Visualising Family Trees

Different ways to view your family tree

Lately, within the genealogy community - especially on Bluesky, people have been sharing generational charts that visualise their ancestral locations. Similar posts have also been shared here on Substack. Take this Note from

Paul Chiddicks

for example. It tells us at a glance where Paul’s family has resided for the last 6 generations. It also highlights the gaps he has. Being able to see where your gaps are at a glance can be really useful.

All this activity reminded me of the excellent ‘Ancestral Trees’ feature on DNA Painter. This can be accessed via a free account as far as 4th great grandparents (6 generations). Even with limited access, this feature provides a fabulous interface for visualizing your family line in various ways.

My Visualisations at DNA Painter

Tree Completeness

One of the things ‘Ancestral Trees’ can tell me is how complete my tree is:

Tree Completeness Chart - Image from DNA Painter

Clearly, I have some work to do and, actually, my 2nd great grandparents are not quite as complete as they seem because I don’t know the family names of two of my 2nd great grandmothers.

Dimensions

I can organise my tree via a range of dimensions, including birthplace, birth century, age at death, country of birth etc.

Birthplace - 5 Generations - Image from DNA Painter

Age of Death - 5 Generations - Image from DNA Painter

Or you can show your dimensions using a FAN chart instead:

Birth Country - Fan Chart - Image from DNA Painter

Genealogy Facts

I can also get a summary of genealogy facts by generation. Here are the facts relating to 5 generations back - my 2nd great grandparents

Genealogy Facts - Generation 5 - Image from DNA Painter

DNA Filters

There are also DNA filters to play with. Once you have marked your ancestors as genetic ancestors, you can filter to them. Also, you can use the filter to highlight your X-DNA inheritance path, your mt-DNA inheritance path, or, if you are a male, your Y-DNA inheritance path.

Each filter can be viewed as a pedigree tree or as a fan chart:

Pedigree Tree - X-DNA Inheritance Path - 5 Generations - Image from DNA Painter

Fan Chart - X-DNA Inheritance Path - Image from DNA Painter

New Developments

Just in the last 24 hours, DNA Painter Users have been invited to BETA test updates to the ‘Ancestral Tree's’ feature. These have been designed to enhance what is already available at ‘ancestral trees’.

The new developments include the ability to add photos to your ancestors in a tree and see these in various views of a tree, a new compact version of the tree and a ‘brick walls’ button that brings up a list of your brick walls.

Why Not Try It!

This feature at DNA Painter provides a really interesting way to visualise various aspects of your family tree. I have only provided a very limited view of what you can do with it. Here is a blog post from Jonny Perl outlining the eight ways you can use ancestral trees at DNA Painter (March 2020) and a later one about using ‘Dimensions’ to showcase your ancestral line (April 2021).

No doubt there will be more news soon when the new features have been BETA tested.

You should try it!

EDIT 17 December 2024

The new development to enhance the ancestral trees feature referred to above is now publicly available. You can read about it in Jonny Perl's new blog post.