A Free, New Family Tree Tool for Map Lovers

There's another new website that can do amazing things with your family tree. It's called TreeAlive, and it features a handful of unique genealogy visualization tools.

TreeAlive can tell the story of your ancestor's journey, from birth to death, showing it on a map. It can take you to a place in your ancestor's life and let you overlay historic maps from different time periods. It can animate your immigrant ancestor's journey and put it into historical context. It can show you the locations of all your ancestors at once.

Journey through time visiting the locations in your family tree.

The website is 100% free and you do not need an account. All you do is add your GEDCOM file. (You're not uploading it anywhere—you're bringing it into your web browser on your computer.) Then click through all the visualizations you want to see.

There is a GEDCOM file size limitation of 30 MB, so you may need to exclude images and notes from your file. My family tree of 87,000+ people is too large. So I exported a GEDCOM from Family Tree Maker of all my ancestors and all their spouses—that's 439 people. It's a tiny file. I could filter in more people if I wanted to.

One feature that sets TreeAlive apart is that it works with FamilySearch. FamilySearch doesn't let you export a GEDCOM*. To work around that, use TreeAlive's option of connecting to your FamilySearch tree.

*A page on FamilySearch.org says you can export up to eight generations of your tree in the GEDCOM 7 format. The problem is, not everything is compatible with GEDCOM 7. I don't use FamilySearch, so I can't verify that.

These websites analyze your GEDCOM in your web browser for free, too:

• TreeLab
• GEDminer
• Family Tree Analyzer

Create a Video to Share with Family

The Video feature of TreeAlive puts your ancestor's journeys on the map through the years. It highlights important moments, such as The America Revolution and World Wars. You can click Share With Family to create a treealive.com link to share. Or you can join the Beta list and download your film.

Detail an Ancestor's Journey

The Journey feature lets you choose one ancestor at a time to visualize the facts you've captured. It uses the most appropriate historical map for each place and time in their journey. I've noticed one quirk with these journeys. They seem to show the immigration fact before the emigration fact. So it looks as if my 2nd great grandmother is born in Italy, comes to New York in 1898, then leaves Italy in 1898. It's as if she crossed the ocean twice.

See Who Else Was There

The Crossings feature points out famous people who were in the same place and time as your ancestors. They may have crossed paths. You can click any item in the list to learn more. I clicked the link for my great grandfather Giovanni and Geronimo. Giovanni lived in New York City in the 1905 New York State Census. It turns out Geronimo, the famous Apache, was there, too. He "sold autographs at expositions and rode in Theodore Roosevelt's 1905 inaugural parade". You can also follow links to learn more about the historical event.

Immerse yourself in historical maps for the places in your family tree.

Plot Everything

The Location Quality Explorer feature shows dots for each location in your GEDCOM. By zooming in and clicking different dots, I can confirm it includes locations for:

• baptism
• birth
• burial
• death
• immigration
• marriage
• naturalization
• occupation
• residence

Sometimes clicking a single location dot opens a starburst of facts for many people. (It's such a cool visual.) My tree has an insane number of dots for the Bronx, New York.

Look for orange dots (approximate locations) or red circles (estimated locations). You can choose to report any location you feel is incorrect and provide guidance. I found a few people who were born in the town of Baselice, but their dots were in the city of Benevento. I clicked to report these estimated location and provided the correct map coordinates. The next day, I found them corrected! I now have no approximate or estimated locations on my map. (Note: I updated my GEDCOM, so it is possible my older GEDCOM was to blame for the errors.)

Put Each Generation on the Map

The Generations feature lets you scroll through the generations of your family tree. As you scroll, it highlights general places of birth for each generation. For me, the first generation highlights the place of my birth, New York State. Generation two shows my parents' two states, New York and Ohio. Generation three adds Italy, for my two grandfathers. Before that, I have nothing but Italy. Your map may have a lot more going on than my very homogeneous family tree.

Overlay Those Maps

I saved my favorite feature of TreeAlive for last. The Time Machine feature is an immersive experience because of its historical maps. While in the Time Machine, zoom in and choose a location dot to click. You'll see a particular event for a person in one location. TreeAlive overlays an historical map that dates back as close to the time of the event as possible.

Here's where you can have some fun. Other maps are available! You can select any of them from the list to get a better feel for the place. Since I'm looking at Italian maps, it interesting to see the older maps showing Latin place names. I see some place names that seem to be an error by the person who drew the map. For instance, on one map they wrote the town of Baselice as Baseuce. On some maps, my towns are not included, but I recognize the neighboring towns.

There's even a button that tilts the map. The button icon is a compass needle. When I click it while viewing a particular 1808 map, the mountains it depicts seem to look 3D. Now I can understand why it was so hard for my husband and I to drive from my one grandfather's town to the other. Mountains are in the way!

While viewing a 1714 map, I clicked the Full screen button to get a better feel for the lay of the land. My ancestors all came from neighboring towns. This view makes it easy to see their proximity to one another.

You can share much of what you see on TreeAlive with your family. Set aside a genealogy session to play with his one-of-a-kind new family tree tool. I'm sure you'll have fun with it.