of error to see complete details about what you need to correct. Then export the full list as a spreadsheet and get busy.

• When you click to see your data errors in detail, the new page gives you the option of seeing:
  • All data errors
  • Date issues only
  • Age issues only
  • Relationship problems only (for me, these were all mothers who were too young)
  • Duplicate Facts only (for me, most of these are cases where I have two very different death records for people, so I recorded both)
  • Quality issues only (this would be key missing facts; I have none!)
• When you click to see your missing places or unsourced people errors in detail, the new page gives you the option of seeing:
  • All missing items
  • Line Origins only (these are the people you're stuck on—you can't ID their parents)
  • Missing Dates only
  • Missing Places only
  • Unsourced people only
  • People with no spouse (if we knew the spouse, they'd be in there, right?)
  • Missing Deaths only

Best of all, after you scroll to the bottom of a long list and click Show All, you can scroll back up and choose Export CSV. This gives you a spreadsheet to use to complete your fixes. You can tackle them one-by-one and delete them from the spreadsheet or mark them done.

I won't export my list of unsourced people since I'm already working on that. But when I'm finished with that project, I can use GEDminer again to see who slipped through the cracks.

While you're on that detail page, look close to the top of the page for four links:

• Suggestions
• Errors
• Vital Sharpener
• Tree Structure

Now:

• Click Vital Sharpener to see all the incomplete dates in your family tree. Sometimes we can't do anything about these because no records are available. But if the people are from the 1900s or later, try a new search on a site you don't use all the time.
• Now click Tree Structure right next to Vital Sharpener. These results have different categories to view:
  • Hidden Cousins tries to group together people with the same last name. That doesn't work well for my tree. Welcome to small towns in Italy.
  • Unlinked Individuals shows you the unattached people floating in your family tree. I have 184 people with zero connection to me. But they're in there on purpose. If more vital records ever become available, I may be able to connect them.
  • Duplicate Finder says I have 409 people with the same (or almost the same) name and birth year. I don't have enough information to be sure some are the same person. I'll review them and see if I can find a few that I should merge. You'll see that the list ranges in match-i-ness from 100% on down. My lowest duplicate is a 57% match, but they're worth looking into. They have the same name, same hometown, same father's name, and very close birth years.

The bonus facts this free tool displays about your family tree can be real eye-openers. And it's all interactive. Click around!

Still Not Sure? Here's the Old Way.

Before I found GEDminer, I planned to show you how you can use Family Tree Analyzer to find these errors. I'm so impressed with GEDminer, but you know I appreciate the heck out of Family Tree Analyzer. So here's what to click. You won't get your score, but you will get lists of what needs your attention. Get your GEDCOM file and open it in Family Tree Analyzer.

To find data errors, click the Errors/Fixes tab and under Data Errors select:

• Birth before father aged 13 and mother aged 13
• Birth after father aged 90+ and mother aged 60+
• Birth after mother's death and more than 9m after father's death
• Marriage before aged 13 and spouse aged 13
• Marriage after death and after spouse's death
• Facts dated before birth
• Birth after death/burial
• Birth after baptism/christening
• Facts dated after death
• Burial/cremation before death
• Child born too soon after sibling
• Child likely born too soon after sibling
• Male Wifes and Female Husbands
• Duplicate Fact
• Possible Duplicate Fact

One way to find duplicate people in your family tree is to go to the Errors/Fixes tab, choose Duplicates? then sort by Birth Date.

To find unlinked individuals, click the Main Lists tab. In the Relation column of the Individuals table, filter to select "Unknown".

Here's the report I used to make a spreadsheet of all my people who had zero source citations. Go to the Main Lists tab and find the Num Sources column in the Individuals table. Click the down arrow for that column and Sort A to Z. Filtering doesn't work, although it should. I exported the full list, then deleted everyone who didn't have zero source citations.

I hope you find this breakdown of problems inspiring and not discouraging. After you've made a good amount of corrections, go back and see the improvement in your family tree.