A genogram adds households, ties and causes of death to a tree
A family tree answers one question, who descended from whom. A genogram keeps the descent and adds what the tree leaves out. It draws who lived in one household and when, how each marriage ended, which children were adopted, fostered or raised by an aunt, what each person died of and at what age, and how the people got on with each other.
The Brontë family shows the difference. A tree gives Patrick Brontë a wife and six children with their dates. The genogram adds that the children’s aunt came from Penzance in 1821 and kept house for twenty years in the same household, that every child died of tuberculosis, that Branwell drank and took laudanum, that Charlotte was fused with her father and that the father stayed hostile to the man she married. None of that is in a GEDCOM file.
A GEDCOM file brings the tree across with its dates
Most family tree programs and websites export a GEDCOM file, and Genogram Builder reads it. Choose Export in the editor, then Import a family file, and select the file. People, unions, parents and dates come across, and anything the file carried that the editor could not read is listed before the import rather than dropped. Gramps and GenoPro files are read directly, as are Mermaid diagrams and spreadsheets with a header row.
A large tree is worth trimming before it is imported. Export the branch you want to study rather than the whole tree. One genogram of up to 50 people can be drawn without an account, a free account holds charts of up to 50 people each, and Pro removes the limit on people.
- Export GEDCOM
In your family tree program, export the branch you want as a GEDCOM file.
- Import the file
Choose Export, then Import a family file, and select it. People, unions, parents and dates are read.
- Read what was not carried
Anything the editor could not read is listed before the import, so nothing is lost silently.
- Add what a tree lacks
Draw the households, the causes of death and the emotional lines, or describe them in notes and draft them.
The emotional lines record what letters and memories say
The lines that join two people outside the lines of descent are the part that family history usually has only in letters, diaries and the memories of the oldest living relatives. The notation gives a line for close, one for fused, one for distant, one for hostile, one for a cutoff and one for a cutoff that was later repaired. Queen Victoria was estranged from her mother in her youth and reconciled with her later, which is a repaired cutoff.
These lines are worth drawing with restraint and with a source. Write in the notes which letter or which relative the line rests on, and draw a hostile line between two long-dead people only when the evidence is more than a family story, since a chart has a way of becoming the story.
Close
Fused
Hostile
Cutoff repaired
A condition traced through generations is a story and a warning
A genogram colours each person by condition and names the condition in the key. Queen Victoria’s family in the famous set traces haemophilia B from the Queen, who was probably a new mutation, through two carrier daughters into the royal houses of Prussia, Russia and Spain across five generations, with affected sons and carrier daughters marked. The chart shows an X-linked pattern more plainly than any paragraph.
In an ordinary family the same colouring shows a cancer that recurs on one side, a heart disease that appears early in one line, or a depression that follows widowhood in two generations. Where such a pattern appears in living relatives, it is a reason to speak to a doctor rather than a conclusion.
A draft from a written family story places each relative
Family history often exists as prose before it exists as a tree, in a memoir, a letter or an evening’s notes from a grandparent, and the draft feature works from prose. Paste it into the notes panel and the draft returns every person, union, parent line, condition and emotional line it found, each marked as stated in the text or inferred from it and each with the sentence that supports it, and it sets aside what the text leaves open, such as a marriage whose ending is implied but not dated.
The draft does not look anything up. It does not search records and does not resolve two people with the same name. It places what the text says, so that a chart drafted from a grandmother’s account is a chart of what she said, with each item traceable to her words. The Max plan adds sources and notes of up to 30,000 characters for a chart built from longer documents.
Your notes
Walter Hawkins, born 1944, a retired postman, married Joan Pritchard, born 1947, in 1968. Walter had heart disease and died in 2021. Their children are Carol, born 1969, Paul, born 1971, and Neil, born 1973. Paul married Helen Fletcher, born 1974, in 2003, and their children are Jack, born 2006, and Ellie, born 2009.
Found in the notes
- Walter Hawkins, 1944, died 2021
- Joan Hawkins, née Pritchard, 1947
- Walter and Joan, married 1968
- Carol Hawkins, 1969
- Paul Hawkins, 1971
- Neil Hawkins, 1973
- Helen Hawkins, née Fletcher, 1974
- Paul and Helen, married 2003
- Jack Hawkins, 2006
- Ellie Hawkins, 2009
- Walter, heart disease
On the chart
Before you decide
Living relatives and what they would want shared
A tree of the dead is one thing and a chart of the living is another. Conditions, divorces and the quality of a marriage are private to the people concerned, and a cousin may not want her diagnosis on a chart that goes to the whole family by email. Ask before a living relative’s condition or tie goes on a chart that will leave your computer.
When memory and records disagree
A date from a certificate goes on the chart, and a date from memory goes in the notes with the name of who remembered it until a record settles it. The same holds for causes of death, which family stories soften or dramatise. The chart is only as reliable as what is written beside each person, so write the source.
The tree program stays the master record
Genogram Builder exports PNG, PDF, SVG and a JSON backup, and it does not write GEDCOM, so the tree program remains the place where descent across many generations is kept. The genogram is the close study of one family within it, and the JSON backup reopens that study with its notes and lines.
The famous templates as examples
Each famous template names its public sources in the case note and says where they disagree, so the facts can be checked. They show the notation on families with settled histories, and they are a good place to see what a genogram of your own family might look like before you draw one.
Import a GEDCOM branch, or open the Brontë template to see what a genogram adds to a tree. One chart of up to 50 people can be drawn without an account.
Open the editor