Digital genealogy: from family tree to multimedia legacy

Names, dates, and lines of descent: the limits of the family tree

You know that your great-grandfather was named William, that he was born in 1910 in a small town in Yorkshire, and that he died in 1985. You know he married Dorothy and that they had five children. You know that one of those children was your grandmother. And that is where everything you know ends.

You do not know what he did for a living. You do not know whether he was quiet or talkative. You do not know if he was an early riser or a night owl. You do not know what worried him, what made him laugh, what he achieved in his life beyond surviving a war and raising a family. You do not know what advice he would have given his great-grandchildren if he had had the chance to meet them.

This is the fundamental problem with the traditional family tree. It gives us the skeleton of a family, the bones, but not the flesh, the skin, or the voice. We know who existed, but we do not know who they really were.

Digital genealogy promises to go further. And in many ways it has. But there is an enormous gap between what genealogical tools offer and what we actually need to preserve the full story of a family.

The traditional family tree: necessary but not enough

Let us be clear: family trees are valuable. Knowing where you come from, tracing lines of kinship, discovering branches you never knew about, all of that has undeniable worth. For many people, building their family tree is a fascinating journey of discovery.

The problem arises when we confuse the map for the territory. The family tree is a map of your family. It tells you who is connected to whom. But a map does not tell stories. A map does not tell you that your great-great-grandmother baked the best bread in the village, that your great-grandfather walked five miles every day to work in the fields, or that your grandmother taught herself to read because in her time girls did not go to school.

Traditional genealogy answers the question "who am I descended from." But the deeper question, the one that truly matters, is "who were the people I am descended from." And to answer that question, we need more than names, dates, and lines.

Digital genealogy: the leap to life stories

Digitization has transformed genealogy. What once required months of searching through parish records and civil registries can now be done from the comfort of your living room. Millions of historical documents have been digitized and made accessible online. Algorithms can cross-reference data and suggest connections that would take a human researcher years to discover.

But technology has advanced far more in data collection than in story preservation. We can find a birth certificate from 1850 in a matter of minutes, but we still know nothing about that ancestor's life beyond the administrative details.

True digital genealogy should combine both worlds: the genealogical data that tells us who each person was in terms of kinship, and the life stories that tell us who they really were as human beings. The photos that show their face. The anecdotes that reveal their character. The achievements that define their contribution to the world.

Available tools: what each one offers

The digital genealogy market has grown enormously over the past few decades. Here are the main tools and what you can expect from each one.

FamilySearch

It is the largest free genealogical platform in the world, operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Its database is impressive: billions of historical records from around the globe, completely free of charge.

Its greatest strength is the sheer volume of available data and the fact that it costs nothing. You can build your family tree, search historical records, and connect with other users researching the same family lines.

Its limitation is that it is focused almost exclusively on genealogical data. Names, dates, places, kinship relationships. There is no real space to tell the life story of each person, to upload their photos with context, or to document their achievements or personality.

MyHeritage

It offers advanced tools such as DNA analysis, facial recognition in old photographs, and AI-powered animation of historical photos. Its technology is impressive and it has a strong presence in Europe.

The model is freemium: you can start for free, but the most interesting features require a paid subscription. DNA kits cost extra. For serious use of the platform, you need to be willing to invest.

Its focus remains primarily genealogical. The technological innovations like photo animation are eye-catching, but they do not replace the narrative of a complete life.

Ancestry

It is probably the best-known genealogical platform in the world, with a massive database centered especially on records from the United States, the United Kingdom, and other English-speaking countries. Its DNA tool is one of the most popular on the market.

It is the most comprehensive option in terms of the number of records, but also the most expensive. Subscriptions can become significant if you want access to all international records.

Like the others, its strength lies in genealogical data, not in life stories. You can find out that your great-great-grandfather arrived in New York on a ship in 1892, but you cannot document what his life was like after he stepped off that ship.

Vestigia

Vestigia approaches the problem from the other side. Instead of starting from genealogical data, it starts from the person. Each profile on Vestigia is a dedicated space for telling the life story of a human being: their biography, their achievements, their photo gallery, the moments that defined them.

It is not a genealogical tool in the traditional sense. You will not find parish records or birth certificates from 1850 here. What you will find is a place where every person in your family can have their own space, with their story told in depth, accessible to anyone who wants to know them.

