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In today’s “digital age,” it may seem strange that some family historians hang on to old newspapers and clippings. There are many good reasons to keep these items- perhaps most importantly, they are original source documents for current and future genealogical research. Published news such as wedding announcements, obituaries, and important historical events about our ancestors, provide a wealth of information that may not be found in other records. To save newspaper clippings for the… Read the full story

Geni’s World Family Tree continues to grow as new individuals are added and overlapping branches are merged. Sometimes after completing the initial merge of an overlapping branch, a little clean up is needed to resolve any remaining duplicates in the tree. There are multiple ways duplicates can be merged on Geni and in a previous blog post, we discussed how to merge through the profile page. For the purpose of this blog post, we will… Read the full story

Does this sound familiar? “Help! I accidentally added my grandfather’s brother as his son! How do I fix this?” Many people in similar situations have found themselves puzzled at how to correct such a simple mistake. What they don’t realize is that correcting these mistakes is really easy on Geni. Below we’ll walk you through step-by-step to show you how to fix these incorrect parent relationships in your family tree. Let’s take a look at this example below – The focus… Read the full story

A few weeks ago, we shared how you can add documents to your Geni profiles. Today, we will go over how you can add a document as a source to support the information on your family’s Geni profiles. Adding documents and tagging profiles are just one part of documenting your genealogy research on Geni. It’s easy to illustrate how the documents you’ve added support, prove or disprove the facts in your family tree. Let’s discover how by following the example… Read the full story

As any genealogist will tell you, documenting your genealogy is incredibly important. While working on the World Family Tree, it is vital to add documents to ensure the information is as accurate as possible. It also allows others to see and verify where the profile’s information came from. Adding documents to profiles is easy on Geni. Follow the steps below to learn how: Documents can be added directly to the profiles in your family tree. Simply navigate to the profile… Read the full story

While researching your family history, it’s not uncommon to find some “kissing cousins,” close cousins who have married each other. History is filled with many of these cousin marriages, including the marriages of Charles Darwin, Queen Victoria, and Martin Van Buren. How do you show these cousin marriages in your family tree on Geni? If you have two people who are related in multiple ways within the same tree, you can create a “Cycle” on Geni to display… Read the full story

Geni is the perfect place to collaborate on your family tree with your family. The easiest way to do that is to invite your relatives to join so they can contribute and help preserve your family history. But did you know you can also share your tree with other people not on Geni? Geni enables you to share a limited read-only view of your tree with your friends outside of Geni, either by sending them a link… Read the full story

No more need for messy GEDCOM import/export where data gets mangled and lost. Let AncestorSync and Geni be your seamless interface for moving your family tree data anywhere you would like without losing any of your important data. Sources, photos, and documents are all kept in tact. Best of all, AncetorSync will keep your desktop software in sync with Geni.com automatically. GEDCOM is so yesterday. At 8:00 PM ET on May 27th, Geni.com will be… Read the full story

Profile revisions are a vital part of the Geni experience. When you collaborate on the world family tree, you’ll be editing the information other people entered. Just the same, other family members and collaborators will be working on data you put into the tree. Keeping track of the revision history will make it clear what was changed, and who changed it. To look at the revisions on any given profile, go to the Revisions tab…. Read the full story

Printing your tree with Geni is very easy. We have two methods of going about it: Order a professional print job or print it yourself on your home printer. Let’s start with how to order a print. In the tree view, you’ll see a series of buttons in the lower right-hand corner. Click on the printer icon. You’ll be brought to this screen. Click the green “Start a Tree Poster” button to begin. Now you’ll… Read the full story

Finding your family’s information on Geni couldn’t be easier. With our tree matches, we do the hard part for you. Here’s how it works: When you’re navigating your tree, you’ll probably come across a few of these magnifying glasses. They signify that the profile in question has a potential match. If you’re a Geni Pro member, you can click on the magnifying glass to take you to the comparison page. Alternately, you can jump right… Read the full story

Geni offers the best family tree experience anywhere. Part of what makes it so great is it’s customizability. Here’s a simple walkthrough on how to make your tree display the way that works for you:

Sometimes relationships between two profiles are made by mistake. With the tools available to you with Geni, it’s easy to remove relationship while leaving the profile in tact. Here’s how: Relationship removal is a pro-only feature (With the exception of splitting a cycle). If you’d like to remove a relationship, you can always start a free trial of Geni Pro.

