Family history vs family tree:
what’s the difference?

A family tree is a chart of descent. Each person has a box with their name and the dates and places of their birth, marriage and death, and lines join them to their parents, partners and children. The State Library of Queensland describes two charts that researchers use:

Each fact on a tree should come from a record, such as a birth certificate, a census return or a parish register. In England and Wales, census returns are open from 1841 to 1921, and The National Archives notes that 1841 was the first census to list the names of every individual. The State Library suggests keeping a research log of which sources you searched, when and where, with a citation for each one.

The National Genealogical Society puts it this way: genealogy “is often used to describe a line of descent, traced continuously from an ancestor”, while some feel family history “has a bit more connotation of a biographical study of a family”. Its conclusion is that “both words mean the study of families, finding their stories, and tracing their lineage and history”.

In practice, family history asks what a tree can’t answer. What work did they do, and why did they move? What did Sunday lunch look like? What did they sound like when they laughed? Some of that comes from records. Much more comes from photos, letters, recipes and the people who remember them.

No. You can write down your grandmother’s stories without knowing her grandparents’ names, and many family histories begin exactly that way. A tree helps in two ways, though: it stops you mixing up two people with the same name, and it shows you whose stories you haven’t collected yet.

There is good reason to start with the stories. Emory University psychologists Marshall Duke and Robyn Fivush, with Jennifer Bohanek, built a “Do You Know” scale of 20 yes or no questions, such as whether a child knows how their parents met. In a study of 66 teenagers aged 14 to 16, those who knew more about their extended family showed higher levels of emotional well-being, even after allowing for how well the family functioned overall. The authors cautioned that it was the only study to have used the scale, so more research was needed.

Another Emory study found that children whose families talked about difficult times in “more coherent and emotionally open ways” coped better over two years, with better self-esteem and less anxiety.

Tree tools are built around records and relationships:

Family history tools are older and simpler: a voice recorder, a scanner, a notebook and somewhere to keep it all together. The Oral History Society’s advice to family historians is to ask open questions, ones which need more than a yes or no answer, and to brainstorm questions by asking yourself what you would ask a relative about the family if they were still alive.

Start with the people who are still here. Among the National Genealogical Society’s nine tips for beginners: talk to your relatives, oldest first, taking notes or recording; ask whether certificates, Bible records and old photos survive; and document where every finding came from. That gives you both at once: names and dates for the tree, and the stories for the history.

Ancestorii isn’t a family tree builder or a genealogy research service. It has no tree view, no record search and no DNA testing, so for the tree, use a tree tool.

It is built for the family history side. Each person can have a Loved One profile with their relationship, birth and death dates and a life story in four chapters: Early years, Important moments, Special memories and Who they are. Around them go timelines of dated events, photo albums with the story and voice notes behind each picture, and a shared Library, all private to the family members you invite. The Free plan covers one loved one; Premium, at £3.99 a month for the whole family, covers as many as you like.

On a family tree, the mum of Ancestorii’s founder would be a name and a date of birth. His caption on this photo says who she is.