It is completely free and designed to endure. There are no subscriptions, no paywalls. And most importantly, it is not limited to data. It puts the focus on what truly matters: the human story behind each name.

How to combine both worlds

The best strategy is not to choose between a genealogical tool and a life story platform. It is to use both.

Genealogical data as the foundation

Start by building your family tree on FamilySearch, MyHeritage, Ancestry, or whichever platform you prefer. Collect the basic data: full names, dates of birth and death, places, kinship relationships. This will give you the structure.

As you build the tree, you will discover branches you did not know about, connections that will surprise you, and possibly historical documents that shed light on the lives of your ancestors.

Life stories as the soul

For each person in your tree who is meaningful to you, create a profile on Vestigia. Do not just copy the genealogical data. Investigate, ask questions, document. Who was this person? What did they do for a living? What did they enjoy? What did they achieve? How do those who knew them remember them?

If the person is already gone and there is no one left who remembers them directly, do what you can with what you have. Sometimes a single photograph and a few facts are enough to create a profile that rescues that person from complete anonymity. Anything is better than nothing.

A practical example

Imagine you are researching your mother's side of the family. On FamilySearch, you discover that your great-grandmother, Dorothy, was born in 1918 in a village in rural England, married in 1940, and had seven children. You find her birth certificate and her marriage certificate.

With those facts in hand, you talk to your mother and your aunt. They tell you that Dorothy was a seamstress, that she sewed clothes for half the village, that she learned the trade from her own mother, and that during the hardest years after the war it was her work that kept the family afloat. They tell you she made the most extraordinary Sunday roast that no one has managed to replicate. That she hummed old songs while she sewed. That she had a fierce temper but an even bigger heart.

With that information, you create a profile on Vestigia for Dorothy. You upload the only photograph your family still has of her, write her biography with everything you have been told, and document her achievements, including the feat of raising seven children with a sewing machine. And suddenly, Dorothy is no longer just a name on a family tree. She is a real person, with a real story, accessible to any of her descendants who want to know her.

The multimedia legacy: beyond text

The great advantage of digital genealogy over the traditional kind is that we are not limited to text. We can incorporate multimedia elements that bring the story to life in a way that a family tree on paper could never achieve.

Scanned photographs

If you have family photo albums, scan them. It does not have to be with a professional scanner. The camera on a modern smartphone does a more than acceptable job if the lighting is good. Every photo you scan and upload to a digital profile is a photo saved from deteriorating in a drawer.

Add context to every photo: who is in it, when it was taken, where, what was happening. Without that context, within a generation no one will know who the people in the photograph are.

Digitized family videos

If your family has old video tapes, VHS, Hi8, MiniDV, digitizing them is an investment worth making. There are specialized services that do it at reasonable prices. Those videos contain something that no photograph can capture: the voice, the movement, the spontaneous expressions of your family members.

Audio recordings

Sometimes the most natural way to collect the testimony of an older person is to record them talking. No formal questions, no pressure. Simply sit with a phone recording and let them tell whatever they want to tell. Those recordings are pure gold for future generations.

Documents and objects

Diplomas, letters, postcards, handwritten recipes, work permits, newspaper clippings. Everything can be photographed and added to a digital profile as part of that person's legacy. A work permit from the 1950s says more about someone's life than any genealogical data point.

Do not wait until it is too late

Digital genealogy is a fascinating field that combines historical research with the preservation of family memory. But there is a crucial difference between researching an ancestor from the 19th century and documenting the story of your grandparents or your parents.

For distant ancestors, you only have official records and, if you are lucky, a blurry photograph. For people who are still alive or who passed away recently, you have access to something far more valuable: people who knew them, who can tell you their story with detail and emotion.

That access is temporary. Every year that passes, there are fewer people who remember your grandparents. Every decade that passes, the stories become simpler, the details are lost, the anecdotes are forgotten.

If you want to go beyond the family tree and document the real story of your family, you can start with our guide on how to document family history.

And if you already know that you want to create a permanent space for your family's history, sign up on Vestigia. It is free, it takes a few minutes, and it could be the first step toward ensuring that the people in your family stop being just names on a tree and become what they always were: human beings with stories that deserve to be told.