So, you’ve been on Geni for a while now. You’ve been adding and merging profiles, but how can you tell if you’re part of the world family tree with over 54 million profiles? While you’re logged into Geni, go to our world family tree page. On the right-hand side, you’ll see a statistics box. There will be a phrase that says “You are connected to _________ people on Geni.” If the number is in the… Read the full story

Geni.com is all about collaborative genealogy — working with others to make the best family tree in the world. A great way to start finding new relatives is by working on a surname page. First of all, go to the surname search page, and enter the surname you’d like to work on. Once you’ve found the Surname page you searched for, you can start viewing the information, and manipulating it. As you can see in… Read the full story

On occasion, we have a feature that isn’t quite ready for prime time, but we want to let users take it for a test drive. If you want to try out these beta features as they come out, just head over to Geni Labs. First, go to the settings page, and click on Geni Labs. Then, you’ll find what we currently have in labs. At the moment, we are currently trying out our Post-to-Geni bookmarklet…. Read the full story

So, you work hard making your favorite project as good as it can be. So, how do you show off to your friends all of the hard work you’ve done? Easy — just embed the project right on your website. From there, copy the HTML code that looks something like this: When you paste that code in your website, it will look a little something like this: Join the worlds largest free family tree Pretty… Read the full story

Like any collaborative effort, there are going to be some people you don’t want to interact with on Geni. With the tools that we have, it’s quite easy to prevent contact completely. All you have to do is go to the profile in question, and then follow these steps: If you want to see who you’ve blocked, you can always go to the Block User Settings page. Unblocking members is as easy as a click… Read the full story

Privacy on Geni is pretty simple to understand. That said, there are a few settings you can customize as far as the private profiles that you manage, so let’s walk through them. Under the “Private Profiles” section there are two check boxes: Profile Photo and Current Location. If you don’t mind sharing that information with other Geni users, leave them checked. If you’d prefer that they remain private to only your family group, uncheck it…. Read the full story

When did your great grandparents get married? Which one of your uncles was born first? Once you and your family have put the information into Geni, you can then access that data very easily with the Family Timeline. If you’re only interested in certain parts of your timeline, you’re in luck. It’s very customizable. 1. You can change the date range (ex. 1908-2004) with the slider in the red box. 2. You can change which… Read the full story

Changing what displays in the Recent Activity tab on the Geni home page is very easy. First of all, click on the Filter drop-down menu under the Recent Activity tab. Next, decide what you want to be displayed by unchecking topics that don’t interest you. For example, you might only want to see public messages. In that case, you’ll just uncheck the Private box. Click the Save button, and let the page refresh. Now you’ll… Read the full story

One of the strong points of Geni is the ability to collaborate with your close relatives very easily. Today, I’m going to show you how to invite your family to work on your tree. First, find the profile of the person you want to invite. Then, enter their email address in the field on their profile page, and press invite. Next, an email will be sent to that person. When they receive it, it will… Read the full story

Discussions are a great way to communicate with fellow genealogists. Here’s how to get started.

Your third-great grandparents and closer are marked as private by default. If there is a reason to change that, it’s easy to make any given adult profile public. Here’s how.

Ever wanted to know how to merge two profiles together? Here’s how. Our tools even allow you to merge duplicates surrounding the merged profiles.

This is a visual guide for uploading your documents from your computer to Geni.com.

Here is a visual walkthrough on how to tag a photo on Geni using the profile ID from any person. If you have any further questions, feel free to leave them in the comment section below this post.

