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Create Your Family Tree Online
Grow Your Family History
Learn how to create a family tree online and organize your family history in one place. Start with relatives you know and expand your family tree over time through record-based research.
American AncesTREES is an online family tree platform that features historical records, research hints, and DNA-related tools to help users grow their family history. Start with a few names and continue discovering new family connections across generations. Build your family tree, discover new family connections, and explore records, hints, and research tools that can help grow your family history.
How To Make a Family Tree In 3 Simple Steps
Grow Your Tree with Records, Hints, & DNA Tools
When you build a tree, you will automatically receive hints on the names in your tree from data sources that may have more information about your ancestors. Hinting is the main way people grow family trees, but you can also explore other tools, such as the web clipper, which allows you to copy information into records field by field, and DNA tools, which use DNA test results to identify ancestors through GedMatch.
Historical Records
If you are starting a new tree, you can search for historical records containing information about births, marriages, deaths, census collections, immigration records, military records, and other genealogical resources that may help verify and expand your family tree.
You can then add information to your tree person by person. You can also download the free WebClipper browser extension to add data from a record field by field.
A FREE American AncesTREES account grants you access to American Ancestors’ free databases, and other free online databases – plus any website you may already be a member of. A paid account grants you full access to all of American Ancestors’ databases, plus any website you may already be a member of.
Hints
Receiving hints from suggested records, people, and potential family connections will help uncover new branches of your family tree and guide further research. Hints are sourced off information in your tree. The more information you have on an ancestor, such as birth, death, location, full name, the more accurate your hints will be. Hints can be to specific records or entire collections where you are likely to find more information about your ancestor. Hints also come from other people’s trees.
When you’re creating your tree, one of the first things you’ll want to do is set up hints. Hints are automatically generated suggestions for sources based on the information in your tree.
American AncesTREES will search databases from some of the biggest providers of genealogical data and give you starting points for growing your family tree.
DNA Tools
DNA tools can help identify familial relationships using chromosomal matches. First you will need to process raw data from your DNA test results through GEDmatch or DNAgedcom to create a spreadsheet. After you have created a DNA profile, you will copy and paste those
spreadsheets into AncesTREES.
American AncesTREES Features
- Tree Dashboard
- Research Logs
- Inviting People to Your Tree
- Creating Charts
- Printing Trees
- American AncesTREES Web Clipper
- DNA Tools
- Private Tree Option
Trusted by Family Historians, Researchers & Leading Publications
American Ancestors is widely considered to be the gold standard in family history expertise. We are the country’s oldest family history organization, founded in 1845, and we have been researching and publishing information about family trees for nearly 200 years. We currently serve more than 400,000 constituents.
As the nation’s most trusted family history resource, American Ancestors is regularly called on by major media outlets, academic institutions, professional genealogists, and organizations involved in historical projects to research and document family lines. Many of our findings have been groundbreaking. Recently, ABC News engaged American Ancestors to research and discover the living descendants of enslaved workers who built the White House; the results premiered in an exclusive broadcast on July 4, 2026. In 2025, The New York Times partnered with American Ancestors and New Orleans-based genealogists to research and document Pope Leo XIV’s family tree, revealing his Black ancestors. For over a decade, American Ancestors has vetted the family history research for Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s PBS show Finding Your Roots, and has worked with Dr. Gates on multiple family history related projects for television and other media.
As featured on
I can't tell you how great it feels to be so supported by American Ancestors and those of you who bring together such quality programming and make sure it goes as planned. The online courses, the website, the databases, the "chat with a genealogist" opportunities, the list goes on... it all is simply a treasure. For years my mom was a member of American Ancestors and found it so helpful; I just wish she were still alive to attend and enjoy with me the courses now offered. She would be delighted to know that I'm following in her footsteps.
In addition to keeping your family history data safe and secure, American AncesTREES offers many original features you won’t find in other online trees – including cutting-edge DNA tools – designed to help you organize and advance your genealogical research. We are committed to keeping your data safe, and you can always export a file of all your information. Read our privacy policy and our terms and conditions.
While the standard version of American AncesTREES is always FREE for guests and research level members, higher-level plans with additional features are available at a low annual cost. Contributing members can enjoy the Advanced plan at no additional cost.
Plans and Pricing
| STANDARD TREE | ADVANCED TREE | PREMIUM TREE | |
| Price | Free | $19.95/year | $34.95/year |
| Invite people to your tree | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Unlimited Hints | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| AncesTREES Web Clipper | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Turn off ads | ✓ | ✓ | |
| DNA Tools | ✓ | ||
| Private Tree option (Information about living people is always private no matter which plan you choose) | ✓ | ||
| Media Storage | 2GB over 500 photos | 10GB over 1,000 photos | 100GB over 50,000 photos |
| GET A FREE GUEST ACCOUNT | PURCHASE ADVANCED TREE -or- UPGRADE MY MEMBERSHIP Contributor-level members get access to the advanced tree plan and other benefits | PURCHASE PREMIUM TREE |
Related Articles & Family Tree Resources
Explore related articles, tutorials, stories and family history resources connected to family tree building and genealogy research, and discover helpful next steps to expand your research skills and family history knowledge.
Getting Started with American AncesTREES
American AncesTREES is a great platform for making your family history easier to research and easy to share. Learn how to set up a tree, start getting hints, manage your account, and manage your tree or trees, including how to rename a tree, switch between trees, and other features.
How to Set Up and Manage Your Tree
Learn how to add a new family tree, switch between trees, rename a tree, and set trees to public or private status.
Using Family History Research to Grow Your Tree
Most trees are grown through hinting, but you can also add your record-based research directly into your tree using the Web Clipper browser extension. Learn how to set up automatic hinting directly from genealogical databases, how to download and use the Web Clipper, and store your research inside your tree.
DNA & Trees
You can use DNA test results to grow your tree. This guide walks you through the steps to get started converting your results to a file you can import into your tree. Once you have a DNA profile, you will be able to leverage your DNA data to identify connections to ancestors through genetic matches.
FAQ and Tips
Features to try
Please experiment with any and all the features that interest you. Click on everything! Check out the different views of the tree, and the ability to create and print reports. The many features of American AncesTREES can be explored through the left-hand side navigation in the TREES screens.
Is American AncesTREES really free?
The Standard plan is free to guests and Individual-level members. Contributing members have access to the Advanced plan at no additional cost. The Premium version of the plan for $34.95 a year features DNA tools and private trees.
How many trees can I have?
You can create an unlimited number of trees.
My FamilySearch.com tree is too big to import.
We suggest importing as many generations as TREES allows to start. Once you’re in TREES, you can continue to import people in your FamilySearch Tree into American AncesTREES. To do this, go to Tree Settings on the left-hand navigation in TREES, and check the box next to “Easy Sync for Family Search.”
What sources are hints from?
Record-based hints from other sources should begin appearing after you create and populate your tree. You may receive hints from American Ancestors, FamilySearch, FindmyPast, Newspaper Archive, Billion Graves, Find a Grave and more. Search hints are available for Ancestry.com—search hints suggest collections that are relevant to your search criteria, rather than person-based record hints.
Why do the tree screens have ads in them?
Ads go a (very) small way toward supporting the cost of bringing you this free product. Ads should not obscure any part of the TREES screens, To disable ads permanently, you can either purchase the Advanced TREES plan, or upgrade to a Contributing Membership.