What has changed

Last updated 20 September 2026: 1663 people on the site.

• 2026-09-20 The top bar now follows you down the page, with a search box, a button to the list of ancestors and a switch between light and dark. A Brick wall tag marks the ancestors at the edge of the tree whose parents have been searched for and not found. On the home chart each family line's name stands above it, and the charts spread the years out more, with larger flags. The family tree's cards are narrower, so more fit across, and choosing a person slides the tree into its new shape instead of redrawing it. A person whose birth year is unknown is now placed by their family's dates rather than at the top of the chart. The list of changes has moved to its own page. Choosing a person on a chart now shows their name as a link, with buttons for the chart around them and for a fan chart of their ancestors, which opens in a window over the page: four colours for the four grandparent lines, the earliest generations written around the centre. 1661 people
• 2026-09-20 A map now goes with the charts: every event in the selected lines is a dot on it, and a person's page carries a small map of their own places. The borders are those of the day - the colonies, territories and states as they stood when each event happened, redrawn from a historical atlas for more than twenty dates between 1600 and today. A (+) beside a chart adds a spouse's line, and a (-) takes an inferred ancestor away. 1661 people
• 2026-09-20 Sixteen more life stories, forty-three in all, beginning with the four grandparents and their own parents. A new piece on Natchez, where several of our families passed through in the century from 1716. Five earlier pieces were revised against what has since been found. The search now looks at every place in a person's life, not only the birthplace, and shows which place matched. 1661 people
• 2026-09-19 The charts are more compact: where a line ends early, the lines beside it now use the room above it instead of leaving it empty, so more of the family fits in view at once.
• 2026-09-19 Pages can now carry a life story - twelve have one to begin with, drawn from the sketches already in the family record - and tags such as Military service, Immigrant, Farmer or Twin, set from the records themselves. A new page lists everyone by tag.
• 2026-09-19 A person's page now has one chart instead of two: their ancestors rise above them and their descendants spread below, meeting at their own dot, and the person the chart is about is outlined so they stand out even when nobody has selected them. The family tree's buttons now follow as you scroll, as the chart's already did.
• 2026-09-19 Fifteen more life stories, twenty-seven in all, written from the records and findings rather than from the old sketches - among them Waterman Curtis, killed by a falling tree in 1859, and Antoine Emery dit Coderre of Contrecoeur, who could not sign his name. Every story now says plainly how the person stands to one of the four grandparents.
• 2026-09-17 Every chart now sits beside a family tree of the ordinary kind - parents and grandparents above, brothers and sisters alongside, husbands, wives and children below - and choosing a name moves both the tree and the chart to that person. On a phone held upright the chart now runs down the screen instead of across it, and a tap holds a person's details open.
• 2026-09-13 The site opened: a page for every person and every couple, charts of ancestors and descendants laid out in time, everyone by surname as a compact list with a letter row to jump by, and a search. Relatives who may still be living appear as "Living", with no details, so a family's line no longer stops short. A tick-box under any chart adds the flag of the country each person was born in, as that country was at the time - New France, New Spain, Prussia and so on.