If you’re a Geni Pro Member, you have the ability to view relationship paths. Put simply, this features shows you how any two people are most closely related on the World Family Tree. Here’s how to view the relationship between two people without your profile being one of them. First, search for the profile you’d like to start with. In this example, I’m starting with Prince William. Once you find the profile, go to the… Read the full story

Geni Projects is a great feature for genealogists. It allows you to make a dedicated section to keep track of a specific aspect of your research. For example, today’s highlighted Project is the US Presidents and Vice Presidents. If you want to make a cool new Project, here’s how: First, go to the More drop-down menu, and then select “Projects” Next, click the “Start a new Project” button. Now, a lightbox will pop up with… Read the full story

We love that Geni is used the whole world over. It’s very important to us to bridge the language gap. Thanks to Tr8n, we now have many translation options. Here’s how to switch which language Geni displays in: 1) Go to the language drop-down menu in the upper right-hand corner. 2) Scroll down, and then select the language you’d like to read Geni in. 3) Now you can use Geni in your native language. If… Read the full story

We want you to know how cool being a Geni Pro Member is, so we have a 14-day free trial of our service. To set it up, scroll down to the bottom of the Geni homepage and click the red “Try Geni Pro for Free” link. You’ll then be directed to our Pro Member sign-up page. If you’re just interested in trying out the trial, don’t worry too much about which plan you pick. Now… Read the full story

Oral history and interviews are a huge part of genealogy. We here at Geni feel it’s important to share this with your whole tree, so we have a video sharing feature built right into our site. Here’s how to use it. First of all, go to the “More” menu and select “Videos.” In the right hand side, click the green “Add Video” button. Click the “Choose File” button, and then select the video file you’d… Read the full story

Sometimes you lose interest in a particular discussion. Getting updates from that topic can be very annoying. As fortune would have it, it’s easy to unfollow any discussion taking place on Geni. First, go to the Discussion page from the “More” menu. Now, make sure that you’re viewing discussions that you’re currently following. You can change that with the drop-down menu on the right. Now go into the discussion you’re no longer interested in and… Read the full story

So, now that you’ve made your documents useful, you can add facts and sources to your profiles. First, go to the profile you’d like to work on. Go to the Sources tab, and then click on “Add Source.” Pick the document you’d like to cite, and then click “Continue.” From there, you can add the citations for the relevant facts of the profile in question. Make sure to add clear notes to avoid confusion when… Read the full story

So, you uploaded a document to Geni. Now what do you do? It’s not doing any good just sitting there without being linked to the relevant data. First off, go to the documents page on Geni. Next, click on the document in which you’d like to add your data. Now click on the edit button in the upper righthand corner. Now, you’ll want to provide as much information as possible about your document. Give it… Read the full story

On Geni the objective is to create a collaborative environment where multiple family members can work together to build, share, and preserve a rich family history. With each additional family member getting involved, the workload decreases that much more and/or the amount of shared content increases that much more. Therefore, over the next three days we will be posting a 3 part guide that will help you activate your tree in becoming a truly collaborative… Read the full story

Step Three: Engage Family Members as They Join As family members start to accept the invitations make sure that you welcome them to the Tree. You can do this by simply sending them a quick message to their GuestBook, which is located at the bottom of their Profile. You may also want to tell them about Geni and that you are trying to create a place for your family to build and preserve family history… Read the full story

Step Five: Send Reminders It is possible that family members overlooked your initial invitation and accidentally deleted it. Therefore, if a few weeks go by and they did not yet join, you may want to send them a reminder invitation. To do this, go to the Invite page, by clicking on the Invite link in the upper right hand corner of any page within Geni. Then click the Invitation History link. This will direct you… Read the full story

Last week we posted our first video How to Get Started on Geni.com. Here is our second video, How to Upload Photos on Geni.com. If you ‘subscribe’ to our videos on our YouTube page you will be notified of new videos as we post them. Let us know what you think!

