Join the Family

Find your place in the World Family Tree.

To help us connect you with the Global Family Tree, we’d love a little more information. Please take 45 seconds to answer the questions below so that we can get you linked to Albert Einstein, Beyonce and the rest of the Global Family. We’ll also send you occasional updates regarding the Global Family Reunion.

More Ways to Connect to the Big Tree

Here are the three ways to connect to the Big Family, with details provided below. You can do one of these, two of them, or all of them.

1. Email your ancestors to info@worldfamily.us
2. Join Geni (part of MyHeritage) or Wikitree, which are amazing collaborative family tree websites
3. Join 23andMe or FamilyTreeDNA genetic testing services

Here, in more detail are each of those options.

1. The minimum: Send a list of full names of your grandparents and, if possible, great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents to info@worldfamily.us. Be sure to include any birth and/or death dates and locations you might know for them.*

Also, if you have any, send the names of any semi-famous relatives or ancestors, which often help us make a connection. They don’t have to be as famous as Abraham Lincoln or Albert Einstein. I recently connected to a friend through Dr. Virginia Apgar, inventor of the Apgar baby test. Click here for a list of other people currently on the World Family Tree.

2. Join a collaborative family tree website

Sign up for Geni (which is part of MyHeritage), WikiTree, or FamilySearch.

All are wonderful and fascinating even if you can’t make it to the Global Family Reunion or watch the webcast.

Geni is free to join, but you can upgrade to a premium membership for an annual fee. WikiTree and FamilySearch are free.

Here’s how these sites work: You put in the names of your relatives, and the Geni, WikiTree or FamilySearch algorithms will search to see if the names of your relatives match the names of people on other trees. If the names do match, and you confirm it is the same person, you can merge your family tree with another.

If you merge a few times, you will likely be on the World Family Tree, connected to millions of people, including  and me.

All three sites have wonderful and engaged volunteers who will help you if you need it. They also have tools that make it super-easy to see how you’re related to me. Here’s WikiTree’s 100 Degrees of AJ  Wikitree.com/wiki/Special:Connection

3. Join a genetic testing site

There are several genetic testing services that will figure out your ancestral roots from your DNA. They send you a spit-test you can take at home and mail back to the company. A few weeks later, they’ll send you information about where your family came from – along with a list of hundreds or even thousands of your genetic cousins.

I’ve been using two primarily: 23andMe.com and FamilyTreeDNA. Once you get the results, compare with my profile on 23andMe and FamilyTreeDNA. Email info@worldfamily.us to let us know if you are linked, or if we should keep looking.

4. Join FindMyPast

FindMyPast offers more than 1.7 billion international family history records from the U.S., Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand and beyond with records going back to 1200 that can help you find and connect to hundreds of new cousins.  They have a paid membership.

MORE YOU CAN DO:

Join the team

We’re looking for volunteers to help with genealogy, social media, organizing and outreach. Please let us know if you’re interested in helping us to connect the entire world. info@worldfamily.us

* To help us link you to the larger family tree, a private, secure profile of your name might be created on one of the global family tree websites, such as WikiTree or Geni. There is no charge or obligation for this.