Many online family tree programs do a great job in organizing your family tree, but sometimes they can be a little slow loading page after page of family tree information and can only display a limited number of generations at any one point in time.

Geni provides an easy to use interface for entering your family tree.  Start with yourself and then click the yellow arrows to add parents, siblings, spouses, and children.

With Geni, you don’t have to go to a new page to add a new individual, a small prompt appears when you want to add a new individual. You can add additional information later.

Geni lets you easily zoom in or out on your entire family tree.

You can pan by clicking and dragging the items on the screen to view different portions of your tree. You can also choose different views of your tree.  You can you a list of individuals in your tree. If you’ve entered dates for your individuals, see events on the calendar view for the individuals.  Use the Map view to see where the members of your family tree come from.

Use the collaboration feature to work with friends and family to expand your family tree.

There are many family tree options available; give Geni a try or explore other options.

A new tool called Family.Show was recently developed as a demonstration of the capabilities of a programing format. The application is pretty cool to work with and you can export what you create to a standard Gedcom file which is a file format compatible with almost all family tree programs.

Family.Show offers a 3D-like view of your family tree. Instead of boxes with connecting lines to show your family history, Family.Show displays icons that look like people and progresses up and down instead of left to right like most family history programs. You can zoom in or out to see the whole tree or just a portion.

Family.Show also lets you view complex family tree structures unlike any other program. It’s easy to make sense out the visual representation if a person was married, then divorced, but had children in both relationships.

The program is free to download. It is possible that you may need to be running the latest version of your operating system for the program to work. Using Windows Vista, the program installed without any problems at all.

Family.Show comes with an example family tree (the Royal Family of England) so you can get a feel for how the program can handle complex family structures.

Family.Show can be downloaded at: http://www.vertigo.com/familyshow.aspx

Check out our Brand-New Step-by-Step Guide Are You Related to Someone Famous: The 7 Secrets to Discovering your Famous Relatives

Click here to view information on the FREE mini e-course: Could you be related to someone famous? which covers the basics of getting started and some of the tools you’ll need.

For a glimpse of what’s in the full guide: In the past, you had to do a lot of work to find out if you were related to someone famous or even hire a specialist to find out for you. Now there is a free tool that will list if you are descended from or related to famous individuals such as:

• European royalty
• Famous English
• Famous Writers
• Signers of the Declaration of Independence
• Mayflower passengers
• U.S. Presidents
• Technology Figures and Scientists
• Famous Americans

To find out if you have famous ancestors or relatives, follow the steps below:

1. Create a free account at http://roots.cs.byu.edu/digroots/
2. Create a family Group
3. Add a Person to your group (grandparents for example)
   1. You’ll need to have an Ancestral File Number (AFN) for one of your ancestors. If one of your ancestors is included in the index, you’ll be able to search for famous ancestors. You can search FamilySearch.org to find out the Ancestral File Number for a deceased ancestor (grandparent or great grandparent). Look in the matches for “Ancestral File” when you search for your ancestor, and you’ll find the number.
4. Select the Run a Report option
5. Select the check boxes for the groups of famous people
6. Request the report

You can run the report for a specific ancestor or link the ancestor to yourself (even if you don’t have an AFN for yourself). Running the reports, I discovered that I’m related to:

• Various European Royalty such as Richard the Lion Hearted and other less well known figures such as Louis II The Stammerer, Louis VIII The Fat, and Wladislaw I The Short (they weren’t too forgiving with titles back then I guess).
• Various Signers of the Declaration of Independence including Robert Paine (3rd cousin 9 times removed)
• Walt Disney (8th cousin 3 times removed)
• Thomas Edison (7th cousin 5 times removed)
• T.S. Eliot (7th cousin 4 times removed)
• Various U.S. Presidents including Quincy Adams (4th cousin 7 times removed), Abraham Lincoln (6th cousin 5 times removed), Franklin Roosevelt (7th cousin 4 times removed), and George W. Bush (8th cousin)
• Gordon B. Hinckley (7th cousin 4 times removed)
• Joseph Smith (3rd cousin 7 times removed)
• Philo T. Farnsworth “Father of Television” (8th cousin 3 times removed)

I was excited to be related to 14 U.S. Presidents. We then ran the report for my wife and found out that she was related to John Adams! I was jealous because I very much enjoyed reading David McCulough’s book John Adams and gained a great respect for his role in the Revolution. I suppose I can say I’m related to the Adams family (no pun intended) through marriage. My wife says that’s a stretch.

To understand what the “7th cousin 4 times removed” jargon is all about, click here.

For those of you with European ancestry, you could find out if you’re related to royalty. I figure that for me, I’d have to be about the last living person alive, of British descent, to be next in line to be king. Hey, at least I’m in line.

Testimonial:

“Before I read this book, I was worried that searching for my ancestors and my relationships to famous people would be too difficult and time consuming. I took a chance, followed the 7 secrets, and was surprised how easy it actually was!

I quickly learned that I am not only related to at least 15 U.S. Presidents, but I’m also a direct descendant of 3 passengers on the Mayflower! I’m excited to continue using the 7 secrets to find out more about who I’m related to.”

-Justin C., Santa Clara, UT