We are creating a series of videos to help walk our users through some of the Geni’s features. The first video, ‘How To Get Started on Geni.com’, is posted below. This video is hosted on YouTube so you can easily share it with your friends who are looking for a little extra help starting their Geni tree. If you ‘subscribe’ to our videos on our YouTube page you will be notified of new videos as… Read the full story

This blog series provides information on how to conduct family research — with a special focus on the challenges that apply for African Americans. Our goal is to help you appreciate history, learn how to research your family and be inspired to join a community – Geni.com – that seeks to unite the entire world into one big family. Join us for an adventure that is sure to last a lifetime!

This blog series provides information on how to conduct family research — with a special focus on the challenges that apply for African Americans. Our goal is to help you appreciate history, learn how to research your family and be inspired to join a community – Geni.com – that seeks to unite the entire world into one big family. Join us for an adventure that is sure to last a lifetime!

Today we celebrate the 206th birthday of pioneering astronomer Maria Mitchell! Mitchell is best remembered for discovering a new comet, which became known as “Miss Mitchell’s Comet.” She is often recognized as the first professional female astronomer in the United States. Image: Maria Mitchell / Wikimedia Commons Mitchell was born on August 1, 1818 in Nantucket, Massachusetts. The third of ten children, Mitchell grew up in a family of Quakers. Her father was a school teacher… Read the full story

Do you remember reading Charlotte’s Web? On this day in 1899, author E.B. White was born in Mount Vernon, New York. Image: E.B. White / White Literary LLC, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0) The youngest child of Samuel Tilly White and Jessie Hart White, Elwyn Brooks White was the couple’s sixth child. He hated the name “Elwyn” and spent most of his life going by the nickname “Andy.” His older brother, Stanley Hart White, was a professor… Read the full story

Happy birthday to Lionel Richie! Today the singer turns 75. Image: Lionel Richie / Photo by Shawn Miller, Library of Congress, Public domain He was born Lionel Brockman Richie, Jr. on June 20, 1949 in Tuskegee, Alabama to Alberta Foster and Lionel Brockman Richie, Sr. He grew up close to the the campus of the Tuskegee Institute, which was founded by Booker T. Washington. Two generations of his family have worked at the institution, including… Read the full story

Legendary filmmaker Orson Welles was born on May 6, 1915. Welles was known as one of the greatest radio and cinema artists of the era.  Image: Orson Welles / Wikimedia Commons, Library of Congress Early in his career, Welles juggled work in the theater with his extensive work as a radio actor, writer, director and producer. His famous live broadcast of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds caused widespread panic after many listeners mistakenly believed the show to… Read the full story

In just one week Geni will be heading to RootsTech, the largest genealogy conference in the world. Each year, RootsTech offers a wide variety of classes perfect for the beginning family history enthusiast to more advanced genealogists. The conference will be held February 29 – March 2 at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, Utah. Once again RootsTech will be both in-person and virtual, so if you cannot make it to Salt… Read the full story

On this day in 1892, pioneering aviator Bessie Coleman was born. Coleman was the first African-American woman and the first Native American to hold a pilot license. Image: Bessie Coleman / San Diego Air and Space Museum Archive, Flickr Elizabeth “Bessie” Coleman was born on January 26, 1892 in Atlanta, Texas to George Coleman and Susan Richardson. Born into a family of sharecroppers, Coleman worked the fields at a young age. She briefly attended the… Read the full story

As the new year comes to a close, we are looking back at the highlights of 2023 on Geni. From new enhancements to a return to regular in-person conferences, we had a fun year and reached a new milestone in the World Family Tree with over 180 million profiles connected! We began the year by returning to RootsTech, which was once again in person after two years of virtual conferences. It was amazing to see… Read the full story

The Consistency Checker has played an important role to help improve the accuracy of the World Family Tree. Today we are excited to share that you will now receive a weekly email notification to alert you of inconsistencies found in the family tree on Geni. In the email notification, you will see a list of the most important issues discovered on profiles you manage. The Consistency Checker automatically checks 28 different types of inconsistencies and… Read the full story