How to make a family tree: a step-by-step guide

1. Start with yourself and work backwards

Write down yourself, your siblings, your parents and your grandparents first: the people you know for sure. Then go one generation back at a time. Working from the known to the unknown keeps the tree correct; jumping to a famous ancestor and trying to connect down usually goes wrong.

2. Collect the basics for each person

• Full name, and other names people used (nicknames, names after marriage or the Hajj).
• Dates of birth and death. An approximate date (“about 1920”, “before 1950”) is far better than nothing.
• Places of birth, death and where they lived.
• Parents, partners (including earlier marriages) and children.
• Photos, and a few lines about who they were: work, stories, where they are buried.

3. Ask the elders first

Grandparents, great-aunts and great-uncles carry knowledge that is written down nowhere. Visit or call them early, show them old photos, and ask about their own parents and grandparents. Record or note the answers the same day.

Useful questions: Who were your parents and grandparents? Where did they live? How many siblings did they have, and who did each of them marry? Who in the family keeps old documents or photos?

4. Check documents

Birth and marriage certificates, the family card (Kartu Keluarga), letters, gravestones, old photo captions and religious records confirm names and dates. Note where each fact came from, so that when two relatives disagree you can see which source is stronger.

5. Record relationships exactly

Real families are not just father, mother and children. Record remarriages and divorces, half-siblings and step-siblings, and children who were adopted, fostered, raised by a guardian or nursed (milk kinship). Getting these right avoids confusion later, for example when someone asks how two cousins are actually related.

6. Choose where to keep it

Paper and spreadsheets work for a few dozen people but get hard to keep current and to share. A family tree app keeps the layout tidy as the tree grows, and lets relatives see it and add their own branch.

Sakdulur is a free, private family tree app for the web, iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac, Windows and Linux. Every tree is visible only to the people you invite. It handles couples side by side, remarriages, adoptive, step, foster, guardian and milk parents, approximate dates, places, photos and notes.

7. Build it together

Nobody knows every branch. Invite relatives as editors for the part of the family they know best, or as viewers if they only want to look. In Sakdulur you invite by email or with a link that expires, and with “Share by branch” each person only sees and edits the people shared with them.

If the tree owner turns on the optional AI assistant, members can also ask questions (“Who is Ayu's father and where does he live?”) and editors can add relatives just by describing them; every change is shown first and saved only when they press Apply.

8. Keep it alive

Add births, marriages and deaths as they happen, and print or export the tree for family gatherings. Sakdulur can print the tree or save it as a PDF or image, and owners can export it as Excel, GEDCOM or a full JSON backup at any time.