Most family trees die at the same spot: somewhere around the great-grandparents, when one person is doing all the work and nobody else can see it. This guide is about avoiding that. It is short on theory and long on what to do tonight.
Start with five names, not a plan
Do not begin by buying a subscription, downloading GEDCOM files or "getting organised". Begin with the five people you can name without looking anything up:
- You
- Your parents
- Your grandparents on one side
Write them down with whatever you know: a first name, a rough birth year, a town. Blanks are fine. A tree with five names and six blanks is infinitely more useful than a perfect tree that exists only in your head.
In Kindomus this is the draft: you can add those five people before creating an account, and the tree keeps them when you sign up.
One side at a time
Trees fan out fast. Two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and each of those had siblings who married and had children. If you chase every line at once you will spend an evening and have nothing you can show anyone.
Pick one grandparent and go up and sideways from there: their parents, their brothers and sisters, who those siblings married. That is one branch. A finished branch is something you can send to a cousin. A half-finished everything is not.
What to record for each person
The temptation is to record everything. Resist it. For each person aim for these, in this order:
| Field | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Full name, including maiden name | It is how records are indexed, and how a cousin will recognise them |
| Birth year (even approximate) | Sorts generations and disambiguates two people with the same name |
| Birth place | Tells you which parish, registry or archive to look in later |
| Who they married, roughly when | Marriages connect branches; they are the joints of the tree |
| One photograph | A face is what makes the next generation care |
| One story, one sentence | "Came from Trás-os-Montes with a suitcase and a violin" is worth more than a death date |
Death dates, occupations, addresses and documents can come later. They are for research; names, faces and stories are for the family.
Ask the oldest living relative this week
Nothing on the internet knows what your grandmother knows, and that information has a hard deadline. Call or visit the oldest person in the family within the week. You do not need a questionnaire. You need three prompts:
- "Who were your grandparents, and where were they from?"
- "Who is this?" (with the oldest photographs you can find)
- "Who in the family would know more about this side?"
That last question is the engine of a family tree. Every relative points at another relative. Follow the pointers.
Make the tree visible to the family early
The single biggest reason trees stall is that one person is building it in private. The moment two or three relatives can see the tree, two things happen: they correct you (good, that is free research) and they add people you had never heard of.
Share early, even when it looks thin. A tree with twelve people and an open question — "does anyone know Avó Rosa's maiden name?" — gets more contributions than a tree with two hundred people and no questions. In Kindomus you can pin a question to a specific person and send it to the cousin who would know, on WhatsApp or by email.
Decide what is private
A family tree contains living people. Before you invite the whole family, decide:
- Who can see the tree (only relatives you invite, or anyone with a link)
- Who can edit it (everyone you invite, or a couple of guardians who approve changes)
- Whether living people's exact birth dates are shown
Kindomus trees are private by default and an invite code decides who gets in. Public trees exist, but they are for public figures, not for your grandmother.
A realistic first month
- Evening one: five names, one photograph, invite one sibling or cousin.
- Week one: one full branch — a grandparent, their parents and siblings. One phone call to the oldest relative.
- Week two to four: a second branch, and the first "does anyone know…?" question sent to the family.
By the end of the month you will have thirty to sixty people, two or three contributors, and — more importantly — a habit. The tree becomes something the family adds to at Christmas, after funerals, when a baby is born. That is what a finished family tree looks like: not finished, but alive.